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On Slow Writing
Someone recently forwarded me an essay from a blogger named Henrik Karlsson. It opens with an admission: “When I started writing online, the advice I got was to publish frequently and not overthink...
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My new book: Slow Productivity
It’s hard to believe that we’re less than two months away from the publication of my new book, Slow Productivity: The Lost Art of Accomplishment without Burnout, which comes out on March 5th. As...
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Heschel on the Joys of Slowness
In 1951, Abraham Joshua Heschel published a monograph titled simply, The Sabbath. It consisted of ten short chapters, comprising of less than a hundred total pages, illustrated with original wood...
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How the Acquired Podcast Became a Sensation
My podcast producer recently turned me onto a show called Acquired, which features its co-hosts, Ben Gilbert and David Rosenthal, diving deep into the backstories of well-known brands and companies,...
View ArticleCome See Me Saturday in DC + TikTok Falters
I know it’s been a minute since I’ve published one of my normal essays. I’ll be returning to these soon as the chaos of the Slow Productivity launch dissipates. In the meantime, I wanted to share two...
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ChatGPT Can’t Plan. This Matters.
A brief book update: I wanted to share that Slow Productivity debuted at #2 on the New York Times bestseller list last week! Which is all to say: thank you for helping this book make such a splash.If...
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Can You Tweet Your Way to Impact?
Earlier this month, a group of scientists from universities around the world published the results of an ingeniously simple experiment in the journal PLoS ONE. Every month, for ten months, they...
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Two Chances to See Me Next Week
I really enjoyed meeting so many of you at my Politics and Prose event a couple weeks ago. It was meaningful for me to be talking about my books in person again after having to launch my last title...
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Do We Need AI to Revolutionize Work?
In recent months, I’ve been doing a fair number of interviews about my new book, Slow Productivity. I’m often asked during these conversations about the potential impact of artificial intelligence on...
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Manchester United Embraces Pseudo-Productivity
Earlier this month, Jim Ratcliffe, part owner and operations head for the storied English football club Manchester United, announced an end to the flexible work-from-home policy that the club’s...
View ArticleOn Ultra-Processed Content
When I visited London last month, a large marketing push was underway for the paperback edition of Chris van Tulleken’s UK bestseller, Ultra-Processed People: Why Do We All Eat Stuff That Isn’t...
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Dispatch from a Writing Shed
I’m writing this from a rental property, on a hillside overlooking the northern reach of the Taconic Mountains. A key feature of this property is a small outbuilding, designed and built by the current...
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Dispatch from Herman Melville’s Farm
Growing up in New York, first in the city and then later in Albany, a young Herman Melville made frequent trips to stay with his uncle, Thomas Melvill, who lived on a farm near Pittsfield, in the...
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When Time Management Was Easy
In 1973, an author named Alan Lakein published a book titled How to Get Control of Your Time and Your Life. It wasn’t the first book about professional time management — my library contains a first...
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The Perfect Cheating Machine?
Many predictions and concerns tumbled into the slipstream trailing ChatGPT’s dazzling, turbulent entrance onto the technology scene in late 2022. Few of these initial warnings felt more immediate than...
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After You Vote: Unplug
I’m writing this post about eighteen hours before the first polls open on Election Day, and it feels tense out there. The New York Times, for example, just posted an article headlined: “How Americans...
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The Tao of Cal
Between this newsletter, my podcast, my books, and my New Yorker journalism, I offer a lot of advice and propose a lot of ideas about how the modern digital environment impacts our lives, both...
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