Ep. 400: Should I Embrace “Slow Technology”?  🔗 **Source:** [Ep. 400: Should I Embrace “Slow Technology”?](https://share.snipd.com/episode/a780bb7f-5723-418e-8dd8-af76095e0339) ## Highlights - **What Slow Technology Actually Means** - Cal Newport defines slow technology as choosing simpler tools with fewer features and more friction because they can improve work and make life more livable. - He frames it as an alternative to fast phones, AI agents, and swipe-heavy apps that turn life into an exhausting blur. Transcript: Cal Newport If I had to use one word to describe modern digital tools, it would be fast. Now, whether we're talking about workplace communication or swarms of AI agents or even apps for ordering food, the focus always seems to be on reducing friction and increasing the Options available to get people through whatever tasks they're thinking about as quickly as possible. Now, the speed, of course, has a negative side effect. It's exhausting. It reduces so much of our life to a frantic blur of swipes and taps and clicks, all in a sort of never-ending battle to keep up with the ceaseless barrage of incoming information. But what can we do? Faster has to make us more productive, right? Or does it? You see, there's a growing subculture of individuals who are embracing simpler technologies that offer less features and more friction. And they're not doing this as a political statement, and they're not doing this because they're nostalgic, but instead because they think these more minimal tools actually makes Them better at their work and makes their life more livable. I call this movement slow technology, and it's what I want to talk about today. Now, to help us better understand it, we're going to be joined by Amy Timberlake, who's an acclaimed bestselling author of children's and middle grades books. Timberlake has won countless distinctions, including a Newbery Honor and an Edgar Award. Her titles have been named to, as far as I can tell, just about every best book of the year list in existence. So she knows what she's talking about. Now, Timberlake came to my attention recently. Here's why I want to talk to her about slow productivity. She came to my attention when I discovered she had recently shifted to using a mechanical vintage typewriter for more and more of her writing and revision process. So I really wanted to find out what was going on here. So in our conversation, we talk about what does it take to succeed in that world of children's book writing, the details of her creative process and how it's evolved, and how she came To believe that using a mechanical typewriter was actually going to make her a better writer and a happier human. Spoiler alert, I kind of end this conversation about half serious about buying a typewriter myself, so beware about that. And then after our conversation, I'm going to step back and I'm going to isolate some general principles of slow technology. I'm going to show you some other examples of slow technology that have become popular in recent years and make the argument that many more people, not just those who are in creative fields Like writing, should consider embracing simpler tools. So if you're tired of being told by tech leaders like Sam Altman that your future has to be orchestrating armies of hyperactive AI agents, or if you find your smartphone to be an overstimulating Anxiety machine, then this episode is for you. ([Time 0:00:00](https://share.snipd.com/snip/b6a76335-6f2c-4b3a-a158-9908e623fc75)) - **Why Children's Books Demand Extreme Precision** - Amy Timberlake says children’s books succeed through precision, not brevity; every word, rhythm, and sound has to earn its place. - She writes long drafts, reads them aloud, then cuts relentlessly because tightly written books cannot carry extraneous language. Transcript: Cal Newport I mean, so something I've always wondered about that genre is that it's a genre where people often, they have this very naive view of it, right? When people think about books, they often think, oh, the hard part about writing is like the quantity of words. So like, okay, I get it. I'm not going to be a big novelist because I can't imagine writing that many words. But then they think of a, if they're looking at like a picture book or something, they're like, well, the actual quantity of words there is not that much. I could sit down and write that many words and it would sound roughly like a story. I could do that, you know, like this afternoon. It's a very competitive market though. What, what you discover that you then put into that first book that, like, makes projects sell in children's books because there's so many submissions in that world because so many People try? What is it that people don't understand about what a successful book in that genre must do? Amy Timberlake I think it just, well, I can only speak for my experience, but I would say The better written it is, the more chance you have. And that first book, I wrote it like my grandfather telling the story. So that voice was very specific. New Mexico, tall tale, and I just went for it. Didn't do a lot of things that you might read about and hear that you have to do. I didn't worry about language. I didn't worry about vocabulary. I worried about how well can I tell this particular story with this particular voice, and I just gave it everything I had. So that's how I do it. It means for me, though, that as a