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10% Happier with Dan Harris
Cal Newport discussed Lin-Manuel Miranda's book In the Heights and how he took 7 years to complete the play, and that this illustrates the importance of taking longer on projects.
the traditional knowledge worker story I used to pull out this principle was actually linman well Miranda working on his first big play in the heights which won a lot of Tony Awards before Hamilton ca...
— Episode: How To Be Productive Without Burning Out...
Episode: How To Be Productive Without Burning Out | Cal New...
Cal Newport discussed Lin-Manuel Miranda's book In the Heights and how he took 7 years to complete the play, and that this illustrates the importance of taking longer on projects.
the traditional knowledge worker story I used to pull out this principle was actually linman well Miranda working on his first big play in the heights which won a lot of Tony Awards before Hamilton came out and I go through the whole story he spent seven years he debuts a version of this play as a sophomore in college it's seven years later than it makes a professional stage he took his time and during this time you know he's working on it in the background often on pretty consistently some periods more intense another yes other jobs he has other initiatives he has other projects he's working on he took his time and in the end what I argue is no one knows how long he took to wrote that play we're just like wow that was a great play and then he did not another great play he's so perccious he's so productive no one thinks like man what a lazy guy he why didn't he just get this done in two years and so taking longer makes things more sustainable it improves the quality of your work I argued Miranda could not have gotten in the heights to the level it did in just a couple years he had to get more experience with life he had the mature he had the mature as a play right he needed that time to make that play as good as it was and so just take longer on projects I mean I it's so tempting to have that optimistic scenario be true what if I could write a book in six months wouldn't that be awesome it'd be done in six months but it's a recipe for failure say no you're in a half let me give myself some time this will come together but I don't want to be frantically chasing a deadline I'm never going to meet okay so now I'm going to abuse my privilege of being the host of the show to ask you about something personal