Slow Productivity: A New Book by Cal Newport

VIDEO TRANSCRIPT

Benjamin Kreps:

Hey everyone and welcome to the Mark Prater podcast where our aim to connect our global family of Sovereign Grace Churches with our executive director. I proudly am wearing my Valley Creek Church swag. Got some new merch recently. Shout out to Nick Kidwell the master of conference trivia games. Shamelessly plugging here. I know you've worn a Christ's Covenant hat. So I just wanna say I'm for sale. If anyone wants a shameless plug send me merch. Large. That's what I wear. Anyway, Mark, great to see you. Thank you all for joining us. So you wanted to tell us about a resource that has recently been helpful to you.

Mark Prater:

Yeah, it's a book called Slow Productivity that is written by Cal Newport and it was just released on March 5th. I had actually, I think CJ had told me about this book, and so I pre-ordered the book and it came in right after my knee injury. So I've had some more time to read and wanted to get to this one because it's a secular written book. But some of those books, and I'm very careful about what I choose, but some of those books can be really helpful to us as pastors or to members of our churches who are trying to be efficient in what they do and either working well in the workplace or serving the church. So Slow Productivity is the book. Here is the cover. You'd like to see that. I think everybody can see it. It's written by Cal Newport who is a professor of computer science at Georgetown University. He's also an author who has studied work in productivity. So he is written books like Digital Minimalism, a well-known book called Deep Work. I think there's a book written called A World Without Email and Slow Productivity are just some of the books that he's written and I found that I've benefited from him. Cal is a student of work and of productivity in particular.

And his study along with observing just some work-related issues that emerged out of the pandemic and those pandemic issues like we're all isolated in our homes and people are working virtually and trying to figure out what's working and what's productive. Some of the issues that emerged out of that sort of just firmed up his conclusions and crystallized for him what it really means to be productive and what he does. So for example, he's saying right now he believes we live in this world of busyness.

We're busy doing a lot of things, but are we really being productive? Are we doing the right things that have impact? And he uses this phrase called pseudo productivity. He defines it this way. The use of visible activity as the primary means of approximating actual productive effort. So the visible means of activity are things like the number of emails you respond to or write, the number of meetings you attend, et cetera. And he uses that term approximate productivity because is that really productive? Is it really effective? So he says the result that he's seen, and really I think the pandemic sort of even showed us or exacerbated, is this busyness that's causing exhaustion and burnout if you use that term, and really isn't productive at all.

So what he's done in writing this book is he's wanting to offer an alternative to pseudo productivity. It's what he calls slow productivity. It's defined this way. Here's how he defines it. A philosophy of organizing knowledge, work efforts in a sustainable and meaningful manner based on the following three principles. Number one, do fewer things. Number two, work at a natural pace. And number three, obsess over quality. He's saying that if you choose carefully and do fewer things and you do those things really well, actually what you produce will have greater impact and longer lasting impact. That's what he's really contending for. He kind of rejects busyness and says, let's do the right things and do them well. Now you notice in that definition of slow productivity that he uses this term knowledge work and he uses this term knowledge worker throughout the book. And so what is knowledge work? And so he defines it this way. I believe it's in the second chapter, knowledge work is the economic activity in which knowledge is transformed into an artifact with market value through the application of cognitive effort. So members of any church or a Sovereign Grace Church listening to this podcast, think about that in terms of what you do. Certainly it applies into the fields of information technology, healthcare, accounting, finance. You're a teacher, obviously you're using cognitive effort attorneys. It doesn't mean that you're sitting at a desk all day. So when the surgeon did the surgery on my knee, he better be using the cognitive effort that he has been trained to understand when he does my surgery. But he's also using that physical skill that God has gifted him with to repair my patella tendon.

Just as another illustration, I also think there's application for pastors. There's knowledge work that we do. There's cognitive effort that we put into the writing of sermons each and every week that we preach to feed the souls of those in our church. There's cognitive effort put into pastoral care where we're looking to take what we know about the Bible and apply it to someone's life to help them with the issues that they're facing. So I think you can place pastors in the knowledge work category. Of course, how you measure, I don't think that has market value in the way he's talking about it, but it does have spiritual value. It does have eternal value in terms of strengthening souls each and every week through preaching and pastoral care and leadership. So that's just this brief overview about the book that I was very intrigued by.