writer, I'm not quick at what I do. It means I produce a lot of words, and then I cut down. In particular for these skunk and badger books, they are really tightly written. They're almost like a farce. And they can't carry a lot of extraneous words. So I have to really know the characters. I have to write pages and pages and pages and then i cut cut cut cut cut cut cut cut cut and the cutting just goes on forever yeah um so it's so for me it's and it's it is really all about language And how does the word sound and so you know I'm often like when I write these I write long then I stand up and I read them out loud so that I can hear how the language is hitting on the page and Then I cut them again so yeah so I I can't really honestly tell you what makes it successful. I do think that the thing that I really do is I put 100% of my effort in it. Cal Newport I think you did just tell us. I mean, what I'm hearing there is something I've heard before, which is in that type of writing, it's like a puzzle coming together. Every word matters, the tonality, the rhythm and poetry of how it sounds out loud. Nothing wasted. Everything moves it forward, which is different than, I don't know, if I'm Neil Stevenson writing a thousand page whatever. Not every sentence needs to be perfect, right? I'm like all over the place, postmodern digression going on. And it's fine. It's like I'm moving like a plot. Yeah. But yeah, I've heard the same thing about screenplays that people as with children's books, people like, oh, I could write a screenplay because I know movies. And if I look at a scene, I was like, they're just talking. I can just talk. And then if you talk to professional screenwriters, like I've interviewed them for the show, like, oh, no, no, there's it's like a jewel box puzzle. Nothing can be wasted. You can't have a single person say a single thing that doesn't have a reason why they're saying it. And it better not, you know, it's got to be Chekhov's gun. If you mentioned this here, this better come back here. And actually it's the nothing's wasted. So I get that this sort of every sentence has to be right. But that's interesting. You write a lot so that you can then pull out as opposed to building the smaller number of sentences very carefully just from scratch. So you pull back to it. And is that because it puts you in the having the larger amount of text really puts you into the moment in the character so that you can then better find the right line for that page. Is that a way to think about it? ([Time 0:05:30](https://share.snipd.com/snip/06a0d413-3598-4927-b649-a7e2344af8e5)) - **How Amy Timberlake Finds Voice Through Overwriting** - Amy Timberlake discovers character and voice by drafting until a line suddenly clicks and reveals the whole story’s sound. - Badger emerged when she found puny, important rock work, and a limited third-person view centered on his focus-obsessed mind. Transcript: Amy Timberlake Yeah, so I think the reason why I go long is for a couple of reasons. Sometimes it's because I need to discover who the character is, and the characters are always very specific. You know, so I don't know. Have you seen Sally Wainwright's stuff on BBC, like riot women or you know any of that i'm familiar with it not i i know the the titles but i'm not very familiar with it she is just she's just Exactly to me exactly the kind of writer that you were just talking about which is where every every piece of dialogue that she has in one of those those um mini series bbc shows um is always Just thought through and so and i would imagine that she also writes long she has to figure out who those characters are exactly and and sometimes she's going back and placing dialogue Early because it makes sense, because it's all just figuring out where things land. But I do it because it's a lot about characters and finding those scenes. And then also sometimes if you write long and you really love language like I do, you find that sentence that is just, it's perfect. It's dynamite. And you go, okay, that's it. That's the voice. That's what I need. Now I have to write this whole thing again because I have to have that kind of like, whatever is. It's like a music. It's like a sound and you get really excited about it. Yeah. So anyway, so that's why I do it. Cal Newport How does that change when you're writing the slightly older grades books that are chapter format, more text? How does that adapt to that? Amy Timberlake Oh, that's that's when I'm really doing it. Interesting. I mean, yeah, all of these skunk and badger books are really, like, okay. All right, here's Skunk and Badger. The first line is, of this one, is, the first time badger saw skunk, he thought puny and shut the front door. Took me a while to find out that he would use the word puny, and that that is the first time, you know, that he shut the front door. But that's the beginning. And so I just had to write, write, write until I found that thing. And I was like, all right, that's how it is. That's what this is. Cal Newport Had you written like dialogue, a lot of dialogue, and then sort of found in that dialogue, oh, this is the this voice feels right for the character. And then you knew how to go back and write that first word in that first line. Yeah. Amy Timberlake Yeah. I had to find out and I had to find out who Badger was. And Badger is is is important rock scientist. He does important rock work. And he's