I used Cal Newport’s So Good They Can’t Ignore You when I was teaching PRINCIPLES OF MANAGEMENT. At the end of the semester, many of my minority students told me that Newport’s book inspired them and gave them hope they could succeed in a tough job market.
Cal Newport’s new book, Slow Productivity: The Lost Art of Accomplishment Without Burnout, focuses on the common problems of workplace stress, aggravation, pressure to produce, and job burnout. Newport provides dozens of examples where changing work routine can lead to better outcomes. I liked the story of The Beatles touring America in 1966 where John Lennon’s comment–“Christianity will go, it will vanish and shink…We’re more popular than Jesus now”–triggered a uproar where Beatle albums were burned and the Ku Klux Klan threatened violence. As a result, The Beatles decided not to tour anymore and just focus on making much better albums. The result was Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band which sold 2.5 million copies during its first three months and reached the Number One spot on the BILLBOARD charts where it resided for three months. Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band has sold 32 million copies to date.
I was also moved by Newport’s story of Jewel. “At the time (1990), Jewel was living out of her car, barely getting by with odd jobs and busking on the San Diego beachfront. Her existence was precarious. Not long before her remarkable run at the Inner Change Coffeehouse…Jewel found herself sick with a kidney infection, feverish and vomiting in the back seat of her car outside a hospital emergency room that had turned her away due to lack of insurance. A doctor who watched the scene unfold found her in the parking lot and gave her a free course of antibiotics–likely saving her life.” (p. 165-166)
Jewel recovered and found some success. But when a record company offered Jewel a million dollar signing bonus–at a time when she was homeless–Jewel turned it down to focus on improving her singing. Jewel’s first album, Pieces of You, was released in 1995…and fell flat. But, because the record company was paying Jewel so little, they proposed another album. Meanwhile, Jewel was touring the country building up her fan base. Jewel’s strategy of prioritizing art over money paid off when Pieces of You went 12 times Platinum and Jewel sold over 30 million copies of her albums.
Slow Productivity offers a different approach to success. Maybe we should slow down a little to get better results. GRADE: B+
Books like this bring out the Bah, Humbug in me! For every Jewel there are a thousand Palookas going nowhere! Guess I’m not the Horatio Alger type!
Bob, I’m inspired by books like this that show how people who are down can succeed.
It takes an incredible amount of foresight, focus, and perseverance to build a career. Almost impossible for those living on the edge financially. I was fortunate to have a particular talent, mentors to help me along, and to have joined the job market in a settled economy that no longer exists!
Fred, you and I share some of the same career luck. I loved being a College Professor. I didn’t enjoy the boring academic meetings with the incompetent Deans, but the classroom experience was mostly wonderful. I retired just before the Pandemic and my colleagues who stayed during those years said the job changed from wonderful to hellish. Timing is everything!
Indeed. And some of us have to fight ingrained workaholism, picked up from parents who had very rough early lives. Hence a tendency to work to exhaustion on anything that takes hold, money-making or otherwise.
At my longest-term job, I (not single-handedly, but closer than it really should’ve been) got the corporation major contracts, while basically I wasn’t rewarded with job description promotions. My salary did go from ridiculously poor to acceptable…with big OT.
Todd, I’ve known a few workaholics and the common thread is a the fear of poverty. I worked Registration with a colleague who worked 20 hours a day–in addition to a full teaching load, he did corporate and personal tax returns for dozens of clients. When I asked him why he worked so long and hard, he told me: “I grew up poor. I never want to be poor again.” I pointed out to him that he had plenty of money from all his endeavors. “I’ll never be rich enough,” he told me.
My parents indeed had lean times, after their fathers’ deaths, and tough times before that. Never enough security, certainly…even when the money is handy. That they both died of differing sorts of genetically-driven dementia only tended to prove them right.
Todd, one of my pet peeves is that our educational system does not teach students about money, saving, investing, and how economies work. I taught a college course in Personal Finance and it was a joy to see students’ eyes light up when they realized there were other avenues to wealth other than Lotto tickets, the casino, and betting on sports. Having multiple income streams is one of the keys to financial security.
Slowness, not giving a blip, and trusting in myself and my judgment have always worked for me. Often I would find myself in an impossible situation, or facing an impossible problem, and I would just say, “Get back to me tomorrow,” and then put the whole affair out of my mind; every time, without fail, my subconscious would come up with and easy, workable solution by the next day. Another thing I learned was a lesson from Samuel Shem’s novel HOUSE OF GOD — buff and turf: make what you do look pretty and shift the work that doesn’t matter to others, allowing you to successfully spend the time and energy on the important things. I had a stellar career with many major accomplishments, but, alas, with little financial rewards. If I had focused on the money and not on doing my job, there’s telling where I’d be today.
Jerry, I enjoyed my job and was fortunate enough to make some profitable investments so my retirement is “comfortable.” Diane and I know several retirees who we once worked with that are struggling now with health problems and the financial issues that go along with them.
I think this works for some but not for all. It has to go along with more than ordinary talent as it did with the Beatles.
Patti, The Beatles caught lightning in a bottle back in the Sixties. And, their music stayed popular over the decades. Just think about the groups and solo singers from that era who had some success…but it faded.
If it’s Slow you want, I’m your man! Me & Burnout always was strangers.
When Jackie got put in charge of the smaller school within the school, she was – as what I always called “the idea man” – full of ideas. But sadly, she had to deal with the older, burnout teachers, who had been her friends, who just didn’t want to do anything that amounted to what they thought of as “more work” for them, even if it really wasn’t. She’d have to bribe them with pizza to get them to a lunch meeting. When we got 100 parents and 200 kids to come on a bus trip to D.C., where we actually went into the Senate and saw Bob Dole making his farewell speech, two of them flatly refused to go.
After dealing with the crap for two years, she just gave up and moved on.
Jeff, our educational system is dysfunctional. At the College, I saw colleagues lecturing from notes 20 years old. They couldn’t be bothered to update their material.
True! Jackie had an “education” professor over 50 years ago who did that. The worst thing she did was forget her place and read the same lecture notes two weeks in a row!
And no, nobody told her.
Jeff, I have to say that the Education courses I was required to take in order to get my NY State Certification…were mostly a waste of time. I only liked the Children’s Literature class I took and the spending six weeks in a classroom being mentored by a veteran teacher. All the “educational theory” classes were useless.
So true. Besides the worthless ones, I had a 6 credit methods couse teacher who told me I reminded her of someone she hated.
I learned EVERYTHING on the job.
Jackie
Jackie, I pretty much learned on-the-job, too. At the College, I lucked out by joining a group of smart, savvy Business professors who showed me the ropes. We got along and had each other’s backs. The Business Departments at the other two campuses were snake pits: the staff divided into cliques and there was in-fighting constantly.
Of course it all depends on what you really want.
After my maths studies I went into IT consulting – the small company’s boss at first didn’t want me, but my results in their IQ test astonished him. That was of course because I was a mathematician.
The job was great but hard work and a lot of travelling. I remember the company gave you an additional free day for 20 business hotel nights – and I got six days extra one year …
That just was too much so I went into part time work – instead of doing the normal 180 days of consulting and traveling I reduced it to 120 days – and that made me enough money because I didn’t need a BMW or Mercedes, holidays like a millionnaire and so on.
So my thirty five years in business weren’t bad – but rather untypical.