Walking, subtraction, and doing less to accomplish more

Executive overview

Organisations and individuals accumulate work, meetings, and obligations by default. Removing things is harder than adding them, yet subtraction is the lever that unlocks focus and output. The first principle of slow productivity is do fewer things — this applies equally to solo practitioners and Fortune 500 companies.

Cal answers listener questions on walking desks, managing unpredictable workloads, social media for performers, publishing fiction and nonfiction, online presence strategy, procrastination, and the future of computing.

Why subtraction beats addition at work

• David Packard: "More businesses die from indigestion than starvation."
• Google's Laszlo Bock: after four interviews, any additional round required his personal sign-off — making excess the exception, not the default.
• Asana's "meeting doomsday": a standing group audits recurring meetings; in a second phase, all standing meetings under five people were blanket-cancelled for two days — only those genuinely missed were reinstated.
• Shortening meeting defaults (60 min → 45 min) recovered significant calendar space with no real cost.
• AstraZeneca added friction to reply-all emails above 25 recipients — making scale a deliberate choice, not an accident.
• Steve Jobs's 1997 Apple: eliminated most product lines within ten months; top-down purges are powerful but should be used sparingly to avoid a culture of fear.
• The principle for individuals: every commitment on your schedule should have to earn its place and face ongoing scrutiny.

Walking and when to use motion for work

• Walking is best for creative insight — solving problems, finding article angles, working through proofs — not for precise composition tasks like answering email.
• The treadmill desk is a compromise; outdoor walking provides novel stimuli (weather, sound, visual change) that amplifies the cognitive benefit.
• For remote workers: 10–15k steps distributed across the day — morning walk, lunch walk, end-of-day walk, short breaks in between.
• Work that requires precise language or screen interaction is better done at a desk; use a notebook outdoors to draft, then type up later.

Managing unpredictable workloads from outside teams

• Boom-and-bust cycles driven by external teams are partially unavoidable — accept that reality rather than fight it.
• During busy periods: strip back self-initiated work, focus entirely on what's incoming.
• During quiet periods: lean into self-initiated work; consider a "phantom part-time job" schedule (e.g., ending the day at 3pm).
• Implicit protocols give outside parties structure without lecturing them: set a shared folder deadline, a fixed meeting slot, a clear draft-and-feedback timeline.
• People don't need full accessibility — they need clarity about when and how to reach you and when to expect a response.

Protocols for solo practitioners (law, freelance, consulting)

• Without a defined system, clients default to expecting instant responses whenever they message.
• Replace that with structure: office hours, a submission portal, a booking link for paid calls, or explicit turnaround expectations.
• Depersonalise contact: use channel-based email addresses (media@, academic@, other@) rather than your personal address.
• People adapt to reasonable systems easily — they just want to know what to do and when.

Self-publishing fiction as a viable path

• There is a large underground of self-published fiction authors earning six-to-seven figures annually.
• Requirements: high output (2,000–10,000 words/day), writing tightly to a specific genre or niche (e.g., progression fantasy).
• Authors like Amanda Lee, Mark Dawson, and others are largely unknown outside their genre — and that's fine.
• KDP / Kindle Direct at low price points ($1.99) with high volume is the model.

How to publish a nonfiction book correctly

• Publishers want a proposal, not a finished manuscript — the sequence is: idea → agent query → agent-assisted proposal → sale → write the book.
• Writing the full manuscript first is avoidance: you're creating the rules you wish were true rather than the ones that are.
• Negative agent feedback is valuable signal: it tells you exactly what to improve rather than letting you work in a vacuum.
• Cal's essay "How to Sell a Nonfiction Book" at calnewport.com covers the industry mechanics in detail.
• If writing a book while employed: disclose proactively to your manager — it's almost never a problem, and it creates useful accountability.

Building an online presence without social media

• Do not return to social media even when your work gains media attention — for most knowledge workers and academics, it is a distraction, not a career driver.
• Own your domain (yourname.com or .net): one paragraph bio, selected press, selected work, a link to your CV.
• For theatre and performing arts specifically: casting decisions turn on craft, not follower counts.
• Set up channel-based contact addresses (media, academic, other); depersonalising addresses reduces pressure to respond to everything.
• You do not need to disclaim "I get too many emails" — most people will adjust to whatever contact structure you provide.

Blogs vs. newsletters

• Both escape algorithmic curation, which is the root cause of most social media distraction and polarisation.
• Blogs were better for: distributed, hyperlink-driven discovery — you could stumble from sports writing into film criticism into music criticism organically.
• Newsletters are better for: individual monetisation — a subscription model ($5/month) lets a single writer earn a living in a way ad-based blogs never could.
• Newsletters are more siloed: discovery depends on pre-existing social capital rather than web links.

Completing tasks and managing an overloaded list

• Two root causes: unrealistic plans, or unfocused execution.
• For unrealistic plans: use multi-scale planning (quarter → week → day) and doubling heuristics — cut today's list in half, double time estimates.
• For unfocused execution: time-block planning — give every minute of the workday a job; stop relying on energy or mood to drive progress.

How to start (and trust) writing a novel

• Procrastination often comes from the brain's long-term evaluator doubting the plan's viability — not from laziness.
• Fix: pause the writing and invest in building genuine confidence — find writers who succeeded in a similar situation, join a writing group, hire a freelance editor for honest feedback.
• Feeling like you're moving backward (getting hard feedback, learning your draft is weak) is how you build the trust that eventually sustains motivation.
• Trust is motivation: once you have confidence in a process that has a real chance of working, starting becomes easier.

The future of consumer computing

• Cal's prediction: computation moves to the cloud, AR glasses become the primary device, and screens (phone, laptop, TV) are projected virtually into your field of view.
• Corporate control of your screen is already possible and already happening — this shift does not meaningfully worsen it.
• Two real concerns: (1) the phenomenological shift as virtual and physical objects become perceptually indistinguishable; (2) economic disruption — Apple, Samsung, Sony, and others face consolidation once consumers no longer buy physical screens.
• Current barrier: latency (especially for interactive 3D graphics) — but investment is heavy and the transition is likely inevitable.