always actually it's funny. It's funny that I'm talking to you about this because Badger Badger always kind of the way he does his important rock work. He does his important rock work. He's always walking somewhere and he's thinking I must focus, focus, focus. And so he's always saying focus, focus, focus. I like this animal. Here we go. I like this character. Yeah, and he's, you know, he's kind of, he's very happy in his life. He lives in a brownstone. He does his important rock work. In the first book, he's, you know, he's got his rocks. He's got his magnifying glass. He's like, is this a rock or is this a mineral? And then one day there's a skunk that walks in, skunk knocks on the door, and now Badger has this roommate. So he's perfectly fine the way he is, but he doesn't really have a choice about Skunk being his roommate, and Skunk is very different. And so anyway, those two characters took a while. And then the story is actually told in a limited omniscient third person, third animal voice, because these are all animals in sweaters. Thank you to John Clausen and his beautiful sweaters. So, and they are all told through Badger. Skunk is a bit of a mystery, but he isn't to me, but he is to the reader. So, yeah, so I had to discover what is the voice of this particular story. It's going to be Badger, and he does this important rock work. And he has a very serious life. It's a very good life. It is, you know, it is fine. He's not hurting anyone as he is. He could live that way for a very long time, and I would be happy for him. But I think he's a little better with skunk in his life, but that's just me as the writer. Cal Newport So even to find out that perspective, that came out of the writing as well. Are we going to do limited third-person mission? That's like one of the things you discover. Yeah. Yeah. Amy Timberlake Instead of first person, sometimes just having all these choices I mean when you're just you're starting with a blank page there's so much choice and sometimes it's just too much choice Oh my gosh so it just takes a while to find all that and so the writing is just that's the way I have to discover that and then once I know kind of how it's going to go, then my process is it's The first scene that kind of sets how far I can write into the story. How deep have I gone? How much do I know about this world? How much do I know about these characters? And then I just write until the story kind of wanes and it disappears. And then I come back and then I come back and I go, oh, I don't know enough yet. And then I'll work some more to kind of build up the beginning. So I have more fuel to get to the end of the story. That's how I sort of think about it. ([Time 0:12:57](https://share.snipd.com/snip/b264d1ef-f547-4a57-8772-5e86ae31c5e6)) - **Full-Time Writing Became Training Not Freedom** - Going full-time did not make Amy Timberlake instantly prolific; it exposed how much craft and structure she still had to learn. - After moving to DeKalb with health insurance through her husband, she found her ideas were huge and complicated, not easy to shape. Transcript: Cal Newport This is fascinating. And now I want to unpack some of the actual, even physical rituals around this. But I guess we should clarify, did you at some point along this way, do you write essentially full time right now? Amy Timberlake I do now. Cal Newport How did that transition happen? And psychologically, what was that like? Amy Timberlake Well, okay. I got married. There was health insurance. Yay. And my husband, my husband is, well, actually, he just retired. So he was a professor in a theater department. So we moved out to DeKalb, Illinois. And we moved from Richmond, where I had a job. I had a regular job and, you know, I was making money and I had... Anyway. But we moved to DeKalb, Illinois. And suddenly we got out there and Phil had a job as a professor. I did not know what I was going to do for work. I mean, I was looking around. I was like, well, I could work in the university, maybe somewhere. I don't, I have a lot of administrative skills and I write. But I, anyway, I was looking at detasseling corn jobs. I was like looking at, like, I was like, huh, what am I going to do? And Phil just said, why don't you just let, let's see how this goes. You know, I'll take, I'll, I'll, I'll get, you know, I have health insurance. Let's just see how it is if you write. And so that is when I started writing all by my, you know, and it was a big transition. It was a dream come true. It was a dream come true. And it was a big transition. Yeah, what was it? Well, it was weird being in charge of my time. I was completely in charge of my time. And I had a little tiny office, and I would go in there, and I would sit, and I had, what was I working on at the time? Oh, you know, it was some sort of laptop. Yeah, it was a big transition. It was weird, and it was great. So it was all of those things. Cal Newport How did it impact the writing? I mean, was it, were you writing faster or more or better, or was it just less clutter in your mind? What was the delta between Richmond and Kyle riding style? Hmm. Amy Timberlake Well, in Richmond... I would often come home from my job and be very tired. And I was doing writing. I was working at the Virginia Commission for Fine Arts there. And so I was doing their website. It was a pretty basic website. And I was doing some writing. And so I would write during