How Slowing Down Is The Key To Productivity

Busyness is worn like a badge of honor.

People display their fully booked calendars and insatiable to-do lists as if they’re something to be proud of.

But this attitude of glorifying busyness and traditional “hard work” comes from an outdated perspective. The idea that productivity only comes from hard work is an example of human programming failing to catch up with modern times.

For nearly all of human existence, working hard and doing more were the only leverage points people could use to get more done. It was hard work or labor, and the only ones who had labor at their disposal were tyrants and the absurdly rich.

Thousands of years later, many still operate under this assumption. But things have changed.

The internet has fundamentally altered how humans operate. One of these changes is the idea of leverage over simply working harder.

Sahil Bloom calls this the speed paradox:

The take-home point here is that last sentence: when you slow down, you can focus on leverage and ROI over just increasing effort.

This statement is true because the internet has created an environment where the rewards for smart decisions have never been greater. And a cluttered, busy mind doesn’t make good decisions.

The new leverage of technology means that smart decisions create significant asymmetry between effort and reward.

The “new rich” exploit this asymmetry to their advantage and achieve meaningful productivity without being bogged down by busyness.

There is a time and a place for sprints and traditional hard work. 

Genuine effort and hard work will always be a virtue. 

But in the internet age, the best results go to those who make the best decisions. And the best decisions are made by those who slow down and allow time and space for clarity and creativity.

Busyness is more often than not a distraction and a trap than a means to productivity.

To fully appreciate this truth, we first need to break down permissionless leverage.

Permissionless Leverage

Permissionless leverage is a concept from the mind of entrepreneur and investor Naval Ravikant. He breaks leverage down into four types.

The first two types of leverage require permission: labor and capital. These leverage points are old and exclusive to the wealthy and powerful.

The game-changing aspect of the internet is that it has created two new forms of leverage that are not exclusive (permissionless).

These permissionless leverage points are media and code.

For example, a programmer could sit down one weekend and build an application. She could host this application for next to nothing, and if the idea was good (and the app was useful), she could begin to make money from it.

She can create a business with no labor and virtually no capital — it only took an idea and knowledge.

You can argue that code is exclusive since you need to know how to code to take advantage of this form of leverage, but media is available to everyone on the planet with a device that connects to the internet.

Media empires have been built by people who started by uploading videos of themselves speaking to a camera.

No startup costs. No investors. No capital. No labor. No permission.

It’s hard for millennials and the younger generation to appreciate how bizarre this is compared to any other time in human civilization. No other generation has had a fraction of our opportunity, thanks to media and code.

Permissionless leverage is what fuels the asymmetry of good decisions. Our hypothetical programmer could reap the rewards for years from making a timely decision to fill a need she saw by creating an application. This concept isn’t limited to programming — the ability to “go viral” on social media creates outsized rewards for smart and timely content.

Sahil Bloom wasn’t a nobody before he began on Twitter (he was a successful investor), but he wasn’t the Sahil Bloom we think of today (with nearly 800,000 Twitter followers at the time of writing).

He wrote insightful and fresh content about finances and wealth creation during the pandemic. He earned some retweets from larger accounts, and the asymmetry of technology yielded him a ridiculously outsized ROI on his effort.

Now, Sahil Bloom has tremendous influence, social capital, and a book deal in the works. It wasn’t endless hard work that got him here. It was smart decisions combined with the nature of the internet.

Thanks to the permissionless leverage of the internet, one well-timed good decision can do more for a person than an entire career of “hard work.”

Let’s dig deeper into the misconception that hard work is the only way to be productive.

Working Smart > Working Hard

We’re told we need to work hard to get ahead for our entire lives. It’s good advice, but it’s not the whole story. I can go down to a local restaurant or construction site and find plenty of examples of people working hard.

I don’t mean to look down on honest people who put in a hard day’s work and keep our society running, but it’s fair to say that these jobs don’t come up on many “dream job” lists.

Work ethic is one side of the story, but it’s not the only side. Leverage has tipped the balance more in favor of working smart, and the people taking advantage of internet opportunities understand this.

The “New Rich” is a term that initially comes from Tim Ferriss in “The 4-Hour Work Week.” It refers to people who have an abundance of time rather than just an abundance of money and operate lean business models that only require 4 hours per week to maintain.

The 4-Hour Work Week inspired a generation of entrepreneurs, but staying true to the title is probably a bit ambitious. The 4-Hour workday, however, is a lot more manageable.

Dan Koe is a content creator who does an excellent job articulating the opportunity of the internet for creative people.

Dan advocates a lifestyle of working for no more than 3–4 hours every day and then spending the rest of the day relaxing, reflecting, learning, and enjoying.

He is not the only entrepreneur who advocates this approach: the short-burst approach to work has caught on in the online entrepreneurs’ community. I like to think of it as the “Lion approach.”

Lions spend most of their time lying around and relaxing. They’re mainly at a one or a two out of ten in terms of energy output. 

But then, for a short burst, they’ll expend a 10/10 effort on a hunt and earn the resources they need to feed the tribe for a while.

This way of life drastically differs from the gazelle, who grazes all day. Never at a two, never at a ten; the gazelle lives constantly at about a five or six out of ten.

You take the lion approach when you work in short, focused sprints with maximum effort followed by periods of complete rest.

This may have been how humans behaved as hunter-gatherers, but it’s been hard to replicate since we started farming and sitting in cubicles for eight hours.

The internet changes the narrative; it allows us to work like lions.

How is working only a few hours per day working out for Dan Koe?

It’s earning him multiple six figures per year. And he’s not the only one.

You don’t have to rely on hard work alone in the internet age. Working smart can get you the greatest ROI on your effort — it’s a better way to be productive.

