Introduction: Stop Polishing the Guitar and Play the Damn Song
One of my favorite pastimes is playing the guitar. As soon as I grab the instrument and start strumming, I lose track of time. Soon, hours feel like minutes, and everything outside music dissolves, including worry, self-judgement, and the fact that I still have to do my taxes. The best part is that I can fully recreate the image of being a rockstar without an audience or pyrotechnics. And the best part is I can do it in my living room, wearing pajamas.
But there’s a problem: sometimes I spend more time researching new gear instead of making music. I convince myself that if I get a specific pedal, I’ll unleash my inner Jack White. Or that a new amp will finally give me the sound I want. Whatever this phenomenon is, it tricks us into thinking we’re moving forward when we’re mostly just loading the stage we never play on.
A minute of action is better than an hour of preparation. I wrote that sentence, but then again, I just switched tabs to “research” this very topic instead of just writing it, and almost fell into a 45-minute black hole of “desk setup tours”. Because nothing says productivity like watching rich influencers alphabetize their pencils. We all procrastinate from time to time, but that’s not the problem. The problem is that we convince ourselves we’re being productive when we’re in fact wasting time.
Productivity’s Evil Twin: Motion Without Meaning
Popular labels for the phenomenon I described are “productive procrastination”, “analysis paralysis”, “pseudo-productivity”, and “meta work”. What all those terms have in common is something James Clear describes as a form of “motion without action”. You’re technically doing something, but you’re not accomplishing anything. There’s an important distinction to make there. When you take action, you move forward, which means progress in a specific direction. When you’re in motion, though, you’re just moving. Motion, by itself, doesn’t mean progress because you might end up in the same place you were when you started. In other words, you might be moving in circles.
It’s like planning the perfect morning routine… at 2 a.m. or researching workout routines so long you count it as cardio. When you find yourself in these situations, you’re stuck in rehearsal mode. The prospect of doing something is so scary or overwhelming that you trick yourself into doing something meaningless instead.
The Art of Looking Busy
Psychologists have a series of names for this (structured procrastination, planning fallacy, analysis paralysis), but they all describe the same phenomenon: motion without action. Let’s go over them one by one.
In his essay Structured Procrastination, author John Perry discusses a strategy that involves doing something useful to avoid doing something even more important. You subconsciously rank all the tasks you have to do from the most important to the least important. Since the top task is so daunting, you end up doing something worthwhile that falls somewhat in the middle of the list. It’s as if our brain tricks us into doing something that seems urgent and important as a way to feel productive. Ah, the beauty of human psychology!
Have you ever wondered why there’s always scaffolding around that large project in your town that never seems to get done? Daniel Kahneman has a name for it, and he calls it the planning fallacy. This is a cognitive bias where we underestimate the time, costs, and risks of future tasks. It results in an optimistic view of future performance, where we always think of best-case scenarios. The most famous example of the planning fallacy is the Sydney Opera House, which took ten years longer and almost $100 million more than expected. Although not as well-known, I’d argue that the four years I spent at college are another perfect example of blind optimism.
Similarly, one of the most important contributions to this article comes from The Paradox of Choice, which says that seemingly endless options lead to anxiety and paralysis. This is important because most projects involve a series of steps where we have too many options. In this context, that means the act of choosing becomes a stressful experience. Acting, on the other hand, forces you to eliminate possibilities, and that feels like a loss. Researching endlessly keeps every possibility open, so you postpone the pain of narrowing things down as long as possible, which means you don’t get anything done, but you create the illusion of it. Research is like tuning endlessly while never playing a single chord.
Action is irreversible, but research isn’t. Whenever I look for a new guitar, I feel overwhelmed by the number of brands, models, materials, and options. If I pick one, I’m immediately invaded by regret because I might have missed something that seems like the obvious choice, so I keep researching. Choosing endlessly avoids both risk and regret; it’s also a gigantic waste of time that leads nowhere. Barry Schwartz points out that imagining possibilities is often more pleasurable than reality. Endless research keeps the fantasy alive, which is fine if you’re looking for the perfect horror movie, but terrible if you’re looking for a partner on Tinder.
