Productivity Is a Lens: What Your System Reveals About How You Decide
Post 1 of 3 in the series: Lens → Mirror → Map
Are you a person that just stares at your to-do list instead of tackling it?
Or are one who sinks hours into comparing frameworks like RICE scores or 2x2s without actually moving anything forward?
When you’re feeling unproductive most solutions start with a surface-level frustration: “Why isn’t more getting done?”
The first instinct is usually some kind of process optimization. After all, what do we all do when we feel disorganized and unfocused? We organize, we structure, we put processes in place.
If you’re anything like me, trying out a new productivity tool feels kind of exciting. It adds structure. It creates rituals. It promises clarity.
But here’s the problem: productivity tools don’t solve for clarity, they just simulate it.
Productivity Is Mistaken for Throughput
Optimizing productivity by adopting frameworks really only works in narrow contexts where you own the full loop and you’re already a in flow state.
In most situations equating throughput with productivity distracts from the real accelerant to high productivity: deciding what matters.
Most teams aren’t isolated units. They’re embedded in complex, interdependent systems where priorities shift without any warning, dependencies can’t be controlled, and through all that clarity on everything evaporates.
In that context, speeding up output without improving decision quality is like accelerating through fog.
What We Call Productivity Problems Are Often Decision-Making Problems
I hate when teams get labeled as not productive. In my experience, that term flattens complex dynamics into something that sounds like it could be fixed by just working harder. But teams rarely become more productive simply by doing more.
When I hear that a team isn’t doing enough, I don’t think about their effort. I think about the system they’re operating in.
What it usually means is: the reasoning behind decisions isn’t clear.
It always looks like a workflow issue. Or a motivation issue. Or a lack of effort. But what I’ve learned is that nine times out of ten, it’s not.
It’s a prioritization avoidance issue.
I’ve made this mistake plenty of times. I’ve pushed teams to do more in all the wrong ways (more process, more structure, more urgency). And you know what? It almost never worked. Because I was solving for effort when I should’ve been solving for clarity.
The team isn’t misaligned on how to move forward. They’re misaligned on what’s worth moving toward.
Productivity Reflects Your Decision Framework
Your calendar, Kanban board, rituals are not just coordination tools. They’re expressions of how your team makes decisions: what gets added, what gets done, and what gets ignored.
That’s your decision system, made visible.
Making your system more efficient is easy but the better question is: What kind of decisions does our system enable, or suppress?
Are you optimizing for throughput or clarity? Are you chasing consensus, or digging for conviction? If you had a handful competing asks, which one would you ignore and why?
The truth is, your productivity system already tells a story. You’d be surprised at how often it’s not actually the story you think you are telling.
For example, if you call your teams empowered but never push back on urgent asks from leadership, no matter how off-strategy or unclear, you’re not actually being a steward for the team. You’re reinforcing a different story: one where top-down urgency overrides team ownership.
Good Productivity Systems Support Clarity, Not Just Motion
To steward high-productive teams you should create clarity by creating a decision system that helps teams do a few things with intention:
pause when necessary
avoid reliance on frameworks and templates
build conviction, not consensus
Telling the story you want isn’t just about which tools or rituals you use. Two teams can use the same tool and have wildly different results.
Some systems look rigorous. Others look chaotic. The difference isn’t in how polished they appear, it’s in whether they create clarity or just the illusion of it.
We’ve all used the prioritization scoring models and used them (even unintentionally) to avoid hard conversations. It’s easier to say, “This one ranked higher,” than to admit, “We don’t know what matters.” When you’re uncertain, it’s more comfortable to let process decide.
But you can’t optimize your way out of ambiguity. it just leads you deeper into the fog.
At some point, you have to make a choice, even if the choice is to defer.
If your system doesn’t make space for that kind of timing and taking a pause is seen as indecision, it’s not helping you think. It’s just pressure dressed up as process.
And if you’re not careful, it’ll end up telling a story about how you work that you never meant to write.
Decision Quality Is the Real Leverage
The most impactful shift isn’t from slow to fast. It’s from foggy to clear.
Better bets made earlier leads to fewer dead ends and momentum you can trust.
The biggest productivity unlock isn’t doing more stuff. It’s doing fewer things, with purpose.
From optimizing throughput → to improving decision quality
From “How fast can we go?” → to “How well are we choosing?”
Most teams don’t suffer from a lack of effort. They suffer from effort applied to the wrong things. Their problem isn’t only low velocity. it’s having thoughtful people working hard on priorities that don’t have impact.
Prioritization is often treated like a planning activity. But it’s actually an act of leadership. Not hierarchical leadership, but personal leadership. The kind anyone can practice. All you need is to be willing to decide.
Every confident ‘yes’ or intentional ‘not yet’ builds a system that can move with more trust, more focus, and less waste.
All you need is the willingness to decide.
TL;DR: What to Ask Instead of “How Can Get More Done?”
Your productivity system is not a neutral toolkit or a silver bullet, it’s a lens into how you make decisions.
If it’s not helping you make better decisions and clarifying why they matter, it’s not actually help you achieve more.
If you’re stuck in a productivity valley and trying to figure out why it keeps happening, ask yourself:
What is the next decision I have to make?
What will make me confident in the next decision?
How can this decision help unlock the next one?
Look at your team and its work.
What story should it tell? Is it telling that story?
Next: The Mirror
Looking at your productivity like a lens will help you assess the health of your decisions.
But it doesn’t just reveal how we decide. It also reflects who we are when we decide.
Your productivity system isn’t just a lens. It’s a mirror too. And in the next post, we’ll take a closer look.