the day. Then I would come home, and I would be tired. And so it was really hard for me to even feel creative. I would just be sort of drained by the time I got home. So I wasn't getting as much done. I, you know, I was also trying to break into book reviewing at that time. I I would write these columns anyway so yeah so it wasn't a lot I wasn't getting a lot of lot done um I did have an agent interested in my writing at that point so I knew I had to get some stuff I had to get stuff done. And then I was just trying and it was hard and I was tired. Yeah. And then when I got to DeKalb, I had more time. And I think the hardest part was discovering that my ideas were complicated and it was going to take a lot of time for me to even get those complicated ideas into a novel, especially a novel For kids. I was, you know, I think my first novel, um, it ended up being called That Girl Lucy Moon, it was about a 12-year activist. And I really wanted like three generations of women in this book. Like I wanted the 12-year activist. I wanted this woman who owns the business in town. I wanted her in it and I wanted the mother. Instead, I had to really, you know, I had to learn the business. And so not only I was just writing way too much, I was writing huge, complicated ideas. And it was kind of frustrating because I was, here I was with this, I suddenly had the time to really write. And it turned out I didn't really have the skill to know what the structure was yet. So it was just, it was a little frustrating. And, you know, there's my husband, he's going off to work, he's doing his thing. And how's your day, Amy? And I'm like, oh, I don't even know if I'm a writer. Cal Newport Interesting. So in retrospect, really the beginning of your time as a full-time writer was actually more of a self-guided training education process. They're like, okay, now I have time to actually push my skills in this genre to the next level. And you're in that frustrated learning process. You thought like right off the bat, I'm going to be spitting out chapters. And that was not what happened. Amy Timberlake I really thought it was going to be easier than it was. I thought my idea was so great. I was like, it's just going to go. And instead, I did end up, I did end up selling it. And in, in kids lit, you can often get an editor that will help you you know like they they will really you know and so you know she says to me we can't have three women in this book and this Is for kids right you know do we really want like a mom and you know and i was like oh okay you're you're right yeah so but you know i i saw the i saw you know i saw the point of what she was saying And i was like all right well you know and those editors those new york editors they know their stuff yes they are good readers ([Time 0:19:14](https://share.snipd.com/snip/ad2a5db9-a6fb-4bbe-95ea-4227f48978a6)) - **Amy Timberlake Builds Structure After Starting** - Amy Timberlake now starts with the liveliest part of an idea, then adds structure only after pages exist. - She experiments constantly with tools, works best in mornings, and values a dedicated home office as a room claimed solely for writing. Transcript: Amy Timberlake Well, I mean, I think the first thing is I have to choose what idea I'm going to work on. I usually have a lot of ideas so that's not really a problem but then I have to choose which one I'm going to work on. I think that is kind of different than earlier in my process was that I would kind of I would kind of just power through something. And now I'm kind of choosing. I'm like, okay, I think this is the one that I want to work on. So I choose it. And then I just start writing wherever it's catching me. You know, wherever the story is, like the thing that's really alive in my head, that's what I'll start writing with, and I'll see where that goes. And then at that point, once I start producing pages, and it's not, it might not be that, well, I can pretty much guarantee it will not be that good. But I, you know, I will be producing pages. And then at that point, I'll like look at it and I'll say, okay, what's the structure? You know, what am I thinking about in terms of structure? And I will start using tools like outlining at that point. So I use pretty much any tool you have heard about used. I have used. I have stuck post-its on doors. I mean, that was a big thing for a while. I, you know, I spread stuff all over the floor back here and I crawl around and grab things and, or, you know, or I've used Scrivener, which is a, which is a writing thing that people like Online. Yeah, I've just done pretty much everything. But basically my rule is when I'm working on something, if I have an inkling somewhere in my head that I think this might help me, I grab it and I give it a try. Cal Newport What's your schedule now, writing schedule? What's ideal for you? Amy Timberlake Mornings. Working mornings. If I can work mornings, that's the best. I do need to stretch. I do need to go for walks. I have to get outside. I can't just hole up and crank. But I do usually try to put in several hours for you? At least. And actually your time block schedule has really helped me. So thank you. And I have like, I have resisted doing that for so long. Like the idea, because by the time I'm done working, the last thing I want to do is look at my day ahead. Yeah. So anyway, so I've started doing that and that's actually been really