Reading Widely

I’ve always been a bit of a magpie when it comes to reading, I love a book because it’s a book, because of its contents, I am not precious about a specific genre. Same with music as I have grown older. And I love the ways you can discover links and fresh ideas from combining knowledge, from reading outside a genre or topic.

Books can show you things from a different perspective. By reading widely you can come to know the world, and yourself, better. Through words you can discover new ways to be.

For instance – I’ve been listening to Cal Newport’s podcast for a while, and bought his last book Slow Productivity when it came out in 2024. I became interested in his work because I struggled over lockdown and ended up burned out, stressed, anxious, depressed and off work. I never wanted it to happen again but I saw the warning signs last year and wanted to find strategies to help me avoid a repeat.

Slow productivity is not ‘quiet quitting’, it’s more about focus, lessening the busyness, quality over quantity, having time and space to do your job creatively and effectively. Several things caught my eye in the first chapter, notably how it’s challenging to measure knowledge worker productivity in any effective way that doesn’t harm the worker or the output. How ‘being productive’ has meant knowledge workers feel they need to be available, to answer emails immediately, respond to Slack messages, prove they are there ‘doing stuff’. Except the stuff they are doing is not necessarily what they need to do in order to create quality – and this has synergies with my PhD topic.

Quality work takes time, needs time and space to be thought through, and so do relationships.

To create meaningful relationships takes time and effort and the activities to do so are often not quantifiable in a meaningful way that can be measured.

TIME

I have an example that I state frequently. I met Tom from The Making Rooms back in 2018/2019 at a workshop to help third sectors with bid writing skills. I was interested in the work being done at The Making Rooms and we stayed in touch sporadically via email and also through me ‘popping in’ when I was in Blackburn. In 2020 the opportunity arose for me to connect Tom with our researchers (via Zoom, because, you know, lockdown) we had new researchers who didn’t know The Making Rooms so I invited Tom to talk a group of them because I could see potential even if I wasn’t sure where it could lead.

From the zoom call Tom connected with Dr Mike Stead and started discussing projects and funding. This led to projects like The Repair Shop 2049 and has since evolved into further projects and myriad possibilities.

2018 – 2020

Around two years for the stars to align for the right connections at the right time. In those two years I could have been challenged with, “why are you going to Blackburn to see Tom at The Making Rooms?” I could have been told to do something ‘more productive’ (where ‘productive’ means producing something tangible). But because I invested time and energy into maintaining our relationship, by the time lockdown happened and I asked Tom if he wanted to chat with our researchers, he was more than happy to do so. He knew and trusted me and I knew and trusted him.

Since that zoom call in 2020 I am unsure off the top of my head how much funding or impact has been generated – I could go look but it’s Saturday and I’m not at work. But I do know it is significant.

Good things take time, and in the chase for productivity knowledge workers (and others) have had that reduced or even removed. This was something I hadn’t ever considered until I read Cal’s book. I had ‘bought in’ to the idea that you had to show constant ‘production’ in order to be valued and of value. That ‘busy’ work was needed. That sitting a pondering a problem was not allowed.

To expand on this topic my next book is Rest is Resistance by Tricia Hersey, followed by Do Less from Kate Northrup.