Chris Boutté's Reviews > Slow Productivity: The Lost Art of Accomplishment Without Burnout

Like many others, I’m a massive fan of Cal Newport. I read all of his books, even if I think he goes a bit overboard with some of his “deep work” philosophy. He still has a lot of great ideas and thoughts about doing good work. With that said, this book is extremely niche and may not appeal to a wide range of readers like some of his other books. This book is specifically for an about knowledge workers like writers, philosophers, and people who have the privilege of getting paid to think.

As per usual, Cal makes extremely strong arguments. This book is all about slowing down and creating the space necessary to think through projects to perform our best work. He shares a lot of stories from famous knowledge workers and creates some principles so we can do better work.

Even if you’re not a full-time knowledge worker, you can probably benefit from this book. I’m only a part-time knowledge worker with my writing, and I gained some value from this book. But for the majority of the population, I could imagine them just getting annoyed by this book. Newport is a pretty progressive thinker, but the people this book appeals to is mainly those of us who are privileged enough to get paid for writing, thinking, teaching, and other forms of knowledge work.

A lot of academics read my book reviews, so for most of you, this is probably a good read. But if you’re working a normal office job with little to no control over your day-to-day tasks, you can probably skip this one. Well, you can give a copy to your boss and hope they change how things are done or potentially get fired.