[florakel]

> Examples of productivity porn include but are not limited to: reading a tweet by a top VC about how to become a better startup founder; watching a Youtube video about the 7 mistakes you need to avoid at the gym; perusing a Hacker News thread about how to improve the code you write. All of these activities deceptively make you feel like you’ve done something productive. “I just learned something new”, you tell yourself.

Those examples from the article make sense but in my experience the biggest illusion of productivity happens right inside our day to day work routines, namely email and chat systems. People respond to endless email threads that in the end trigger no action, endless discussions on Slack channels with no decision making until eventually somebody calls a meeting. We type and type but in the end we waste our own attention and our coworker’s attention just to feel important and productive without doing anything useful most of the time.

[koheripbal]

Reading this thread is a good example.