Benjamin Kreps:

That sound intriguing. I'm looking forward to checking it out. The reality is, as John Piper famously has written, we are not professionals. Pastoral ministry looks more like agricultural metaphors. It looks like shepherding. It looks like planting, watering, not so much the corporate world, but we can learn from the corporate world. There's insights to be gleaned, but it is a secular book like you said. So what are some of the strengths, but also what are some of the weaknesses of the book when it comes to a pastor reading and applying what's in the book?

Mark Prater:

I think just a few strengths. And by the way, I'm going back through this book, reviewing it and looking to glean what I can and apply it to my own work responsibilities. How do I apply this to my pastoral responsibilities at Covenant Fellowship Church and how do I apply this in serving Sovereign Grace in my role? And I'm still in that process, but some things I'm taking away from it. I think what you just said is very good, Ben, that we are not professionals. As scripture talks about, there is that agricultural imagery that's applied to what pastors do, for example. And I think that's right because one of the takeaways is that for pastors being faithful to do what God's called us to do over many years will be the best way to serve your church, the best way to build your church and will impact generations to come.

In other words, for us as pastors, we sometimes can wrestle if we don't see the immediate impact of our ministry. And scripture says that's okay because what we're doing takes time as God works because that's the way God works. You see that throughout scripture. So I think that's an encouragement that is informed biblically that you wouldn't find in the book, but it's a benefit I think from the book.

Another one is I think just thinking about doing fewer things and what does that mean really begs you to ask the question, alright, am I doing the right things? I think that's good for anyone listening to this podcast occasionally to just do a checkup on what you're doing and are you doing the right things? And whenever in doing so, think about what needs to come off your plate. But it also challenges us, and he does this in the book. He says, when you add a new responsibility to your list or to your plate, you've got to think very carefully and evaluate it very carefully and not just the time it will take to get that responsibility done. There's typically work that you have to do in preparation for, and there maybe some work on the back end. So lengthen the time commitment that you typically might think of accomplishing a specific responsibility and that's going to be more accurate and that will tell you whether you should take that responsibility or not. So those are just some of a quick list of benefits. I could list some more, but for the sake of time I won't.

I think in terms of weaknesses, he says this in the book, but this book is not for everyone. So he says, if you don't have some autonomy with how you manage your responsibilities or with your schedule, this book is probably not going to be able to really help you because he's talking to people who have some degree of autonomy in doing that. Maybe not completely, but some. I think the other thing, another weakness I think for pastors in particular is that there are necessary pastoral interruptions that we need to respond to that sort of interrupt our schedule, interrupt our plan, and to be faithful to the people in our church and to our church. We need to accept those invitations or those interruptions with faith and go about serving those that are entrusted to our care. I think it's the same for maybe they're not, although this related to pastoral, there may be a church crisis of some kind that requires leadership and you've got to think about that. That's going to interrupt your sermon planning and the other things that we do. So I don't think the book factors that in quite, and it is a weakness of the book. That's something I think you can still benefit from it, but just be aware of that.

One other mention, Newport doesn't appear to be a Christian. I don't know that for certain, but certainly not a Christian book. I think in terms of thinking about this book, you've got to keep in mind the good sovereignty of God that God does order all of our days, and so we can live content with that when our days don't go as planned, that's a part of God's plan and we can trust him in that. So obviously that theological point is not in the book and therefore a weakness in terms of Christians applying it. So just keep the sovereignty of God in view.

Benjamin Kreps:

Excellent. Well, this sounds like this could be a helpful book for extremely busy pastors. I think it is wise to at times reflect on, evaluate our schedules to see if we are doing the most important things and committing our time to those things. Because as you know, Mark, just because we're very busy does not mean that we're being faithful. Our lives can be busy and full of activity and we're failing to give attention to that which is most important. And also a lack of fruitfulness does not necessarily, like you said, mean a lack of faithfulness on the part of a faithful pastor who is feeding, tending, planting, watering by God's word. I think I was reminded when you talked about how it's for knowledge workers. I was reminded of Paul's expectation to Timothy in 2 Timothy chapter 2 when he says to Timothy, and by implication, all pastors "do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth." That all takes slowing down thinking, meditating, communicating effectively what God has said in his word. So thanks for the suggestion. I'll look forward to picking up the book and giving it a read. Thank you all for checking out the podcast. We'll see you here next week. Lord willing. Bye for now.