Enter Slow Productivity, a recent release by best-selling author Cal Newport.  Cal Newport revolutionized my philosophy around how to get work done with his book, Deep Work.  In Slow Productivity, he expands on his approach with a detailed guide on how to do less, but do it better.

In this article, I will cover the key principles he covers in Slow Productivity and how filmmakers can enact them in their work to create the best films and videos they can.

I’m going to make a few assumptions here:

1. You’re either a freelancer or run your own production company
2. You’re not just focused on client work – You want to develop and work on your own film projects

Employees tend to have other time pressures that they can’t control (bosses, co-workers, etc.). While the book is helpful for employees, my article will focus on how independent filmmakers can use the principles in the book to make better work without burning out.

“Strive to reduce your obligations to the point where you can easily imagine accomplishing them with time to spare. Leverage this reduced load to more fully embrace and advance the small number of projects that matter most.” 

The first principle of the book encourages you to take on fewer obligations overall.

To tell you the truth, this is one of my biggest challenges. Looking at the big picture, I have so many different ideas for films that I want to make. If I don’t control the urge to start new projects (usually when another project starts getting tough), I’ll never get anything done.

I’ve had too many projects on the go, which led to me not completing one of the major projects, which likely let down the participants in the story. I’m doing everything I can to avoid that in the future.

To help with managing your projects and time, he suggests keeping two “bins”– Holding Tank and Active Lists.

The Holding Tank is where you put your ideas and any new projects you want to take on or get thrown your way. The size of this list can be unlimited.

The Active list includes the projects you’re currently working on—he suggests limiting this to three active projects.

For filmmakers, the active projects can easily be broken down into one project in Development, one in Production/Post-Production, and one in Distribution.

If you’re focused solely on producing and have excellent project management skills, perhaps you can add another project to the mix.  If you’re focused on directing, you’ll likely want to reduce your active list to one project.

I’m going to break down what this looks like for me now:

For starters, I break down my daily tasks into creative work and administrative tasks.

Creative work is anything that requires a great deal of concentration and effort. This includes writing, editing, creating/designing pitch decks, etc.

My administrative tasks include research, emails, meetings, bookkeeping and similar tasks.

ACTIVE LIST:

In my active list, I currently have two feature/broadcast-length documentaries in development/financing and a short film I’m distributing. I’m directing and producing the features (one feature has a co-producer).

To manage my time between the two projects in Development, I’ve decided to focus on getting one of the projects to the point where most of the creative work is finished, and I’m ready to pitch it and/or apply for grants.  Now, this project is more of an administrative task that’s easier to manage.

Then, I can finish the other project’s creative tasks to prepare to pitch it.

For the short film in Distribution, we currently have one confirmed event I’m organizing (mostly for the experience; usually, I would let the partner organization handle most of the details), and I’m responsible for outreach to new potential partners for screenings. This is almost entirely administrative now. I’ve set up email systems to reduce the time I need to manually send emails (another principle of doing fewer things from Slow Productivity).

I also have this article and newsletter, which goes out every two weeks.  I block aside time (approximately 6-8 hours in the week of the newsletter) to get this done.  I also know I need to make a post/story/ feed for each article for social media, but I don’t make this too elaborate.

HOLDING TANK:

Now, where to start… there’s so much I want to do!

First, I have a list of 13 additional film or series ideas I want to work on. A few of them are further along in ideation than others, and a few of them could be considered more time-sensitive. More ideas are floating around in my head, but they’re not to the point where I want to put them down on paper yet.

I also want to develop a few courses.  I absolutely love teaching and want to get more involved in that world.  I don’t yet know if I’ll create a typical online course or something more in-depth or in-person, but it’s on the list of things I want to do and accomplish over the next 5 years.

I’ve also considered starting a YouTube channel, expanding my reach on Instagram and LinkedIn, and jumping on TikTok (ok, no, I haven’t considered that, but you get the idea).

Another key priority in the next few years will be starting a distribution company that will focus on acquiring films and developing impact campaigns for them.

And then there are my business ideas outside of filmmaking, which I won’t discuss here.

How do I decide when to pull something out of the holding tank and into the active list?

I’ll likely start developing my next project from the list of ideas once I finish post-production on the first film I’m currently developing. This means I’m unlikely to start Development on the next film until sometime in late 2025.

It’s an exercise in patience for sure, but this will help me focus my time and efforts on my current goals.

“Don’t rush your most important work. Allow it instead to unfold along a sustainable timeline, with variations in intensity, in settings conducive to brilliance.” 

There’s a lot to break down in that quote alone.  Let’s go over it.

Don’t rush your most important work. Allow it instead to unfold along a sustainable timeline

First, we need to identify what our most important work is.  As filmmakers, that is generally our films.

