Slow intensity

There's this tension between two trains of thought, of which I both agree with. The first comes from voices in startup and business culture that are doing interesting things, for me this is embodied in content like the My First Million podcast which I listen to regularly. The second train of thought is around slowing down and doing deeper, more focused work which is epitomized by Cal Newport and his Deep Questions podcast.

I am a fan of both and get a ton of value from their ideas. But to some extent they are in conflict. Often with startups there's this idea that says the most successful founders are ruthlessly focused and go about their work with so much intensity that they basically manifest success no matter what the obstacle. I can't argue with this, yet at the same time, I also agree with the second train of thought that says we need to slow down to be more productive.

How do you square this circle, where you need to be slow and intense at the same time? The idea I'm starting to develop, that I put into practice for myself, is about focusing on the quality of the time I spend working over the quantity. I basically have a block of 5-6 hours per day that I can dedicate to work outside of the time I spend with my family and on my fitness. In order to move my business forward, I need to be ruthlessly productive during this time. There is no time for the news or social media scrolling that I might have done in prior jobs. The time that I am working needs to be dialed up to full intensity and it needs to be spent working on the highest priority things.

I find if I'm working at that intensity for a full 5-6 hours, I'm mentally drained and it is tough to continue to do good, creative work beyond that point. So adding more hours anyway would have diminishing returns. Instead, when I have some down time outside of work, I try to read things that will help me either understand business in general or my industry better. This will pay dividends back into my work, without further taxing my brain for that day.

I'm continuing to evolve this way of working, but this is how I am currently trying to keep up the intensity level, while also keeping things relatively slow.