helpful. I'm always I'm always trying. I'm always experimenting on myself to see, is this helpful? Is that helpful? And so I'm always I feel like I am I'm just a constant experiment in my work process, like how I do it. But anyway, I'll for your question. Cal Newport Well, where do you write? What type of space gets your creativity going? Amy Timberlake Oh, I like having an office. Yeah. Cal Newport At your house? At your house or somewhere else? Amy Timberlake Yeah, that's where I am right now. We're in my office. And this is one of the nicest ones I've ever had. It's quite spacious. But I like having an office and I just come up here and yeah, it's just a space that's mine. It's a big deal. I think particularly for women, I know Virginia Woolf writes about having a room of one's own, but it really was a big deal for me to just sort of claim a space in our home and say, this isn't For anything else. This is just my office. And I, yeah, I really like having an office. Cal Newport Yeah, we underestimate the power of space, especially in like the world of corporate work, too. I've long argued about this is like, hey, we'll just throw everyone in like some big open space. And this is efficient because we don't have to have desks. And it's like, no, human brains respond to environment. So I've heard the same thing from lots of people, having a space of your own, customizing it, and also just recognizing it. When I come here, it's to work. Yeah, all that can make a big difference. ([Time 0:27:07](https://share.snipd.com/snip/51890daf-1aba-4c14-b14f-f1cc1da3fc84)) - **Why A Typewriter Beat Amy's Laptop** - Amy Timberlake moved toward a vintage mechanical typewriter after noticing she kept fleeing her laptop to focus. - On the typewriter, two hours vanished without interruption, and retyping drafts forced her to think through the whole chapter again. Transcript: Cal Newport So the thing that originally caught my attention is what I want to get to now is this experiment that you've been running more recently where you've made the technical process of writing Strictly harder by moving back to an actual typewriter as the mechanism with which you're producing words. Tell me about what you're doing and why. Amy Timberlake Okay. Well, yeah. So the reason the typewriter came about, probably a little bit because Tom Hanks was talking about it. I'm sure you've heard Tom Hanks had this thing. Using typewriters again. But I was working on these three books, Skunk and Badger, Eggmark's Spot, Rock Paper Incisors. And I had a, and I was under a deadline for it, and I was late on the third book. So I was really feeling, I was really And I had a work process that was working for me. And I was, which was, I would use the computer, the word processing program, Microsoft Word mostly. I would print out a chapter, I would print it out in paper, I would bring it to my chair, and I would sit there and I would make the changes in pencil or pen on this draft. And I would type it in and I would try to make myself not fix it while I was typing. So I would turn on music in the back just so that my brain would be thinking about the music and all I was doing was typing the words into Microsoft Word. So I was doing this process and I also had a notebook and a three ring binder and I was using three by five cards. So I, and what I had realized as, as I kept doing this, I realized I kept moving away from the laptop to get my work done. I realized, you know, every time I do that, I focus so much better. So I had already started doing that, but the process was working. And I am so protective of my process. Like if I have something that's working, I am not going to mess with it. If I have a habit that's part of that or, you know, a routine, I will just keep that routine. So I was, I was just keeping this routine with the three, you know, the printing out and the three ring, the three ring binder and the three by five cards in the notebooks. And I'm using all this stuff. And I just kept thinking, I hate this laptop. I hate it. I mean, I, I mean, I love my laptop. Let's face it. The reason I have trouble with it is because I also love it. But it's a really cool thing. But, you know, every time an update would come, something would change, and then there would be a notification. And I'd be like, I know I can turn this off. Working on work focuses and home focuses and all this stuff to try to get this laptop to not interrupt me. And also, I love email. So, you know, I would just check email on a whim. So I was like, oh, my gosh. So I was really struggling with that. And so I was spending more and more time away from it. And I just started thinking, you know what, It would be, I should really try a typewriter. And I was like, oh my gosh, that's insane. That's insane. I can't try a typewriter. But I was like, well, I think as soon as this project is done, as soon as you send it off to your editor, maybe you should just see if you can get yourself a typewriter and try it. I I had the only, in my past, my mom had an electric Smith Corona. And it was in our living room. So the only reason you really used that typewriter was if you were, you know, you'd written your paper and you were typing it up. And you better not make one single spelling error on that thing and meanwhile mom is right there and sometimes she would like suggest changes so it was just like a stressful thing yeah Meanwhile my dad downstairs was