Acknowledge that resisting the hurry trap is a process

Griffiths says: “In essence, embracing slow productivity means working smarter rather than harder – but how can you actually do this? The first step is to accept that moving away from a busyness-first approach to working (something often described as ‘busy fool syndrome’) can be challenging. Really, by doing this, you’re going against the grain – and it might even be worth having a conversation with key people (whether a manager or your whole team) who might notice the new approach you’re taking. This way, you can manage expectations and give yourself permission to fully commit to this new strategy.”

Embrace chronoworking

Slow productivity requires optimising the time you spend working. A good approach to this is chronoworking (a term I coined in the Working On Purpose newsletter, so of course I’d join Griffiths and Medlicott in recommending this): shifting how you work in line with your natural dips and peaks in energy. Griffiths advises paying more attention to “when you are at your sharpest so you can put this knowledge to use”.

“Perhaps you intuitively know that around 10am is when you really hit your stride, or maybe you feel most alert later in the day,” he says. “If you’re not sure, you can always keep a log of your energy levels at half an hour intervals on a given work day. With this awareness, you can then plan your day so that it works with (rather than against) the natural ebb and flow of your energy peaks and troughs. For example, you might decide that the morning is the best time to tackle a problem or piece of work you find especially challenging, as this is the time of day you are naturally most energised.”

Plot in time to check emails and messages

Medlicott says: “To make better use of your time, you need to begin to limit your correspondence, So many of us handle communications in a reactive manner – we respond to messages as and when they come in, and if an email arrives with mention of a task, we’re likely to drop what we’re doing and pick up this new job instead. Still, even just the act of reading these messages (regardless of whether we act on the content) is damaging to our productivity.

“It takes the average person 23 minutes to refocus after being distracted. When you consider the number of messages we receive in a day, that’s a lot of time lost. This is why chunking communication is crucial to slow productivity. This means deciding how much time you truly need to give over to this kind of communication, and then finding a time-boxed portion of your day in which you go through these messages, leaving the rest of your time free for focused work.”

How to practise ‘slow productivity’ at work