The Addictive High of Pretend Progress
So, as I explored in this article, we trick ourselves into believing we’re doing something useful, but in reality, we’re stuck in the same place. Why is this so seductive, and why does everyone do it? The main reason is that whenever we do something we consider a small win, our brain rewards us with dopamine. Dopamine is the pleasure hormone that signals we must be doing something right. Think about it, for productivity nerds, creating pages in Notion is like a harem.
We humans are social animals. Whenever we tell someone, “I’m researching new guitars”, this signals identity, even if we haven’t proven our actual skills. We get social validation from wasting time on a screen and without actually playing a single note. Also, this keeps us safe from judgment. After all, no one can critique the essay we haven’t written or the song we’ve never played. So claiming something might reinforce our identity in the short term, but it erodes it in the long term.
When you say you’re going to do something but don’t, you lose more than time and growth; you also lose part of your identity. Instead of becoming the person who does something, you become the person who’s always about to do something. In other words, you live in the fantasy of potential instead of the reality of practice. Although living in a fantasy world tricks you into believing you’re someone you’re not, deep down, you know who you are. Practicing demands confronting your ego because you’ll soon find out you’re not as good as you think you are. Since you never get to practice, though, you protect your ego, but lose part of your identity as a result, and that’s a bad tradeoff.
As paradoxical as it sounds, accepting your own weaknesses makes you stronger. Motion is infinite, but infinite is overwhelming. You can research as long as you want, but that means you’ll never achieve anything. Action, while imperfect, is finite. You research, but when you finally make a decision, that’s it. You’re stuck with whatever you chose, and now doing the thing becomes unescapable, even if it takes time and effort to be comfortable with the results.
Kill the Prep, Do the Thing, Screw the Perfect
The best solution to break this loop of endless research is awareness. Accept that what you’re doing looks like working, but isn’t. This may not work for everyone, but here’s a rule that works for me every time. I allow myself to do all the research I want as long as I make a decision. Similarly, I avoid doing research for things I don’t yet need because that’s a waste of time that will leave me emotionally empty, mentally depleted, and filled with shame, which is exactly how I felt after I watched the Friends reunion special.
Then there are more practical ways to perform important tasks. The best strategy is to shrink the task to kill what Steven Pressfield calls “The Resistance”. Instead of telling yourself you’re going to watch a movie from beginning to end, watch one scene. You might end up liking the scene, and before you know it, you’ll watch the entire film. Alternatively, you might hate the scene and stop watching, which means you save time to do something else. In both cases, you win.
The best strategy I developed for this is embracing imperfection. Doing something badly still counts as doing. Since we’re social animals, we tend to compare ourselves to others. And nowadays, we have the means to compare ourselves with the best of the best at anything. If every time I pick up my guitar, I compare myself to Kurt Cobain, that’s not going to go well. However, I can reframe my perspective slightly to use it to my advantage.
Think about it this way: for someone to become the best at something, they have to be willing to make more mistakes than anyone else. Even my heroes make mistakes from time to time, or at least, they made mistakes when they were learning. Not doing something because I’m scared of making mistakes isn’t a solution to anything. Doing something despite the possibility of making mistakes is a much better alternative, even if it bruises my ego.
Life Happens in the Doing, Not the Googling
When it comes to productivity, it’s so easy to think that you need better tools to create something worthy. I would rather lose myself in something imperfect that gets done than lose myself in something perfect that doesn’t really exist. You don’t need a new guitar; you need to strum the strings you already own. You don’t need the “best” horror movie; you need to press play. Life doesn’t happen in preparation; it happens in the doing. Despite what the productivity gurus tell you, life isn’t lived in tabs and toolbars. It’s lived in the sound of a chord finally struck. And even if you hit the wrong note, you can always try again.