way into computers so he had like an apple 2e we had a trs80 which was a radio i think that was a radio shack trs80 we had a trs80 and apple 2e at one point and So i ended up being the first person in my high school who had turned in a paper on a computer and I was a dot matrix printer and I got an A-minus because my dad he stayed up really late trying To figure out how to get footnotes to raise on this Apple IIe on their word processing and he couldn't get it to work. So anyway, so I feel like I sort of learned to write on a computer. So the idea of trying a typewriter was really crazy to me because I just thought, well, how do you revise? I don't get how you revise. So now I am working on my next project, which at this point is another animal in sweater story, because I found that they're pretty fun to write, which is really, anyway, I really like It. So I'm working on it, and I am doing the drafts on the typewriter as long as I can. I know at some point I'm going to have to get back on the laptop, and I am really fast at making changes on the laptop, so I don't know how long I can resist exactly, but it's been really interesting. I mean, there's been a couple of things that have been really great. First of all, when I started writing on a typewriter, I'm looking at my typewriter. It's right over here. I don't know. Here, I'll show you. I'll give you. Cal Newport Oh, there it is. Oh, that's my. So that's not even electric. Amy Timberlake No. I love. Actually, you can get the electric still. But, you know, like sometimes the I'm always worried about the electrical from previous decades. Cal Newport Is it old? Is that vintage? Or is there still ([Time 0:31:52](https://share.snipd.com/snip/cba23aa4-3b29-4b1b-b25b-c57a23e5de06)) - **Creative Productivity Is Not Faster Output** - Amy Timberlake rejects the idea that creative productivity means producing words faster or with less effort. - For her, the goal is the best possible book for kids, which requires rhythm, voice, specificity, and time-consuming revision. Transcript: Cal Newport Final question. So I want to, I will do a little reflection on productivity. You know, productivity and technology in the brain is that's a, you know, confluence of topics, of course, I'm really interested in. We're in a moment now where we're hearing a lot about writing and productivity because of generative AI. It produces text. So we're thinking a lot about writing productivity. And the story that's being told by the AI companies is what we need to be more productive is words have to be produced faster. And we need to reduce the cognitive – it should be easier cognitively. We want it to be easier and be faster. Then we'll be more productive. But when we hear from a professional writer like you, a real creative, award-winning writer, the productivity, which you probably think about on the scale of like the books you produce Over the course of multiple years and how good they are, is completely unrelated to the speed with which you put words on the paper or trying to reduce the cognitive strain. You've actually gone the other direction, made the words go on the paper slower to gain more big scale productivity. So how do you think about in the creative arts, the idea of productivity? Amy Timberlake Because I think it's very different than the way that we've been hearing recently well number one I always want to be more productive like oh my gosh I would I would love but I I don't I just Don't think the I don't think art That's my number one thing. And no, I mean, for me, I just want to create the absolute best book for kids that I can create in the time that I am living in. So I always give myself a little out. Sometimes, you know, you're living in a weird time, and you are just not going to be able to do, you know, it's not going to be perfect, and nothing is going to be perfect. But I always want to do my absolute best. And for me, that means it sounds good you read it out loud. It has language. It has rhythm. It has voice. It's very specific to the characters. And I mean, I don't know another way to do it except for just taking time and doing it slow and giving it, just giving it time. And I honestly, I always wish I were faster. I mean, you could ask my husband any day. He will say, Amy, I've heard this before. You wish you were faster. And I go, oh, I wish I were faster. And I'm like, there's no other way for me to create what I feel good about, except for taking the time. I ([Time 0:45:51](https://share.snipd.com/snip/583a1bc6-44b0-4251-99a5-4b29f5d27605)) - **Three Everyday Examples Of Slow Technology** - Cal Newport broadens slow technology beyond writing by pointing to MP3 players, paper task systems, and Blu-rays. - Each wins by making the experience more intentional, tangible, or higher quality than all-purpose digital alternatives. Transcript: Cal Newport Let's generalize, right? So we learned some interesting lessons from talking to Timberlake. But let's generalize here about slow technology. I want to extract some general principles about when to use it and how best to use it. I thought a good way to do this would be to quickly review a few other examples of other simpler technologies with less features and more friction that have become popular in recent years. So we can get a more expansive view of slow productivity. And then I'll give you my principles. All right, I'm going to load on the screen here my first