Your Productivity system is your Map
Post 3 of 3 in the Lens → Mirror → Map series
In 1961, the U.S. was losing the space race.
The Soviet Union had just launched the first satellite and sent the first human into orbit. The U.S. was scrambling.
Then President John F. Kennedy stood before Congress and made a bold declaration:
“I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the Earth.”
At that point, the US had no rocket capable of reaching the moon, no lunar lander, no playbook for space missions, no budget to support it. But JFK gave them one critical thing: a direction.
That shared commitment shaped how NASA operated for the next decade. It determined what to fund, what to prioritize, and what to let go.
And in 1969, eight years later, Apollo 11 made good on the promise. They didn’t get there because they had a perfect system. But because they were working from the same map and able to move their part forward with shared purpose.
Now contrast that with Kodak.
In 1975 a Kodak engineer named Steve Sasson invented the first digital camera. It was clunky and low-res, but revolutionary.
Execs saw it as technically impressive but dismissed it as “cute” and shelved it. Why? Because Kodak made billions from selling and processing film stock. Their core business wasn’t cameras, it was film. Digital photography threatened to undercut their most profitable line.
So instead of mapping their company toward the future, they kept optimizing their existing system at better film sales, bigger marketing, more of the same.
They were productive, but their work was not leading them anywhere purposeful.
By the time Kodak did pivot to digital in the late 1990s, it was too late. Other players like Sony, Canon, and Nikon had already captured the digital camera market.
From inspection to direction
A lasting productivity system needs both movement and purpose. They’re often mistaken for the same thing, but are actually separate elements you need to bring together.
We all tend to assume that if things are happening, value must be happening too. And from that perspective, when results fall short it’s low productivity to blame.
However, most system aren’t broken, what’s missing is clarity of direction. If it’s not clear where you want to end up, you’ll make a lot of motion without making real progress.
And even when direction is clear, it’s easy to stall out while trying to find the “perfect” next move. That can feel like purpose but without movement, it’s just another form of drift. Motion without purpose is noise. Purpose without motion is delay.
The kind of productivity I care about is momentum: direction with energy behind it. Momentum starts by choosing a direction and starting to walk.
That’s what this post is about. Productivity as clarity in motion.
In Part 1 of this series, we used productivity as a Lens to inspect how decisions are made.
In Part 2, we looked into the Mirror seeing how fear, power, and identity shape what gets prioritized.
Now it’s time to move from inspection and reflection to direction. Because your lens and mirror have hidden signals meant to spur you into action.
TL;DR
Aim for a system that creates momentum, not just motion. Because once your you get moving it’ll carry you. Figure out where it should take you first.
1. Motion needs to inform your map’s directional progress
Think about your team’s productivity as a wayfinding system: something that can guide, not just track, progress.
Most teams measure output: how much got done and how fast. But those metrics only tell you if work happened. They don’t tell you if it mattered.
Executing fast is valuable when it helps distinguish between making progress and accumulating motion. Motion on its own is just noise. Motion connected to purpose is momentum. Your system should measure momentum.
If you’re not clear on where you’re trying to go, your system will default your priorities to those that are loudest, whether urgency, volume, or reactivity.
I’ve seen strong teams lose their autonomy in a matter of weeks just because the leader who protected their space and clarity moved on. It’s shocking how fast drift can take over even when how the teams operates doesn’t change.
Something to Try: Before your next retro, ask: “Did we move closer to something we care about?”
2. Include what you want to protect
When you have a clarity of purpose and direction, protect it. Your system should make defending what matters easier, not harder. Every team has limited time, energy, and attention and if you don’t choose what deserves protection, the system will fill itself with requests, scope creep, and noise. Protect space for learning. Protect focus from interruptions. Protect trust by avoiding churn and thrash.
What do you want your team to optimize for? What deserves elevation?
Something to Try: Audit your current rituals. What are you actively protecting? What are you unintentionally sacrificing?
3. Always protect decision-making
By default, most systems are built for execution. They expect teams track work done but not necessarily better decisions made.
The flaw with this is that decision quality is where real leverage is. Processes that support output are easy but designing a system that supports decision-making takes ongoing intentionality and constant vigilance to maintain.
Good systems make tradeoffs visible. Great systems turn trade-offs into friction points that force choices. They help you consider and commit with intention before inertia makes the decision for you.
Something to Try: Review your backlog and roadmap. For each item, ask: Is this a bet, a belief, or a demand? Then ask: are we treating those differently in how we make decisions? You should be.
In Mirror, I shared a story about how I realized my approach was not improving my own opinions or allowing me to own decisions direction. A friend of mine, Coby Almond, called out an important point.
One principle I subscribe to, and something I hope is a through line in all of my writing, is: nothing works everytime or everywhere. That mindset of “we know better” absolutely falls under this principle. It helped me in the moment but, if left unchecked, it becomes an interia trap.
Don’t assume strong conviction means you’re right. You’ll stop listening, dismiss feedback as noise, and mistake decisiveness for direction.
Conviction without learning isn’t clarity. It’s a closed loop. A strong system makes space for feedback without losing ownership of the map or clarity of purpose.
4. Make drift detectable
Even the best maps are useless without a way to tell when you’ve gone off course. You don’t just need a vision, you need regular feedback loops to check direction.
Not metrics for the sake of metrics but markers that ask “are we still heading where we meant to go?”
Something to Try: As a part of your retros, add a monthly “drift check” to ask: “Are we learning what we hoped to learn?” “Are we doing meaningful work or just visible work?” “Are we still in agreement on what good looks like?”
If you’ve never done this kind of reflection, your system may be silently drifting and reinforcing the wrong signals.
5. Finally, build your productivity system on purpose
The biggest misconception about productivity is that it’s neutral. It’s not. How you work always reflects something, and if you don’t design it with intention it will default to fear, inertia, and the loudest voices in the room.
Lens helped you see how decisions get made.
Mirror helped you see what’s internal factors are shaping those decisions.
Map is about action and taking the reins.
Viewing your productivity system as a map means building it to work for you, now and in the future, and not the other way around.
You’re the Cartographer Now
Clarity keeps you purposefully on the path you chose. Movement drives progress. The productivity system you inherit doesn’t guarantee either of these and you’ll need both. Don’t just inherit or maintain your system. Design it to serve you.
If you’ve made it through all three parts of this series, here’s what I hope you take with you:
Your productivity system reveals how decisions happen.
It’s also a mirror that reflects your fears, defaults, and unspoken rules.
And finally, it should be your map to help navigate with purpose instead of drifting and reacting.
You’re probably already be working long hours or feeling burnt out. You don’t need more motion, you need momentum. You need to choose where you’re going and build a system that moves you towards what actually matters.
Want help putting this into practice?
I created a Productivity Map Builder Notion template you can use to reflect on your system and redesign it with intention.
It’s lightweight, interactive, and built to help you protect what matters, upgrade decisions, and stay on course.