You work like a lion when you prioritize deep work over shallow work.

Plan your work intentionally in blocks, so there is no ambiguity when it comes time to work.

Remove the distractions from your environment.

Have a clear goal for the outcome of your work session.

You’ll get more done in 4 hours of focused work than in 12 hours of shallow work.

And on top of that, the extra time to relax and reflect is when you’ll come up with creative insights and better decisions.

Unfortunately, those who value busyness miss this crucial time to relax and reflect.

Busy makes you feel productive

True productivity comes from working smart in a way that exploits the permissionless leverage of modern technology.

Fake productivity is busyness.

The worst danger of busyness might be that it can deceive you into thinking you’re productive when just spinning your tires.

In his wonderful book “Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals,” Oliver Burkeman describes how people deceive themselves with busyness.

They keep too many “irons in the fire” — too many projects on the go at the same time. This allows them to switch to an easier aspect of one project when they hit a roadblock on another.

They’re always in motion, never progressing.

It’s better to choose one thing and focus on doing it well than diluting your efforts between multiple projects.

Busyness is not valuable

People can deceive themselves about their productivity level for years because they make the mistake of viewing busyness as inherently valuable.

They mistake the metrics for results — an easy trap to fall for.

You fall for this trap when you focus on

• The number of books you read last year over what you learned

• The number of days you went to the gym last month over how much weight you added to your squat

• The number of hours you worked over the results you delivered

Mistaking metrics for results is one of the most dangerous traps people fall for, and valuing busyness is always at the root of it.

The person who gets the same results in 25 hours is not lazier than the person who worked 90 hours that week.

They’re working smarter.

The leverage of the internet rewards those who work smarter, not harder, and who do not see “busyness” as something worth valuing in itself.

The Future Of Work

This is an accusation I’ve seen leveled at proponents of the “new rich” lifestyle.

There is a problem with this accusation: It’s false.

The online movement is not exclusive. From what I’ve seen so far, it’s a supportive and encouraging community — an oasis of positivity in the desert of the internet plagued by hostility and controversy.

There are people of all backgrounds killing it online. Some people have built amazing personal brands while raising families.

A single person in their twenties will obviously have more opportunity to focus on themselves and work on a one-person business than older people with more responsibility, but to say that this lifestyle is exclusive to a particular demographic is a coping mechanism.

It’s not reality.

But there is a more interesting point underneath the surface of this accusation. It suggests that this model of work can’t work for everyone.

I’ve described how people are changing the rules of productivity — adopting a new model based on permissionless leverage from the internet.

People are taking advantage of the asymmetric ROI of good decisions in this new environment, changing the game for the traditional view of “hard work” and what it means to be productive.

Sure, some people can work like lions and use permissionless leverage to create businesses, but it’s not available to everyone, says the critic.

We still need people to pick up garbage.

We need people to build apartment buildings.

We need people to work in factories. To clean bathrooms.

At the time of writing, we still do.

But for how much longer?

We can argue about the timeline, but there is no doubt about it: we will automate the jobs people don’t want to do.

It’s already happening.

It’s just a question of when it will happen at such a scale to be truly disruptive.

And then we wonder what will happen to all the people who worked the automated jobs. Enter the conversation on Universal Basic Income or other potential solutions.

But what if it’s not the problem we think it will be?

My only belief about the future is that humans suck at predicting it, so I’m sure as hell not going to make myself a hypocrite by attempting to do that here.

But if we look at the past, one fact seems obvious: technology creates new jobs unfathomable to previous generations.

Can you imagine trying to explain to your Great Grandmother how people earn a living uploading their thoughts to the internet?

No one knows the answers to these questions. But I can tell you one thing for sure: we are a creative species.

If you imagine the peak of human civilization — as ambiguous and convoluted as that image may be — does it involve cleaning bathrooms?

Does it involve sitting in unnecessary Zoom calls?

Does it involve working menial jobs to scrape by and then recharging via the mechanisms for mindless consumption we have at our disposal?

We’re not meant to work for 8 hours per day. We’re meant to work like lions: to use short bursts of extreme focus applied to creative work.

How can a species capable of creating the Sistine Chapel find meaning through cleaning up shit, packaging flyers, or sitting in Zoom calls all day?

What if we are living through the moment when humans discovered the mechanism that allowed us to finally achieve our potential and work in the way we’re meant to?

What if the inevitable automation of jobs doesn’t leave millions unemployed but leaves millions free to pursue creative opportunities enabled by automation?

It takes a long time for our programming to adjust to societal shifts. We’re programmed to view hard work as the only lever we can pull to get results.

The internet has changed this.

Media and code have unlocked human potential. This is one of the biggest shifts in the evolution of our species — and how cool is this — we’re living through this shit now!

The traditional view of long work days and toiling for hours is no longer the only road to success.

Trying to move too fast and do too much will likely backfire. With permissionless leverage, the rewards go to those who slow down, allow time and space for creative thoughts and reflection, and use this to make better decisions.

More often than not, focusing on busyness is a distraction. We’re not meant to exist in a constantly stressed state of “busyness.”

We’re better off working like lions.

Extreme effort followed by rest.

I hope that technology will allow humanity to transition to a style of work where all the work done by humans is creative, and we automate the work nobody wants to do.

In the meantime, the opportunities from permissionless leverage are here already for those who see them.

The internet rewards intention, quality, and above all, good decisions.

To do your best work, take advantage of media and code as tools for leverage. 

Work like a lion, not a gazelle. 

Avoid using metrics as a proxy for results and valuing busyness in and of itself. 

This may be the future of work. 

We’ll have to see.