example. This is an article from Axios. The title is, Why Some Are Returning to MP3 Players. Let me read a couple of quotes from this article. By the numbers, search interest for the original iPod and iPod Nano spiked last year, even though Apple discontinued the product line in 2022, according to Google Trends data. EBay searches jumped for the iPod Classic by 25% and the iPod Nano by 20% between January and October 2025, compared with the same period in 2024, per internal data shared with Axios. It's kind of similar to the analog record boom we saw in the last decade. A dedicated device for music, for a lot of people, makes the experience of listening to music more intentional and meaningful. When it's not just coming out of your phone like every other distraction, where you're going to hit skip and jump and move around as soon as you're bored, when it's coming out of a dedicated Music player, people are having a richer experience with the music. We talked about in an episode from a couple months ago that we actually bought our son. It's not an iPod, but a Japanese MP3 music player, that you just drag MP3 files into it, and all you can do is select songs from that list and play. And there's something about that dedicated experience. I think that's a great example of slow productivity in action. All right, let me load up another example here. This comes from the world of work and productivity. It's a system called Analog. For those who aren't watching, what we're basically seeing here, Jesse, I would describe it as you have like a wooden box full of index card-shaped pieces of paper that you can put one Of the papers in the front of the box where it'll stand up. There's a couple other pictures here. There we go. So like here's an animation of it, right? So you have a piece of paper you put in a wooden box. Basically, my understanding for how the system works is you're writing a to-do list on this sort of pre-formatted index card, and then you put it propped up in this elegant wooden box Next to your computer so you see physically in front of you the things you're supposed to be working on and can check them off as the day goes on. Let me read you a couple of quotes here from the website. Analog is a physical companion for your digital tools that helps you prioritize and focus on your most important tasks. Working out of your inbox puts you on defense all day. Analog helps you focus on your important work to move you closer to your goals. Already using Asana or Trello or Basecamp? Great. Analog actually makes them better. Physically copying down your tasks gives you a tangible, distraction-free view of what you want to focus on today. Productivity apps like Todoist is going to have more features and more options and less friction. You can very quickly add tasks. You can do it from any device. You can sort and look at them in different views. It has all the features on paper that seem better, yet people like this sort of analog tool that's less options, less features, more friction. But its tangibility makes you take it more seriously. And you have this well-formatted piece of paper that you carefully wrote five things you were going to do and have it right in front of you and propped up. Now you're much more likely to follow those tasks than if they just existed somewhere prioritized on an app. There's one app among many. All right, I've got a third example here. I want to cite of slow technology. Jesse knows I'm on board with this one. This comes from the BBC. Let me read you the headline here. Oppenheimer and the resurgence of Blu-rays and DVDs. And there's a picture from Oppenheimer. Let me read you a stat here from the article. Christopher Nolan has achieved some great feats of cinema in his career, but last November he pulled off something impressive on the smaller screen too. Deep into the streaming era where physical media can sometimes feel like a distant memory, the Blu-ray home video release of Nolan's Oppenheimer, one of 2023's biggest box office Success stories, sparked a buying frenzy. The 4K Ultra HD version of Oppenheimer sold out in its first week at major retailers, including Amazon. Universal released a statement saying they were working to replenish stock as quickly as possible. Some limited edition copies were fetching more than $200 on eBay. It was a sign that, for some people at least, nothing beats that feeling of holding a copy of something you love in your hand or seeing it on your shelf. All right, confession, Jesse. I do myself own the 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray of Oppenheimer. I would expect nothing less. As well as Interstellar and Dunkirk. Nolan really cares about his Blu-ray releases. Now, here's something that was missed in this article. It gave two primary reasons for why people liked the Blu-ray. Reason number one is they said people were worried about losing their data if it existed only in the cloud. If I don't own this movie, if it's just digital, then maybe I'll lose it. And then the second thing decided was what I said in the quote is that people like the feeling of holding their own thing. They're missing a key point here. It's actually a better watching experience coming from a 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray than it is from a streaming service. So they're missing. Cinephiles know this, especially with Nolan Blu-rays. He really pushes the format to an extreme. In