OVERWHELMED and OVERSCHEDULED

Is your inbox making you feel anxious? Do you sometimes feel like your to-do lists are endless? Do you feel exhausted after a day's work? Productivity expert Cal Newport has some tips that might help.

- LIESL ROBERTSON

Ever since the pandemic forced most of us to work remotely – until employers called everyone back to the office – it has sparked an ever-growing conversation around work: the way we work, the hours we work, and whether any of it is really working for us. There’s been a backlash against hustle culture, talk of rising burnout, and the idea of ‘quiet quitting’ – when you’re in the same job but no longer giving it 110%.

What it all comes down to is that we’re tired. Tired of trying to get shit done and ultimately failing. Cal Newport, a productivity expert, computer science professor and the author of best-selling books like Deep Work and A World Without Email, has a theory on why that is.

Why am I so exhausted? ‘

The explanation for this endemic tiredness is not what you think,’ Cal says in an episode of his podcast Deep Questions. People tend to think it has to do with workload – that you can only handle so much work before your energy becomes depleted. And sure, that might be the case: that you’re drowning in work. But generally, there’s more to consider than the sheer volume of it.

‘We can find numerous case studies of knowledge workers who produce a large quantity of work – and yet they don’t report being exhausted,’ Cal says. An extreme example of this is Maria Popova, a prolific blogger and writer who typically produces three essays/ articles and 50 tweets per day, most of which are based off books she’s read on subjects ranging from poetry to memoirs. She reads a book per day on average. And yet she’s not exhausted.