I switch between Gnome and KDE pretty regularly on my primary workstation because I occasionally get bored and procrastinate by telling myself that I should check out the latest thing on the other side.
It makes literally zero difference to my productivity. If it affects your productivity, it's a skill issue. Telling people they "haven't thought about it" is a social skill issue.
I'd say that maybe the fact I didn't have to think about it is a good sign. To me it means that the desktop is out of my way. I can customize it for my liking and I don't need to keep fiddling with it. Sometimes the overly minimalist approach that GNOME is taking bothers me a bit, but not too much.
I also use KDE sometimes and I quite like it but it feels a little bloated and a bit unstable sometimes. Still love it though but I'd rather use GNOME as my daily driver.
I'm still trying to get used to tilling window managers and 8 have been giving Sway a try, but the radical metaphor change takes some time to get used to.
IMO the so called "phone UI" is better than the "traditional desktop UI" where you have toolbars with 100's of small buttons. Even on other platforms, apps are moving to the new UI paradigm which makes the UI less cluttered.
My battle with Gnome was when they tried to merge touch screen devices with desktop, and every day tasks took multiple more clicks or navigation.