Solve for Motivation, Not Productivity

They’re trying to be more productive.

They tweak routines, install apps, track hours, design perfect mornings. They ask how to squeeze more output from the same day. And when it doesn’t work, they assume they’re undisciplined or broken.

But productivity is rarely the root problem.

Motivation is.

You can see this clearly at work. Take a common situation: someone joins a new project and suddenly feels “less productive.” Tasks take longer. Procrastination creeps in. They start looking for better tools or stricter schedules.

Then, a few months later, they’re pulled into a different problem — something messy, ambiguous, and interesting. Almost overnight, the same person is staying late, thinking about the problem in the shower, sketching ideas on weekends. No new system. No new habit. Just renewed motivation.

Nothing about their ability changed. Only what they cared about did.

Most of us already have proof of this.

Think about a time when you were deeply motivated — a project you were excited about, a problem you couldn’t stop thinking about. You didn’t need reminders. You didn’t need hacks. You didn’t ask how to be productive. You just worked. Hard. For long stretches. Often without noticing the time.

That’s not a productivity trick. That’s motivation doing its job.

If you have a proven history of working hard — and most people do — then lack of productivity today is usually not a discipline problem. It’s a signal. Something is misaligned. The work doesn’t connect. The problem doesn’t feel meaningful.

Trying to fix that with more discipline is like pressing the accelerator when the engine isn’t firing.

Solve for motivation first.

That might mean changing what you work on. Or how you work. Or who you work with. It might mean reconnecting with why you started, or admitting that the thing that once motivated you no longer does.

Productivity is an outcome, not a goal.

When motivation is real, productivity becomes almost boringly inevitable.