The Trap of Looking Productive

I’ve been using Notion for five years. I started in 2020, and I loved it from day one. It felt like Minecraft for productivity — a space where I could build anything from scratch. The freedom, the creativity, the systems… that part always made me excited to work.

But somewhere along the way, something went wrong.

By 2022 up to 2025, I kept feeling “productive” without actually moving closer to the goals I set for myself. I kept redesigning systems. I kept adding features, dashboards, widgets, templates. I kept chasing the feeling of improvement instead of doing the work that creates real improvement.

Everything looked good. But I wasn’t moving.

The more complicated my system became, the less I actually did. Eventually, I’d forget about the system and restart again. And again. And again. A full year of repeating the same cycle.

That’s when I realized what it really was: toxic productivity.
The illusion of progress. The trap of thinking I was building momentum when I was actually avoiding the real work.

It hit me hard. There were days I genuinely hated how I looked in the mirror because I knew I was tricking myself. Not on purpose, but out of habit.

Just recently, I started reading again — not to escape, but to reset. To figure out where the real gap is and rebuild from something simpler, cleaner, and actually aligned with the life I want.

This is just the start. I’m still writing the rest.