The Ultimate Productivity Trap
What is a theory, essentially? It’s a question phrased as a statement. Our brains are constantly posing these hypotheses, testing why a project failed or why a certain process feels clunky. We often treat these internal guesses as facts, building entire systems around questions we haven't actually answered through action yet. This is how many of us end up stuck in a cycle of productive procrastination.
As a writer, actor, and filmmaker, I’ve spent a lot of time in "La-La Land" — that place where planning the work becomes more attractive than the work itself. It’s a seductive trap. We tell ourselves that researching a new app or perfecting a tech stack is progress. In reality, we’re often just drawing a more detailed map of a place we haven't even visited. We’re standing in the driveway, obsessing over the GPS, while the car is still in park.
This happens to all of us. We get raveled up in the sophistication of our tools until the tech starts talking to the tech. The human element — the actual story or the solution — gets drowned out by the noise. It’s like a musician who spends ten years building a perfect recording studio but never actually records a song. The gear looks professional, but the silence is deafening.
I’m now testing a new hypothesis: Action is the only real data. Everything else is just a guess phrased as a statement. I’m shifting out of the "specimen jar" phase - where ideas stay preserved and motionless - and into a live experiment. I’m stripping back the over-complicated maps I’ve drawn for my business and my creative process to see what the territory actually looks like.
Over the next few days, I’ll be sharing the results of this shift in The Lab. I'm looking at the internal casting struggle between the part of us that wants to plan and the part of us that needs to produce. If you’ve ever felt like you’re preparing to start without ever actually starting, I’m inviting you to look at your own map. Is it helping you navigate, or is it just a beautiful distraction?