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How I Manage My Time Without Burning Out

2024-06-25 · Book summary (Book Club) · Ali · recording, 21:57 · watch on YouTube

Topic: Productivity and time · mode: List of tips or lessons · tags: Lesson from a book, Sponsor segment present, His own products discussed, His own numbers, His medical past

In a Book Club episode on Cal Newport's Slow Productivity, Ali explains its three principles (do fewer things, work at a natural pace, obsess over quality) and how he applies them: a visible list of active projects and a backlog, meeting-free Mondays and Fridays, and weighing well-paid speaking gigs against time to write.

What is said

The parts of the video and what is said in each (★ — how much it matters to the video).

00:00:00 — Why we need Slow Productivity: the mistake of doing too many things; who Cal Newport is

  • ★★★ After 15 years as a productivity nerd, Ali says the mistake most people, himself included, still make is trying to do too many things, so they burn out before making real progress. — 00:00:00 · burnout
  • ★★ In this Book Club episode, the series in which Ali has distilled highlights from favourite books for four years, he discusses the three core principles of Cal Newport's Slow Productivity. — 00:00:29 · Cal Newport, Book Club
  • ★ Cal Newport is an associate professor of computer science at Georgetown University and the author of eight books, most famously So Good They Can't Ignore You, Deep Work and Digital Minimalism. — 00:00:29 · Cal Newport

00:01:10 — The foundations: pseudo-productivity, a slow revolution, famous knowledge workers of the past

  • ★★★ Cal Newport (quoted): Cal Newport argues that knowledge work, lacking a good measure of output, took activity such as hours at the computer as a rough proxy for productivity, which he calls pseudo-productivity. — 00:01:26 · Cal Newport
  • ★★ Cal Newport (quoted): Cal Newport argues that pseudo-productivity is a root cause of today's burnout, of people not enjoying their jobs, of feeling always on, of working evenings and weekends, and of Zoom fatigue. — 00:01:56 · burnout, Cal Newport, Zoom
  • ★★ Cal Newport (quoted): Cal Newport argues for a slow revolution in work, like slow food set against fast food and slow fashion against fast fashion, hence the title Slow Productivity. — 00:02:22 · Cal Newport
  • ★★ Cal Newport (quoted): Slow Productivity studies famously productive knowledge workers of the past, such as Galileo, Isaac Newton and Jane Austen, who had great autonomy over how they spent their time. — 00:02:51

00:03:30 — A free quarterly alignment webinar on 30 June 2024

  • ★★ Ali hosts a free two-hour quarterly alignment webinar on Zoom, 3 to 5 pm UK time on Sunday 30 June 2024, to reflect on the last three months and set quests for the next three. — 00:03:45 · Zoom

00:04:11 — Principle one, do fewer things: Jane Austen, the overhead tax, a visible active list and backlog

  • ★★ Cal Newport (quoted): Slow Productivity says the story of a busy, socialite Jane Austen scribbling her novels between visitors is mostly myth, written up decades after her death by a relative, perhaps her nephew. — 00:04:40
  • ★★ Cal Newport (quoted): According to primary sources cited in Slow Productivity, Jane Austen wrote her best work in a four- or five-year period after her family retired to a remote country house and cut social obligations to almost zero. — 00:04:40
  • ★★ Cal Newport (quoted): Cal Newport writes that the lesson of Jane Austen, that doing less can enable better results, defies our contemporary bias towards activity. — 00:05:10 · Cal Newport

  • ★★★ Cal Newport (quoted): Cal Newport's first principle is to do fewer things: cut obligations until you could easily finish them with time to spare, and use the lighter load on the few projects that matter most. — 00:05:53 · Cal Newport

    “Strive to reduce your obligations to the point where you can easily imagine accomplishing them with time to spare.”

  • ★★ Cal Newport (quoted): Cal Newport says simplicity in work is possible in most modern work settings if you are willing to be creative, at times even radical, in how you select and organise your work. — 00:06:22 · Cal Newport

  • ★★★ Ali explains the overhead tax from Slow Productivity: each project brings emails, meetings, team updates and finding stakeholders, time that creates no value but has to be spent on every new project. — 00:07:17 · deep work (concept)
  • ★★★ Three projects at once mean three lots of overhead tax and little time to focus, Ali says, so do one project at a time and move to the next once it is done. — 00:07:45
  • ★★★ The tactic from Slow Productivity that Ali finds most interesting, close to his energy investment portfolio: keep a list of active projects and a backlog in a Google Doc or Notion page and make it visible to your manager and coworkers. — 00:08:08 · energy investment portfolio, Google Docs, Notion
  • ★★★ When a manager brings a new request, Ali advises showing your active projects and backlog with an estimate of when you can start, and, if it is urgent, asking which project they would rather you deprioritise. — 00:09:21
  • ★★ Running a company of about 22 people, Ali says good people are hard to find and keep, so a boss is not looking for a reason to fire a good employee, who has more power than they think. — 00:10:40
  • ★★ Uncertainty is the most painful thing for a boss, Ali says, so making your list of projects visible gives them a profound sense of relief and lets you really do fewer things at a time. — 00:11:04

