(ANALYSIS) In our post-pandemic, technologically-infused culture, burnout is on the rise across all sectors of the economy. People are struggling with the frenetic pace of the modern workplace.

The church is no exception.

In fact, I frequently hear from pastors and clergy who find it difficult to keep up with the evolving demands of church life in a digital age.

READ: Why The Anglican Church In North America Faces Existential Challenges

Cal Newport, professor of computer science and a bestselling author, is at the forefront of addressing this issue. In his latest book, “Slow Productivity: The Lost Art of Accomplishment Without Burnout,” Newport takes on the complex topic of productivity.

Newport argues that modern knowledge workers frequently confuse busyness with genuine productivity. So long as workers keep up a charade of frenzied activity, they validate their outputs. irrespective of the quality. But Newport’s shows us a better way, and his analysis has important implications for Christian leaders and pastors.

The rise of pseudo-productivity

In the opening chapters, Newport traces the historical roots of our tendency to confuse busyness with productivity. Despite the appearance of constant activity, knowledge workers often find themselves engaged in a frenzied pursuit of meaningless tasks. Readers can easily imagine the scene of a distracted employee scurrying to look hardworking every time the boss turns up.

Newport labels this rat-race “pseudo-productivity.” The use of “visible activity,” he writes, “as the primary means of approximating actual productive effort” is a disastrous standard for any measure of success.

The pandemic served only to reveal the depth of this problem. The so-called “Great Resignation” and the emergence of the movement known as “quiet quitting” signaled workers’ dissatisfaction with the current state of pseudo-productivity.

In response to the chaotic pace of modern knowledge work, Newport makes two key moves in his book: He determines to “focus on alternatives to what’s wrong” and “draw solutions from time-tested traditions.” Long before the advent of schedules filled with pointless meetings and an endless cycle of emails, history’s most influential philosophers, scientists, artists and writers mastered the art of producing valuable work in ways that were sustainable. From these examples, Newport proposes what he calls “slow productivity.”

Implementing slow productivity

Slow productivity involves three specific principles: Do fewer things, work at a natural pace and obsess over quality. Each of these principles are applicable to all kinds of fields, and Newport has plenty of examples. The book features a diverse array of successful people that practiced “slow productivity,” including Jane Austen, Ben Franklin, Galileo, Georgia O’Keeffe, Lin-Manuel Miranda and Mary Oliver.

Doing fewer things means reducing your obligations to those that are easily accomplished with time to spare. He challenges his readers to focus on the small projects that matter most and attend to key issues in workflow practices. This kind of simplicity is “possible in most modern work settings,” Newport writes, “if you’re willing to be creative — and perhaps, at times, even radical — in how you think about selecting and organizing your work.”

Slow productivity also challenges readers to work at a natural pace. The frantic, urgent tempo of a buzzing office is often counterproductive. Instead, take the long view.

“The great scientists of the past era would have found our urgency to be self-defeating and frantic,” Newport writes.

Past knowledge workers did not draft their famous works over night, but through the slow, deliberate work that accumulated over time.

“Don’t rush your most important work,” but allow your work to “unfold along a sustainable timeline, with variations in intensity, in setting conducive to brilliance,” Newport writes.

He also makes several practical recommendations. Take longer to complete key assignments, make a five-year plan, double your project timelines, simplify your workday, embrace seasonality in your work and, most importantly, forgive yourself. A seasonal approach, for example, means varying the intensity of your work over the span of a week or even a year. True productivity is not about what a knowledge worker accomplishes in a day or even a week, but over the course of a lifetime.

Finally, Newport calls readers to “obsess over the quality of what you produce, even if this means missing opportunities in the short term.”

This is the “glue” that holds slow productivity together. Again, Newport offers several practical suggestions such as immersing yourself in fields outside your work, starting a study group like C.S. Lewis’ Inklings, and investing in tools to improve the quality of your work. In the end, producing excellent work can be leveraged to gain more freedom to help sustain the excellence of the work overtime and eliminate busyness.

Slow productivity and Christian ministry

Newport’s latest book is another attempt to reframe knowledge work in the modern era. His work is not a panacea, but a step in the right direction. For those invested in Christian ministry, his work is highly applicable.

Churches often run at breakneck speeds, confusing busyness and productive ministry and consuming pastors who burn out quickly. Faculty and administrators at Christian colleges and seminaries, too, often struggle to keep up with the evolving demands of the technological revolution.

Alongside a healthy vision of ministry derived from the Scriptures, applying the principles of slow productivity can help reimagine a steady pace for Christian leaders that is focused on sustained and authentic spiritual growth.

Stephen O. Presley is senior fellow for religion and public life at the Center for Religion, Culture & Democracy (crcd.net), an initiative of First Liberty Institute and associate professor of church history at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. Presley is the author of a couple forthcoming books: Cultural Sanctification: engaging the world like the early church (Eerdmans) and Biblical Theology in the Life of the Early Church (Baker). Follow him on Instagram: @stopresley and X @sopresley.