The Secrets To Cal Newport's Article Writing System | Weekly Update #6

Introduction

In this video, Cal Newport talks about his latest article for the New Yorker and gives an update on his book "Slow Productivity". He also shares his long-form article writing process.

Cal's Latest Article for the New Yorker

• The article is titled "What Hunter-Gatherers Can Teach Us About Improving Work".

• The premise of the article is to look back at the deep history of the concept of work and compare it to what work means today.

• The goal is to find places where work is making us exhausted or frustrated and get some ideas for reforming modern work.

Cal's Writing Process

• Cal started with one of his research assistants who read a bunch of books and articles, loaded it all in a Google doc, and they spent an afternoon talking through bouncing ideas off each other.

• Cal created a Scrivener project for this article and added every article that his research assistant had found along with rough summaries of their conversations.

• He then worked on an outline before doing more research to support specific points in the outline.

• At this point, he had a large amount of research notes that he could use in the article.

Update on Slow Productivity Book

• Cal has finished Part 1 of the book which focuses on why productivity matters.

• He has written around 30,000 words so far.

• His plan for the next month is to finish Part 2 of the book which focuses on how to be productive.

Conclusion

In this video, Cal Newport shared his long-form article writing process and gave an update on his book "Slow Productivity". He emphasized the importance of doing research before creating an outline and having a large amount of research notes that he could use in the article.

Writing Process

In this section, the speaker talks about his writing process and how he goes about researching and writing articles.

Researching and Writing

• The speaker took three weeks to write a 7,000+ word article.

• He writes day by day, piece by piece, stopping when he needs to find more research.

• He spends time finding research for the next section of the article if it requires a lot of research.

• After three weeks of writing and over one or two months of research, he realized that the original draft was not working well.

Starting Over

• The speaker told his editor that he needed to take another swing at the article after realizing that it wasn't working well.

• He started from scratch again with a blank page and pulled stuff from the old draft as needed. This time he came in at 5,000 words which was something he could work with.

Editing Process

• The speaker went through several editing drafts until it was ready for submission.

Book Update

In this section, the speaker provides an update on his book progress.

Part One and Two

• The book has two parts: part one and part two.

• Part two is longer than part one.

• The speaker finished part two last week with a nice draft ready for submission to his publisher.

Progress on Part One

• The speaker has begun part one which has three major chapters to write.

• He is halfway through the first chapter and aims to finish it by the end of November.

• He also aims to finish the second chapter in November and be significantly into the third chapter by December.

Update on Long Form Articles

In this section, the speaker provides an update on their progress with long-form articles.

Progress Update

• The speaker has a collection of folders and subfolders full of articles.

• They are still having fun with it and making progress.

• The book is more or less on track.

Next Steps

• The speaker will be back next week for a new update.