Productivity is so insidious, much akin to riptide. As soon as you dive in, it pulls you deeper in, and despite how hard you try, you’re basically swimming in place, tiring yourself out and more likely to drown in it. The more productive I try to be, the more I feel like I’m falling behind.

Some of this can also be attributed to the tools we try to use to plan. In the real world, when take action there’s this friction (confined by the physicality of a thing) and an intentionality that comes from that friction that’s like, “I have a limited amount of space, a limited amount of time to do this.” It forces me to prioritize and be intentional, whereas like digital just hides all that complexity. Take all of these tabs open on my screen. If this were an actual desktop and these were each little pages on the desk, the desk would be a complete mess.