fact, I had to buy a better Blu-ray player so that I could watch Nolan's Blu-rays. So he has all, like he uses an encoding format. So like the aspect ratio can switch throughout the Blu-ray as it does in his movies, as he switches between like 65 millimeters, 70 and 35. He's a big user of the dynamic HDR. So there's like a lot of information dynamically the colors and the color depth to do exactly what he wants. And it's all at a higher resolution and bit density than you're going to get from a compressed streaming service. So actually it's a better, if you have a really good TV like we have, it's a better looking experience on the Blu-ray, which I think they kind of missed out. So with all the movies that you watch, do you watch majority streaming now? That's probably too much. Yeah, I mean, I try to see what I can in the theater. Yeah, I buy the ones that I want to own, or I think they're very aesthetic forward, and you want the best possible viewing experience. I was a long holdout on the DVDs in the mail from Netflix. I had that service for like two years after everybody else. Yeah. And you're still trying to send them back? I just listened to how I built this with Reed Hastings about Netflix. Pretty interesting. He's kind of a boring guest, but it was kind of an interesting story. ([Time 0:54:02](https://share.snipd.com/snip/bdbef284-0b00-4f0c-a185-3f9ca5af5291)) - **The Four Principles Behind Slow Technology** - Cal Newport argues that speed rarely determines work quality; cognitive context, focus, and experience matter more. - His four principles say friction is often fine, distraction is costly, and tools should be judged at the scale of years and outcomes. Transcript: Cal Newport What are some general principles we can draw about slow technology? I came up with four I want to give here. All right. Number one, speed is rarely the most important factor in the quality of your work or in experience. This is something that the designer of digital tools think is true. Oh, it's like we're in a factory. Doing something faster or having more options makes everything better. But as we've seen in both personal life and professional experiences, actually going faster with the thing you're doing is not necessarily the bottleneck that's going to make what You're doing better. Texts can often produce better results even if certain steps take longer in the moment. So what does matter, I'm saying in this principle in a lot of type of work, the cognitive context matters. Like with Amy Timberlake, yeah, it's slower to put words using a typewriter. It's way slower to edit when you're using a typewriter workflow as opposed to a word processor. But it created a cognitive context for her that produced better words, which is ultimately what mattered. I believe the phrase she used was going down to well, being lost in a state of really creative flow. And that ultimately matters a lot more because, again, the bottleneck, if you're a writer, is not all I do all day is typing, and if I can literally make the words come out faster, I'll Publish more books. It's like how much time do you actually spend typing? You spend six months on one of these books. There's probably like seven hours in there if you add it all up or you're actually hitting keys. So if that becomes 12 hours, it doesn't matter in a six-month period. It doesn't drastically affect your rate at which books are produced. But if it puts you in a better cognitive context when you're typing those words, you're going to have a better book, and that's really worth it. I think this is true for a lot of different things we do. A tool that can put us in the right mindset is often going to give us way more value than a tool that lets us do particular steps faster. Because again, we're not building Model Ts on an assembly line, and simply doing individual steps faster does not always lead to notable productivity increases that actually affect The bottom line. All right, point number three, friction isn't a bad thing. Distraction and mental exhaustion, however, can cause real problems. So we were demonizing in the design of digital tools friction. Oh, I have to click too many things or do too many things to get this done. How do we make this faster? When really what we should have been really worried about was things like mental exhaustion as caused by like constant context shifting or overflow or distraction. Like that's actually a much bigger impact in knowledge work than friction on individual steps. My final point, fourth and final point about slow technology, when assessing tools impact, you need to zoom out to the right scale. If you focus on the quality results over time or the quality of the overall experience, you'll prioritize different factors. That's probably the thing that's thrown in the soft most with digital tools is that we look at the effectiveness of tools on a very small timescale. I got this done this fast. That's good. But if you zoom out to how many books did I publish this decade and how good are they, you begin to prioritize different things. And those things usually have very little to do with like speeding up individual tasks. So I think slow technology is more than an affectation. It's a way of life and a way of working, of thinking about work in the knowledge sector that actually might make you better at what you do. ([Time 1:00:45](https://share.snipd.com/snip/f14f2426-2cd5-48ec-91dc-e8c981974fd0))