Notes
Collecting some notes, reading Slow Productivity1 as I’m iterating on this2 post which is related.
Disconnection From the Familiar
The p160 - 163, daily rituals, going to some other other place , as a escape place to focus.
I have stumbled upon this phenomenon too. Traveling has been a favorite way to collect my thoughts not otherwise accessible. Bonus relaxed low stakes environment.
trail of broken urls
Reading, p181, about this Jarvis, this quote resonates,
" It’s hard to detail the full list of things Jarvis has worked on in recent years, as his various ideas leaving behind a trail of broken URLs and out-of-date websites: which is, of course, exactly what you’d expect from someone who isn’t trying to build the next Microsoft but is instead pursuing just enough work to engage his curiosity while supporting his slow, inexpensive life-style."
And reminds me of Pieter Levels too. The entrepreneurial mindset scaled up and scaled down, trying things out relentlessly until something sticks. Risks, but they energize you to keep going to the next thing with small bits of progress in between.
Rigorous Leisure Tangents
Up to p188 , Cal desceibes how his sophisticated movie appreciation is so unrelated to his profession so it is a loose way to pick up new inspiration.
Like Ali Abdaal’s take on Hobbies in Feel Good Productivity (George W Bush the oil painter), and Tim Ferris has this notion too. Also Hugh Laurie characer House on House multiple tracks , side quests he has, getting out of his duties and making fun of his residents, helps stir the diagnostics.
Sustained and specific
(p205) Yea, efforts in increments. Measured bets. This is where microplanning shines.
Dont quit your dayjob
p206 Cussler, Crighton, Grisham, 3 exzmplss of writers that only quit their day jobs after their side hussles started proving profitable.
Focused side projects
And they are used as examples of making that shift, by doing that energizing self driving passion effort in their spare time. This story is a throughline in history I think that the deep stuff takes time and typically you cant get paid for it early on.
Plenty examples of this I hear all the time. Can collect them elsewhere.
Also Andrew wiles story too. He setup 7 years of unpublished research and trickled it out to be able to focus better on his Fermat’s Last Theorem work in secret in his attic.
Compound interest
Dont think Cal phrases it like this but the stories of all the sustained efforts in his book feel like setting up for compound interest. Actually he does write about betting on yourself , that you make investments in yourself thqt may or may not pay off. But then later, you can reinvest the gains little by little taking what you do and if you learn from it, then it feels like compounding.
Set up the story
I like the p213 description of how McPhee cut up his notes into scraps of paper and sort of story-boarded the components, rearranging them until it flowed at a high level , bird’s eye perspective. He did it low tech but I wonder how people do that today.
drip drip
p219, I like this summary below, addressing, not just that there is daily pressure to be “pseudo-productive”–aka look busy–but more importantly that it sucks away your energy you would like to use toward meaningful work. But(!), if you can defend just a little bit of your time every day consistently, then maybe you can take that daily win as a peace of mind against the anxiety of losing a day, keeping instead a perspective of what thoss little “drips” can amount to over time. Sort of biding your time perhaps.
Slow productivity, more than anything else, is a plea to step back from the frenzied activity of the daily grind. It’s not that these efforts are arbitrary: our anxious days include tasks and appointments that really do need to get done. But once you realize, as McPhee did, that this exhausted scrambling is often orthogonal to the activities that matter, your perspective changes. A slower approach to work is not only feas-ible, but is likely superior to the ad hoc pseudo-productivity that dictates the professional lives of so many today. If you collect modest drops of meaningful effort for 365 days, McPhee reminds us, you’ll end the year with a bucket that’s pretty damn full. This is what ultimately matters: where you end up, not the speed at which you get there, or the number of people you impress with your jittery busyness along the way.
references
- slow productivity
- https://michal.piekarczyk.xyz/post/2025-10-21-kanban-cage/