The Productivity Trap No One Talks About

Hey there,

We live in a world obsessed with productivity…

Optimized workflows, morning routines, habit tracking, and systems for your systems.

And for a while, I was the poster child for all of it.

Every morning, I woke up at 5:30 a.m. sharp, rolled out of bed into mindfulness, a workout, an ice bath, journaling, vitamins, and light therapy (sometimes all at once).

I was basically one smoothie away from becoming a walking Huberman Lab episode.

Before sitting down to work, I made coffee, in slow motion, obviously, because what’s the point of being productive if you don’t look cinematic doing it?

I tracked everything…

Reps. Minutes in the ice bath. Tasks completed per day. Net worth. Sleep quality. Micronutrients.

I had three dashboards, and three calendars.

By 8 a.m., I had already accomplished more than most people did by lunch.

And I was exhausted.

But hey, at least my cortisol levels were optimized.

This is the productivity trap nobody talks about: when you become so efficient that you end up with more to do.

You become a faster hamster on the same wheel.

And for years, I thought that was “progress”. Turns out, I was just spinning in circles.

Up until last year, I was running two companies while still working a full-time job, with a six-figure salary and $1.7 million in equity.

On paper, I was killing it. In reality, I was slowly killing myself.

My days were a blur of meetings, projects, emails, and travel.

I had so many tabs open in my brain I could feel my RAM overheating.

But I told myself this was ambition, that juggling 47 things at once was a badge of honor.

In truth, I was optimizing myself into oblivion.

The more efficient I became, the busier I got.

The busier I got, the more I convinced myself I was being productive.

But what I really was, was distracted.

I had built an elaborate life dashboard tracking everything except how I actually felt.

I thought I was hacking life, but really I was just building a more efficient hamster wheel.

There was also this weird thing I used to do when people asked how I was doing.

Most people would say, “Good, how about you?”

But not me. I’d give them a PowerPoint presentation.

(Think every project, every meeting, every side hustle, as if busyness was a TED Talk on self-worth).

And the more chaotic my life sounded, the prouder I felt, like I was winning some imaginary “productivity Olympics”.

But every day felt like a sprint that never ended.

By the weekend, I’d be burnt out, cramming in leftover work just to recharge enough to do it all over again.

I was burning so much rubber it looked like my daughter’s underwear after a nap.

But I wasn’t gaining any traction.

The busyness kept me distracted just long enough to avoid thinking, to avoid feeling, to avoid facing the fact that maybe I wasn’t actually moving forward.

I was juggling so many things that when my hands were full of grocery bags, I didn’t have room left for the fragile ones: the eggs, the things that actually mattered.

My family, my health, my peace of mind.

We’ve turned productivity into self-worth, a religion where busyness is worship and rest is sin.

We measure value by how much we can squeeze into a day, such as how early we wake up, how many boxes we check, how few emails are left in our inbox.

But the moment you finish your to-do list, someone sends you more to do.

In Four Thousand Weeks, Oliver Burkeman said it best:

“The world is bursting with things we could be doing, so efficiency just lets us fit more of them in.”

He’s right.

We think productivity gives us freedom, but it just fills the space we cleared, like cleaning your house only to make room for more stuff you don’t need.

We keep optimizing for speed, not meaning.

We spend hours color-coding our calendars when we could just do the thing.

And worst of all, we use productivity as a distraction.

It feels like progress, but really, it’s procrastination with better branding.

For years, I thought the answer was to optimize even harder.

Find the perfect system, the best tools, the most efficient workflow.

Which is ironic, because I once spent three hours optimizing my morning routine just to save fifteen minutes of actual work.

When I finally left my job and stopped chasing metrics like they were oxygen, I got more done.

Not because I was faster, but because I was finally working on what mattered.

I didn’t need a new system. I needed a pause.

Time to ask: Why am I doing all this?

That’s when I found Cal Newport’s idea of “Slow Productivity.”

Do fewer things at a natural pace with obsessive focus on quality.

Basically, the opposite of how most of us live.

So I cut the noise, deleted half my tools, and stopped tracking meaningless stats, and for the first time in years, I felt creative again.

If you feel like you’re sprinting on a treadmill that won’t stop, here’s what helped me:

1. Audit your productivity.
   Ask what you’re optimizing, and why. If you don’t know, you’re probably optimizing the wrong thing.

2. Stop tracking things that don’t matter.
   You don’t need 14 habit trackers. You just need to show up.

3. Do fewer things, slower.
   Quality compounds, while speed burns out.

4. Redefine success.
   It’s not about how much you do. It’s about how much you care about what you do.

And remember: You don’t need a 47-step morning routine.

You just need coffee and a reason to get out of bed.

We think the answer to feeling behind is to move faster.

But if you’re running in the wrong direction, speed just gets you lost quicker.

We don’t need to optimize our lives like machines. (AI’s already doing that for us).

We need to live our lives like humans.

Because productivity isn’t about doing more; it’s about creating space for the things that matter.

So maybe instead of asking, “How can I be more productive?”, try asking, “What can I let go of?”

Because freedom doesn’t come from doing everything efficiently.

It comes from realizing not everything needs to be done.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to go delete three dashboards and take a very unproductive nap.

– Scott

P.S. Get more stuff from me (so my wife doesn’t make me go back to a “real” job):

• My podcast

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