How I set a “visible work” trap for myself in 2024
In James Clear's parlance, I am a reader - it's an important part of my identity and a habit I intentionally cultivate. When I can manage it, 30 minutes with a physical book first thing in the morning resets my brain from the endless digital scroll and sets up my day for focused work. This practice became the foundation of my approach to intentional productivity, though it would take an unexpected detour through quantity over quality before I really understood why.
In January 2024, I decided to start tracking my reading. Simple enough, right? Just noting down titles and authors of completed books. What could be the harm?
Here’s where I ought to warn you that I am a person that gets a real dopamine hit from checking items off a list, so I maybe should have guessed that this 6-book month would be setting a bar I didn’t actually mean to set. Every month I read more and more books, peaking at 12 books per month in August and September. I was also choosing books because they’d be easy reads, and finishing mediocre novels for the dopamine hit of adding one to the list. Now, ask me what the titles and what I got out of them. Who knows? I’d say I’ll check my reading list, but I cast it aside when I realized that for me, this list was leading me to value quantity over quality in my reading.
Enter Cal Newport's “Slow Productivity,” which refreshed my acquaintance with his idea of mistaking visible work for true productivity. The irony wasn't lost on me - here I was, a creator of minimalist planning tools, falling into the very trap my products help others avoid. I had made the classic American mistake: if a little of something is good, a lot must be better. The Pareto Principle suggested otherwise - 80% of the value from my reading came from 20% of the books.
So, for 2025, I am channeling my “fresh start energy” (I prefer this idea to the traditional New Year’s Resolution) into the intention to read fewer books. Crazy for a reader, right?
In order to ensure that I’m engaging with the books I do read more deeply, I’m including three books as guides for the year.
I’ve decided to make my way through Cal Newport’s “Deep Work” slowly and mindfully, really taking time to apply the principles to my own work. I’ll be posting here on my thoughts about applying the Deep Work concept to doing creative work at home, because I think a few tweaks would help me incorporate his system into my workflow more seamlessly. Straight out of the box, a few of his ideas rankle a bit, so I’m planning to take the time to examine that rankle and make adaptations to suit. I’d love to hear from you with any of your own experiences in applying productivity principles to your own work.
I’ve also decided to learn to apply Carl Jung’s work to deepen my analysis of literature and other art forms. To that end, I’ve picked up a copy of his “Man and His Symbols.” One of the many, many books I read in 2024 was Mark Harris’ “Pictures at a Revolution,” which sparked an interest in exploring the films of the 1960s. I feel that deepening my understanding of Jung will enrich my experience of the films of the French New Wave. So many of these are available on Kanopy. So far, my favorite has been “Last Year in Marienbad,” which makes absolutely no sense in the best way possible.
My third guiding book for the year will be Claudia Durst Johnson’s “The Social Impact of the Novel,” because my dad has fallen down a rabbit hole with it, and if there’s anything I enjoy more than joining my dad on a trip through the looking glass, I don’t know what it is.
As I channel this 'fresh start energy' into quality over quantity, I'm reminded why I started designing minimalist calendars and correspondence tools in the first place - to support intentional work and meaningful connection in a distracted world. I'd love to hear your thoughts on harnessing this energy into quality-over-quantity efforts in your own work and life.