Slow Productivity: How to Do Less, Focus More, and Not Burn Out with Cal Newport
The One You Feed
Eric Zimmer, The One You Feed
4.6 • 2.5K Ratings
🗓️ 9 September 2025
⏱️ 70 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In this episode, Cal Newport explains slow productivity and how to do less, focus more, and not burn out. Cal argues, our obsession with busyness is pseudo-productivity and while it may look like progress, it isn’t. In his new book, Slow Productivity, he shows how we can accomplish more by doing less with focus and intent
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Key Takeaways:
- The impact of technology on productivity and focus.
- The struggle between distraction and meaningful work in the digital age.
- The moral implications of smartphone use, particularly among children.
- The distinction between deep work and shallow busyness.
- The concept of “slow productivity” as an alternative to traditional productivity metrics.
- The challenges of measuring productivity in knowledge work.
- The importance of quality over quantity in work output.
- Strategies for managing workload and reducing distractions.
- The psychological and evolutionary roots of digital distraction.
- Balancing ambition with practicality in creative work to avoid perfectionism.
If you enjoyed this conversation with Cal Newport, check out these other episodes:
How to Find Focus and Master Attention with Dr. Amishi Jha
Digital Minimalism with Cal Newport
For full show notes, click here!
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Social stress drives you back to your phone because you're stressed that someone you know has sent you a message. |
| 0:06.6 | And if you're not responding, they will interpret it as you're ignoring them. |
| 0:11.3 | We're really wired for this because if I'm in an actual Forager band 100,000 years ago, |
| 0:16.8 | these interpersonal connections are everything for my survival. |
| 0:19.9 | And if someone in my band is like tapping me on the shoulder and I ignore them, that could be a huge problem. |
| 0:28.1 | Welcome to the one you feed. |
| 0:34.2 | Throughout time, great thinkers have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes like |
| 0:39.3 | garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you think, ring true. And yet, for many of us, our |
| 0:45.9 | thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self-pity, jealousy, or fear. |
| 0:53.3 | We see what we don't have instead of what we do. We think things that |
| 0:57.0 | hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking. Our actions matter. It |
| 1:03.2 | takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life worth living. This podcast is about how |
| 1:09.2 | other people keep themselves moving in the right direction, |
| 1:12.3 | how they feed their good wolf. For years, I believed the only way to succeed was to put in more |
| 1:21.3 | hours. But when I was working full-time in software while also running this podcast, I couldn't do |
| 1:27.1 | more. I had to find a way to do |
| 1:29.3 | less. And then something surprising happened. My work improved. I had to get clear on what was |
| 1:36.8 | most important in both roles. It forced me to think about what really mattered for getting |
| 1:43.0 | results. As Cal Newport argues, our obsession |
| 1:46.2 | with busyness is pseudo-productivity. It looks like progress, but it isn't. In his new book, |
| 1:52.6 | Slow Productivity, he shows how we can accomplish more by doing less with focus and intention. |
| 2:04.0 | I'm Eric Zimmer, and this is the one you feed. |
... |
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