Second Cup: Good ideas take time

Give your work the time and space it deserves

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Before Breakfast, a production of iHeartRadio. Good Morning.
This is Laura. Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast. Today's
tip is that being productive doesn't always look productive. Good

(00:23):
ideas take time, and true productivity is measured over the
long haul, but often achieving a lot in the long
haul doesn't mean filling every minute. Today's tip comes partly
from Cal Newport's new book, Slow Productivity. In this book,

(00:45):
Cal talks about how to achieve great things without burnout.
He opens Slow Productivity with a tale of someone who
is important to me, Professor John McPhee of Princeton. Many
years ago, oh I took mcfee's famous nonfiction writing class.
I learned a lot from his discussions of his own

(01:06):
life as a working writer. One of mcfee's most famous
stories is about the Pine Barrens in New Jersey. After
compiling all his notes from trapsing around the forest, he
had some fairly serious writer's block, so we wound up
laying on a picnic table day after day for about

(01:27):
two weeks. Finally, he realized that much of his reporting
could come back to one central character who could form
the spine of what became a long new Yorker piece.
Cal notes that if you looked at McFee during those
two weeks spending his working hours lying there seemingly doing nothing,

(01:53):
you would not have considered him to be terribly productive.
But that would be a mistake. McPhee has been incredibly productive.
He's written around thirty books over his lifetime, including one
that won the Pulitzer Prize, in addition to teaching undergraduate
writing for decades. To produce his best work, McPhee needed

(02:18):
time and space to think. Fortunately, he gave himself that space,
and over the decades, lots of good work followed. So
what can the rest of us take from this? One
of the key realizations Cal tells us is that sometimes
good ideas take time. Yes we have deadlines. Yes, sometimes

(02:45):
you just have to move forward with something that isn't perfect.
Nothing is ever perfect, so if you are waiting for perfection,
you will never do anything. But it is okay to
sit with an idea for a while and think of
it and not necessarily go with the first thing. Maybe
the first thing can be incorporated into your later idea.

(03:08):
It is a stepping stone for getting there, but maybe
it is not it. See how it feels when you
realize that good ideas take time. That means you need
to give yourself time, and that means being okay with
not doing something that looks productive every single minute. Yes,

(03:33):
you've got emails. You could set up some more meetings,
or you could sit there, go outside, walk around, think,
talk to some colleagues about ideas. Even if it just
looks like you are hanging out in the office kitchen.
You might not come up with something brilliant the first time.

(03:54):
In fact, you probably won't or the second time or
a third time. But eventually, and when it comes to
executing on those good ideas, even a little bit does
add up. So just keep doing a little bit. Maybe
it doesn't always look productive, but that's okay. Real productivity

(04:18):
doesn't always look productive in the moment, but good ideas
take time, So embrace this slow productivity as cal calls it.
Over the long haul, it will be okay, and you'll
probably be happier in the meantime. This is Laura. Thanks

(04:41):
for listening, and here's to making the most of our time.
Thanks for listening to before breakfast. If you've got questions, ideas,
or feedback, you can reach me at Laura Arah at
Laura vandercam dot com. Before Breakfast is a production of iHeartMedia.

(05:10):
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