Down With Pseudo-Productivity: Why We Need to Transform the Way We Work

The last several years have seen the rise of a sort of anti-productivity movement. Knowledge workers who feel burned out and that work is pointless, meaningless, and grinding, have been talking more about opting out, “quiet quitting,” and doing nothing.My guest would argue that, in fact, productivity itself isn’t the problem and that most people actually want to do good work. Instead, he says, it’s our whole approach to productivity that’s broken and needs to be transformed.Cal Newport is a professor of computer science and the author of books like Deep Work and Digital Minimalism . His latest book is Slow Productivity: The Lost Art of Accomplishment Without Burnout . Today on the show, Cal explains what’s led to the rise of what he calls “pseudo-productivity” and the fallout when we a