Newport vs Zen: Finding flow in a rigidly scheduled world

I work for LinkedIn and they have this wonderful tradition of giving US employees PTO for the week of July 4^th. I took the time to read Time Surfing by Paul Loomans and carefully work through the material. The book presents a time management system rooted in Zen Buddhism. Loomans himself is a Zen Monk. It’s a time productivity book that does a wonderful job of integrating the psychological with the actionable. We’re treated to a 7 part instruction guide on how to be productive from a place of calm.

As someone who has been immersed in the philosophy of Cal Newport for the past few years, it was interesting to me to compare and contrast the two. Their time management systems largely overlap with one another. They both set out to reduce the sense of overwhelm so common in the modern work environment which values busyness and activity. The goal of any system is to make us feel more in control of our lives. There’s no do doubt Newport would agree with Loomans about not multi-tasking, taking breaks without a smartphone, avoiding distractions, and making project specific plans. In fact, the first 6 instructions are perfectly in agreement with the Newport productivity philosophy.

There’s one key point where the two deviate from one another: in deciding what to do next. Newport advocates for time blocking, a system where you partition the day into blocks dedicated to specific tasks and then follow the plan. While Loomans central promise is ability to live intuitively with no such plan. The last instruction for Time Surfing is to simply “Use your intuition when choosing what to do next.” It goes that if we can resolve the negative emotions leading to avoidance, then our minds would naturally do what needs to be done. Because procrastination is an avoidance behavior in reaction to negative thoughts and feelings associated with doing the thing. (There’s another theory that procrastination is a rational behavior based on the expected value of a task. I don’t really buy into it.)

What’s interesting to me is that both systems seem correct. Time blocking allows us to allocate time for the important tasks to ensure they get done. While Time Surfing promises tranquility and the ability to do the correct thing at the right time while being Zen AF. Obviously, both can be right. The best time management system is what works for you. Its purpose is to reduce stress and overwhelm by systematically addressing what needs to be done. There’s no reason to obsess over these details and write long articles about it. Then there’s me, who reads way too many time management books I couldn’t stop at that. In order to resolve this incongruence, I must dissect why they differ.

Time management systems are a bit like religions. You must believe in the system to work and give yourself over to it completely. The two diverging philosophies also seem, to me, deeply rooted in religious philosophy. While Loomans’s Time Surfing is self-described as Zen Buddhist, the Newport style is perhaps less obviously so, but I believe it to be based in the Protestant work ethic. Cal Newport was heavily influenced by his grandfather who was a Baptist priest. At its core it’s about prioritizing meaningful work to avoid the original sin of shallow work, distraction, and vapid entertainment. Idle hands are the devil’s workshop. We repent for our time wasting ways by subjecting ourselves to the plan to receive salvation in the form of deep work and meaningful insights. If allowed our agency we would succumb to the infinite scroll of TikTok, and other heathen behaviors.

While Time Surfing is rooted in the Zen Buddhist idea of the Two Truths Doctrine. The “absolute truth” that time is an illusion, there is no past or future, only the present moment. The past is memory happening now, and the future is anticipation happening now. It’s through meditation that we practice this absolute truth and try to embody it through everything we do. Even as we engage in the “relative truth” of time as a linear phenomenon where we can make a doctor’s appointment at 10 AM on a Friday and actually show up at the correct time and place. I’m simplifying things here, as I did for the Protestant religion, to focus on the main point here, which is deciding what to do with ourselves.

Cal Newport is a busy guy. He’s a successful podcaster, bestselling author, New Yorker contributor, tenured professor, little league coach, father, and more, probably. With that context in mind, I think it makes sense how time blocking is absolutely necessary to execute so many projects at such a high level. I’m also reminded of one of his guest, Dr. Sarah Hart-Unger, a practicing pediatrician, a mother of three, and co-host of the Best of Both Worlds podcast. Per her recommendation, I just got a Hobonichi planner and I’m super excited to try it out. It’s kind of funny because the planner embodies this exact conflict, it has a strict timeline grid on the side for time blocking, but the rest of the page is just wide-open space for creative journaling. I’m basically forcing myself to face this tension every single morning. Anyway, these are epically productive people is my point.

Oliver Burkman described using Time Surfing and the principle of doing the Most Important Thing first for writing his book Meditations for Mortals. It’s a fantastic book and I’ve been working my way through the books referenced in the appendix, and it’s been rewarding for me to learn more about Zen Buddhism. That is to say I’m not trying to throw shade on Burkman. But when your primary professional commitment a full-time non-fiction author writing a book, it gives you flexibility in how to approach your day. Maybe I’m getting this wrong, though. He’s also a father, a columnist, a public speaker, appears on several podcasts, and I’m sure much more.

I work as a Data Engineer at a large tech company where the approach to projects is highly structured and logical. In order to meet my performance targets than I need to be hyper proactive about moving a project through each stage of the software development process in a timely manner. As delays in software are common and can be detrimental to the success of a project. While I would love to live my life intuitively, a part of me feels like it just isn’t realistic. Software development is a creative, yet, highly structured process. For example, before a new feature can be deployed into production it must be rigorously tested in a staging environment. For people like me, time blocking seems like the natural choice. The artifacts generated each day allow me to evaluate whether I executed what I said I would do and incorporate it into tomorrow’s plan, an iterative approach. As an American, is the Protestant work ethic simply in the water of corporate work culture? An unavoidable consequence of our colonial past?

Of course, Paul Loomans addresses deadlines and appointments. He encourages using a planner to mark down important dates and deadlines, to make them available for your mind to select intuitively later. He uses the analogy of a gacha machine where each task is sealed in an opaque ball ready to be dispensed at the right moment. It seems quaint considering how in software, if I miss a single step, the consequences can be catastrophic for the products I develop and maintain.

So, is the difference in time management systems come down to how we decide to design our lives based on our religious philosophy? Surely people who value flexibility would gravitate towards Time Surfing. While those striving for the value of excellence in the ultra-competitive media landscape would time box. Maybe the answer is time management should a reflection of your individual values.

My initial reaction was to reconcile the two approaches by taking the average between them. What if a time block designated deep work and you could surf inside of it? This dilutes the utility of both. Time block plans are most effective when you are highly specific how about what you’ll do, when, and where, giving yourself no room to worm your way out. An alternative is time surfing on non-workdays. But don’t people do this already? You can time block the high priority projects and keep space open in between for time surfing. Without dedicating yourself completely to one I think it’s unlikely to get the benefits.

My conclusion is that my work has to be predictable, optimized, and highly scheduled. Because my employer demands it. Perhaps I can apply Time Surfing for my personal projects around writing where I have no deadlines and no readers, ha ha. On the surface, it seems trivial, but my anxiety on the topic reflects a broader concern we all share. How do I know I am spending my time meaningfully? Time is our most precious resource. If we get around 4,000 weeks on this earth, then we’d like to spend them in a worthwhile way.

Deciding what to do next is a rephrasing of the broader question: what should I be doing with my life? The answer is, perhaps unsurprisingly, religious. Whether you believe it should be done in the cold hard light of rationality as you face the “productivity dragon” each morning filling out your planner. Or you’d rather dedicate yourself to immersion in the current moment and go with the flow. It’s about wanting to do something meaningful. I think it’s up to you to decide your values and work backwards from there.