When the Knowledge Sector emerged in the mid 20th century, our best understanding of the word "productivity" came from manufacturing, which led to us measuring productivity based on quantity produced per hour.
But in knowledge work, we are not producing just one thing: We are working on 7-8 different things at one time, that differ per worker. Our solution to this was to introduce a rough heuristic that author and professor Cal Newport has dubbed "pseudo productivity," which uses visible activity as a crude proxy for useful effort.
More and more of our time is focused on performing this busyness rather than focusing on high-quality outputs, leading to burnout. Newport has a solution: An idea called "slow productivity," which is focused on the quality of items produced over time and based on three main principles.
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