00:11:20 — Brilliant sponsor read

00:12:40 — Principle two, work at a natural pace: Copernicus, Galileo and Newton; seasonality; Ali's meeting-free days

  • ★★ Cal Newport (quoted): Slow Productivity recounts that Copernicus's ideas on planetary motion were sparked by a commentary he read at 23, published in 1496, but he wrote a working draft only in 1510. — 00:12:45
  • ★★ Cal Newport (quoted): Slow Productivity recounts that Galileo timed swinging chandeliers in the Cathedral of Pisa with his pulse in 1584 but did the follow-up pendulum experiments only in 1602. — 00:13:06
  • ★★ Cal Newport (quoted): Slow Productivity recounts that Isaac Newton took until 1670, about 15 years, to feel he had a handle on the inverse square law, and some 15 more to publish. — 00:13:36

  • ★★★ Cal Newport (quoted): Cal Newport writes that our habit of grinding without relief is more arbitrary than we recognise: bosses rarely dictate our daily schedule, and our own anxieties often play the fiercest taskmaster. — 00:13:36 · Cal Newport

    “It's our own anxieties that play the role of the fiercest taskmaster.”

  • ★★★ Cal Newport (quoted): Cal Newport's second principle is to work at a natural pace: don't rush your most important work, but let it unfold on a sustainable timeline with varying intensity, in settings conducive to brilliance. — 00:14:38 · Cal Newport

  • ★★ Cal Newport (quoted): Cal Newport argues that working eight hours a day, 40 hours a week is a relic of the industrial revolution; for most of history people worked in seasonal, variable-intensity ways. — 00:14:38 · Cal Newport
  • ★★★ Ali's takeaway from the second principle is to embrace seasonality: be a little slower in the summer months, or don't take on too many projects over the Christmas break. — 00:15:03
  • ★★★ Ali now keeps Mondays and Fridays free of work obligations and meetings; one day a week is his intense filming day, one is for meetings, and the rest is for working at a natural pace, on ideas and his next book. — 00:15:36
  • ★★ Since reading Slow Productivity, Ali says he does not need to work on his next book right now: he lets it percolate in the background because he wants it to be really good too. — 00:16:05
  • ★★ Ali says really good things take time: working at a natural pace is more sustainable and humane, and often leads to better work than hurried sprints in an era of busyness. — 00:16:05

00:16:40 — Shortform affiliate mention

  • ★★★ Cal Newport (quoted): Cal Newport's third principle is to obsess over the quality of what you produce, even if it means missing short-term opportunities, and to use the results to gain more freedom over the long term. — 00:16:46 · Cal Newport

00:17:02 — Principle three, obsess over quality: perfectionism, an extra few weeks, speaking gigs versus the craft

  • ★★★ Cal Newport (quoted): To balance obsession with quality against perfectionism, Cal Newport advises giving yourself enough time to make something great but not unlimited time, and good enough to catch the attention of those whose taste you care about. — 00:17:32 · Cal Newport
  • ★★ Brendon Burchard (quoted): Brendon Burchard, Ali's friend and mentor, advises that the difference between good and great is often an extra two to four weeks of effort. — 00:17:32
  • ★★ For a course his business releases, Ali says, an extra month gives the final polish; an extra year would be too long, and two or three days would bring busyness and stress. — 00:18:18
  • ★★★ Balancing quality against "done is better than perfect" varies by industry and work, Ali says: some very perfectionistic people he knows could obsess less about quality, others could obsess a little more. — 00:18:18
  • ★★★ Ali's personal takeaway from Slow Productivity is that good things take time, meaning time to focus on the thing, which requires saying no to other shorter-term obligations. — 00:18:57
  • ★★ Since releasing his book, Ali gets speaking gigs where companies pay him tens of thousands of dollars and fly him business or first class to talk at their conferences, often in the US. — 00:19:21 · Feel-Good Productivity (book), United States
  • ★★ Ali pictures a typical speaking trip, flying to New York to talk for a big company for 30 grand and about four days of his time: more money than he would have earned in a year as a doctor, he says. — 00:19:45
  • ★★★ Saying yes to many speaking gigs left Ali no time to write, though writing creates his videos and books; making time to write means saying no to extra money, since books pay late and not much. — 00:20:35
  • ★★ Everyone must balance quality with getting things done, and short-term money with time for work that could pay off in the long term; Ali calls it hard and says he does not really know the answer. (unsure) — 00:20:56
  • ★★ Ali urges viewers to read Slow Productivity, which he calls absolutely sick and has highlighted heavily on his Kindle. — 00:20:56 · Kindle

