The bigger challenge of Slow Productivity is that it requires systems to manage work that’s not yet assigned. If you’re a boss, and an important task pops to mind—“We need to update our Web site with new client testimonials!”—you can no longer simply e-mail the request to one of your underlings and move on with your day. Slow Productivity would require you to log this item into a system where it can be properly prioritized and ultimately assigned when the right person has the needed time available. If it’s a significant project, perhaps it can be stored on a kanban-style board that tracks both pending and ongoing work. When someone finishes an objective, a collective decision can be made about what to assign her next, and the board is then updated for all to see. Smaller administrative tasks might be better served by a more direct system. Imagine everyone on your team puts aside one hour a day for completing small tasks and answering quick questions. Further imagine that they each post a shared document containing a sign-up sheet for a day’s block, including only a limited number of slots. If you want someone on your team to, say, give you his availability for an upcoming client visit, you must find a free slot in which to record this request. He’ll then see it and give you an answer during that day’s administrative block—freeing him from the burden of having to manage all of these obligations in a single, overwhelming pile of unstructured urgency. All of this, of course, would be a pain. It would be so much easier in the moment to simply e-mail your colleague to assign him a project or ask him a quick question. But in the world of work what’s easiest is rarely what’s most effective. The downsides of haphazardly inflating work volumes are sufficiently severe that we should be willing to entertain elaborate solutions, even if they are, at first, complicated and annoying to implement.

Source: It’s Time to Embrace Slow Productivity – Cal Newport