Habits that look productive but absolutely are not

I spent a genuinely embarrassing number of years feeling very busy and accomplishing almost nothing. Not nothing-nothing. Just… the wrong things. The kind of things that look, from the outside, like a person who has their life together.

The planner was color-coded. The bookmarks folder was organized. I had a whole system. Several systems, actually, because I kept finding better ones.

Eventually I had to sit down and ask myself the actual question: what did I finish today? And the answer was uncomfortable enough that I started keeping a list. This is that list.

Is reorganizing your to-do list actually doing anything?

Reorganizing your to-do list is not a task. It is avoiding the tasks on your to-do list while feeling administrative and responsible.

I cannot tell you how many mornings I spent moving items between apps, rewriting them in different formats, breaking them into sub-tasks, and re-prioritizing them with a whole color system — and then looking up and realizing I’d spent 45 minutes on the container instead of the contents.

The to-do list is not the work. It never was. Write it down, then do the thing.

What about finding the “right” productivity app?

Downloading a new productivity app is the most sophisticated form of procrastination I know of, because it feels like you are literally solving the problem of not being productive.

I have had Notion, Todoist, Things, TickTick, Obsidian, a brief and weird flirtation with Roam Research, and like four different journal apps at the same time. I was not more productive. I was an excellent app reviewer who hadn’t written anything.

The app is not the reason you’re not starting. You know that. I know you know that.

“Doing research” before you actually begin

“Doing research” before starting a project is sometimes genuinely necessary and mostly a lie we tell ourselves.

I don’t know when it happened, but at some point I started requiring myself to know everything about a thing before I attempted the thing. Which sounds very reasonable. It is not very reasonable. It is reading seventeen blog posts about how to start a blog instead of starting a blog.

At some point the research becomes a reason the work doesn’t have to happen yet. And yet becomes never, if you let it.

Does making a vision board count as working toward a goal?

A vision board is a beautiful object that has nothing to do with the actual mechanics of your goal.

I’m not saying vision boards are bad. I’m saying that the two hours I spent cutting out magazine pictures and arranging them aesthetically were not two hours spent on anything actionable. They were two hours of future-fantasy that felt productive because there was craft involved.

The vision board does not get you to the goal. The boring, unglamorous, unsexy steps get you to the goal. The board is just decoration.

Reading about the habit instead of building the habit

Reading Atomic Habits is not the same as having atomic habits — and I say that as someone who has read it twice and listened to the audiobook once.

Books about productivity, focus, morning routines, deep work, essentialism, slow living, high performance — I have read so many of them. There’s a version of me that just collects the knowledge without ever applying it, and she is very well-read and no more functional than she was before.

At some point you have to put the book down and do the embarrassing first attempt at the actual thing.

What about “cleaning before I can focus”?

A clean workspace is genuinely better for focus — research backs that up — but the operative word is “clean,” not “reorganized, redecorated, and newly aesthetic.”

I have deep-cleaned my desk, rearranged my desk, bought new desk accessories for my desk, and taken a photo of my desk for motivation — all before starting work that had nothing to do with my desk.

There’s a version of this that takes twenty minutes and genuinely helps. There’s another version that is just home improvement content with extra steps.

The “planning the plan” spiral

Planning how you’re going to approach the project is not the project. It’s a project about the project.

I once spent an entire weekend making a content calendar, an editorial workflow, a production schedule, and a tracking spreadsheet for a thing I hadn’t started yet and — spoiler — did not end up starting for another three weeks after that.

The plan felt like momentum. It had the emotional texture of productivity. But momentum is only momentum if it’s pointed at the actual thing.

Is journaling about your goals helping you reach them?

Journaling is genuinely good for clarity, processing emotions, and working through a problem. I’m a believer. But journaling about your goals — writing about how much you want to start, how you’ll feel when you do, why you haven’t yet — that can become its own loop.

I have whole notebooks dedicated to the idea of writing more. If that energy had gone into actually writing more, I’d have several more years of actual work behind me instead of several more years of very sincere journal entries about wanting to have more work behind me.

Write about the thing. Then go do the thing.

Why does “networking” feel like work when it often isn’t?

Scrolling LinkedIn and calling it networking is a little like going to the grocery store and calling it cooking.

I spent a lot of time in the “staying visible” zone — liking posts, commenting thoughtful things, being present — in a way that felt like professional development but resulted in no actual professional development. Visibility without output is just presence.

Real networking is uncomfortable. It involves asking for something or offering something specific. Scrolling is just scrolling with better lighting.

The counter-argument (and why I still stand here)

Look, there’s a real case that all of these habits have legitimate value in the right doses — behavioral science research on implementation intentions does show that planning and mental prep genuinely help. And I’d be a hypocrite to say planning is always fake work. Sometimes it’s not.

But the version where you spend more time preparing to work than actually working? That’s not implementation intention. That’s avoidance with excellent branding.

The difference is output. Something has to come out the other end. If nothing comes out the other end, the “productive” behavior in front of it was probably just dressing up the delay.

I’m not sharing this list because I’ve fixed it. I share it because I still catch myself doing half of it on a regular basis. Last week I spent forty minutes picking a new font for my notes app. My notes app. Where only I go.

The bar for “real work” is uncomfortable because real work is uncomfortable. That’s actually the tell. If it feels easy and satisfying and like self-improvement — double-check whether anything is actually getting done.

But what do I know? I’m the person with four productivity apps and an almost-finished vision board.

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