Answering 20 emails feels productive. Each response gives a little dopamine hit—done, done, done. But at the end of an hour, nothing has actually changed. You’ve been playing a video game.
“I’m answering emails but I’m not doing anything… my mind was being tricked by a response that feels good but I was a video game. And by the end of the video game maybe I got to the next level but my business wasn’t forward.”
Every app and platform is incentivized to engage you, not to make your life better. Social media, Slack, email—each one rewards responsiveness, not impact. Add the cultural layer where busyness signals virtue (“look how hard I’m working”) and you have a perfect trap: exhaustion without accomplishment.
The antidote is regularly asking: if I look back on this week, how much of what I did actually moved things forward? That’s the difference between pace and spin.
Related Concepts
- To-do lists can be the inner critic
- Should creates stress, not change
- The most productive thing is the most uncomfortable thing
- Responding feels like doing but often changes nothing