00:21:10 — Productivity Lab's book club, The 12 Week Year video, sign-off

  • ★★ Productivity Lab, Ali's community for entrepreneurs, creators and professionals, is starting a monthly book club, and Slow Productivity will be one of its first books. — 00:21:27 · Book Club
  • ★ Ali says The 12 Week Year goes against some principles of Slow Productivity but complements it nicely. — 00:21:27

In the description and comments

Threads in this video

  • milestone · Book Club, Ali's series of book-summary videos (2020) — In this Book Club episode, the series in which Ali has distilled highlights from favourite books for four years, he discusses the three core principles of Cal Newport's Slow Productivity. (00:00:29)
  • progress update · Ali plans to host more annual planning workshops (2024) — Ali hosts a free two-hour quarterly alignment webinar on Zoom, 3 to 5 pm UK time on Sunday 30 June 2024, to reflect on the last three months and set quests for the next three. (00:03:45)
  • milestone · Ali builds a team for his online business — Ali has about 22 people working for him. (00:10:40)
  • milestone · Productivity Lab (2024) — Productivity Lab, Ali's community for entrepreneurs, creators and professionals, is starting a monthly book club, and Slow Productivity will be one of its first books. (00:21:27)
  • restate · How many projects should you work on at once? — After 15 years as a productivity nerd, Ali says the mistake most people, himself included, still make is trying to do too many things, so they burn out before making real progress. (00:00:00)
  • refine · How many projects should you work on at once? — Three projects at once mean three lots of overhead tax and little time to focus, Ali says, so do one project at a time and move to the next once it is done. (00:07:45)
  • restate · How many projects should you work on at once? — Cal Newport's first principle is to do fewer things: cut obligations until you could easily finish them with time to spare, and use the lighter load on the few projects that matter most. (00:05:53)
  • refine · How do you decide which work to prioritise? — When a manager brings a new request, Ali advises showing your active projects and backlog with an estimate of when you can start, and, if it is urgent, asking which project they would rather you deprioritise. (00:09:21)
  • restate · How do you avoid burnout? — Cal Newport's second principle is to work at a natural pace: don't rush your most important work, but let it unfold on a sustainable timeline with varying intensity, in settings conducive to brilliance. (00:14:38)
  • refine · How do you avoid burnout? — Ali's takeaway from the second principle is to embrace seasonality: be a little slower in the summer months, or don't take on too many projects over the Christmas break. (00:15:03)
  • refine · How many hours a day should you work? — Cal Newport argues that working eight hours a day, 40 hours a week is a relic of the industrial revolution; for most of history people worked in seasonal, variable-intensity ways. (00:14:38)
  • refine · How should you plan your week? — Ali now keeps Mondays and Fridays free of work obligations and meetings; one day a week is his intense filming day, one is for meetings, and the rest is for working at a natural pace, on ideas and his next book. (00:15:36)
  • restate · How do you get past perfectionism and the fear of starting? — To balance obsession with quality against perfectionism, Cal Newport advises giving yourself enough time to make something great but not unlimited time, and good enough to catch the attention of those whose taste you care about. (00:17:32)
  • refine · How do you get past perfectionism and the fear of starting? — Balancing quality against "done is better than perfect" varies by industry and work, Ali says: some very perfectionistic people he knows could obsess less about quality, others could obsess a little more. (00:18:18)
  • refine · How do you decide what to say yes to? — Saying yes to many speaking gigs left Ali no time to write, though writing creates his videos and books; making time to write means saying no to extra money, since books pay late and not much. (00:20:35)

Where the stories that moved here went next

Mentioned

Central: Cal Newport · overhead tax · pseudo-productivity · Slow Productivity

Also: People: Brendon Burchard · Galileo Galilei · Isaac Newton · Jane Austen · Nicolaus Copernicus

Projects: Book Club · Productivity Lab

Works: Deep Work (book) · Digital Minimalism · Feel-Good Productivity (book) · So Good They Can't Ignore You · The 12 Week Year

Organizations: Brilliant · Georgetown University · McDonald's

Concepts: burnout · deep work (concept) · energy investment portfolio · perfectionism · quarterly quest · seasonality

Places: New York · United States

Products: Google Docs · Kindle · Notion · Shortform · Zoom

Also centred on Slow Productivity: 19 Books to Transform Your 2026

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