Allowing our work to unfold along a sustainable timeline is probably the most challenging part.  As humans, I think it’s normal behaviour to overestimate how fast we can get work done.  This leads us to rush our work in a manner that makes the work worse.

As a rule, Cal suggests doubling the length of time you guess a part of the process might take.  However, in a world with confined budgets (if you have one at all!), this is not always possible.  For example, try extending a post-production budget for a feature doc from 6 months to 12 months…. Good luck with that!

However, it can work for tasks such as creating pitch decks or writing treatments.  If I think it will take me a week to do the rough draft, doubling it to two weeks will give me more time to do a better job – as long as I don’t use that extra time to procrastinate!

with variations in intensity:

What does Newport mean by variations in intensity?

There are going to be times in your project’s lifecycle when you need to put in more effort and times when you can slow down and possibly even escape for a bit or take a vacation!

For example, production is usually hectic, with lots of moving parts.  10-12 hour days, working with a team, and ensuring you have all the footage you need to make your film can be very stressful. Coming to the final stages of post-production can be as well, especially if you’re trying to make a film festival submission deadline.

Newport suggests that after an intense period of work, you take a bit of time away to recharge your batteries. This could be as simple as taking an afternoon off or escaping for a few weeks or months, if you’re lucky enough to take that much time off!

In settings conducive to brilliance:

This is both the physical environment you surround yourself in and the rituals you do to get yourself in the right frame of mind for work.

For example, if you have certain activities you do every time you get ready to edit, it’s going to be a lot easier to get into the headspace to work.

The physical space you choose to work in can also provide inspiration for you to do your best work and help reduce distractions.

Cal Newport is not a big fan of working from home. He feels that home has too many familiarities—too many distractions—to tempt us away from the important work we need to be doing.

While I do enjoy working from home, I tend to agree with him—I can’t wait for the day when I have a small office less than a 5-minute walk away from my home and can create a ritual of the morning walk to work, with a coffee in hand, then sit at my desk with the sole focus of working rather than the pile of dishes stacked up in the kitchen or the laundry that needs to be folded.

To summarize this principle, this is how I typically structure my day:

My current morning ritual involves making my morning coffee, then sitting down with my daily planner and planning how my day will look.  I block off time for the tasks I want to complete that day, and then I get to work on my most important task first.

To balance my day-to-day efforts (when in front of a computer), I know what times I work the best and how long I can typically focus. Right now, my most productive times are mornings between 7 and 8:30 a.m. and 9:30- 11:30 a.m.  There are days (particularly early in the week) when I can continue my concentrated efforts between 1 and 2:30 p.m., but after that, my brain starts turning to mush.

So, I tend to focus my creative tasks in the morning, when I work the best, and my administrative tasks in the afternoons, when I can be more on autopilot.  I find this helps me not burn out, and I can sustain this effort for weeks at a time.

It took me a few years of experimenting with different time management techniques to find something that worked for me, but once I figured it out (and when I could stick to it), I could get many more of my tasks done with less mental fatigue.

“Obsess over the quality of what you produce, even if this means missing opportunities in the short term. Leverage the value of these results to gain more and more freedom in your efforts over the long term.”

Cal Newport explains that this principle, obsessing over quality, holds the whole concept of Slow Productivity together. Once you commit to doing something to the best of your ability, the other two principles become easier to stick to.

I don’t think this is a difficult thing for most filmmakers I know.  We tend to have a desire to create great work (especially when it’s our passion project).  However, we tend to fail when we do not have enough time or space to do great work.

We need to slow down to focus on quality work. To slow down, we need to reduce the burden of other tasks and items on our plate and work at a sustainable pace so we can return to the task day after day with the same energy and enthusiasm.

This doesn’t mean we have unlimited time to create the best work.  Deadlines are important and exist in real life. Grant applications, campaign launches, and film festival submissions all have due dates, and we need to be mindful of them.

I believe the key to obsessing over quality is being aware of how many tasks you are taking on, reminding yourself that you want to do the best job possible on your most important projects, and committing to doing so.

The book covers much more than what I’ve gone through here, but these are the main principles to focus on for achieving more, not just every day but throughout your career.  The goal is to look back 10-15 years from now and see that you’ve achieved a certain level of quality and achievement with your work, even if it’s a smaller overall volume of work than you could have achieved if you rushed through everything. For example, I will personally get more satisfaction in my life if I create 2-3 great films that get significant recognition from my peers, audiences and festival juries than 150 YouTube videos that garner a lot of views, but no meaningful results.

So, in conclusion, I’m likely not going to start a YouTube channel soon.  I’m holding off on creating a course (something that is a long-term, meaningful goal of mine) until I complete the projects currently on my docket and have time to dedicate to making it the best it can be (also once I can truly demonstrate the principles I want to teach in practice). And I’m going to obsess over the quality of my next two films so that they are the best they can possibly be.