I. #

Once I was done with exams, it felt like getting my brain back. It’s not just that you spend most of your day studying difficult subjects, leaving you with less time and willpower for other tasks. You also have to do cost-benefit analysis all the time. All. The. Time. Sometimes, it’s relieving if someone tells you exactly what to do¹.

II. #

Slack is sometimes defined as having leftover resources. Intuitively, slack is like a buffer allowing you to absorb shocks better. We often speak of slack in the context of time and money. But to make things more visceral, imagine packing a bag. Having slack means having leftover space. There’s no need to stuff your shoes with underwear, fold your clothes meticulously or pack things in a given order. You don’t have to engage in trade-off thinking (“If I leave my camera, I can fit my notebook and an umbrella”). Having slack leads to a feeling of abundance.

Slack is trendy nowadays. The concepts of “slow productivity”, “intentional work” or “anti-hustle culture” are essentially about having more slack. There has also been some recent research into the benefits of slack.

Some companies have tried implementing four-day work weeks and measured productivity and employee wellbeing. The results? One survey paper found that implementing four-day work weeks also made employees happier and healthier. This also agrees with my personal experience. I can only do good mathematics for at most 4-5 hours per day. After that, I need a long break.

As stressed in Scarcity, having slack also improves judgement. If you have little time or money, you tend to tunnel – neglecting anything which isn’t immediately related to that resource (evolutionary baggage). There have also been numerous experiments showing that scarcity reduces mental bandwidth, i.e. intelligence and impulse control.

Perhaps slack is necessary for being happy too. Chronic stress and financial insecurity have very negative consequences on wellbeing.

III. #

To create slack, just say no.

Saying “no” is hard, though. Planning fallacy often leads us to take on too many tasks. While there are ways to overcome planning fallacy², everything takes longer than expected by default. Even when you add a planning fallacy allowance. Moreover, saying “no” requires prioritising – cognitive effort.

To say “no”, remember that slack is the best thing ever. Here you can tap into your own quirks. For example, I often slip into a productivity-maxxximiser mindset, so I’ll try reminding myself that slack makes me more productive. I also have a few idols, and creating slack also seems consistent with my goal of becoming more like them.

But I don’t just want to rely on mental habits. To create slack, I’ve set myself the goal of “working as an adult” rather than a student. That is, I’ll fix reasonable working hours, take Sundays off and treat breaks as a non-negotiables. These habits are all meant to protect slack. I also think digital hygiene helps create slack by making us more efficient. I’m wary of email and Slack checking, I keep my phone out of reach when studying and I mostly keep my phone on silent.

I’ve also tried identifying early warning signs that I need more slack. For example, when I have little slack, my message respond time increases from my targeted 24h to around three days³. I also tend to cut back on my reading before going to bed and clean my room less frequently. Silly, I know. But these are surprisingly effective indicators of my stress levels.

IV. #

It feels good having one’s brain back. To do good work, you to be working at full capacity. This doesn’t mean overexerting yourself. Rather, it means having slack. Good work – sustained efforts to solve hard problems effectively – comes from the feeling of slack.

This post was partly inspired by conversations with Yannick Muelhauser, Agatha Duzan and Hatem Khrouf.