Don't Become a Productivity Tourist

Photo by David Schultz on Unsplash🍕 I’m JA Westenberg. I write essays about technology, philosophy, productivity, and what it means to be human. If you like ideas that take their time, you’re in the right place.While you’re here, a few things I’ve built: Kerouac, a writing app | Post Through It, a solo microblogging tool | Distributism.ai, my MCP platform | Laterware, all the AI news you need | Studio Self, a thought leadership agency for founders x VCs.You can buy my book Permissionless here.It’s a mistake to make “productivity” itself a hobby. The idea that switching systems and optimizing tools, workflows, and widgets around your work is a fun little pastime is a dangerous quagmire to fall into. It might seem harmless - it’s just another AI assistant! To-do app! PKM tool! - but it will catch and keep you in an endless cycle of vocabulary changes that never shape or produce the words you so desperately want to share. Productivity chasers talk about building systems - but that’s not…