The problem isn't your work ethic. It's not your tools. It's the very concept of "productivity" you've been sold.
It’s an intellectual cul-de-sac. A seductive meta-game where you spend more time sharpening the axe than chopping any wood. You get hooked on the empty calories of organization—the color-coded calendars, the intricate to-do lists, the zero-inbox fetishes. You get a dopamine hit from feeling organized, while the actual, important work sits untouched.
It's a trap. I know, because I spent years designing the most beautiful, elaborate traps for myself.
The antidote wasn't another system. It was the brutal, physical reality of building a flatpack wardrobe on the fourth floor of a São Paulo apartment with no lift. That wardrobe taught me a lesson I'm now building into software: the goal is not to be productive; the goal is to produce something.
The Two Mistakes That Cost Me Everything
I’m building an app called Quantizar, something I wish I had to stop me making the same two mistakes over and over again.
Mistake One: The Perfect System. My first disaster was a masterpiece of over-planning. We weren't building a business; we were building the ultimate productivity machine. We had SOPs for making coffee. We spent weeks debating the merits of one project management tool over another. We were addicted to the process of organizing. The actual work? That was secondary. We were so busy perfecting the instruction manual that we never built the wardrobe. We failed, but with an incredibly well-documented process.
Mistake Two: The New Idea. My next failure came from the opposite direction. We were a speedboat with no rudder, chasing the thrill of the new. We’d get the wardrobe delivered—a concrete task—and instead of doing the hard work of carrying it upstairs, we’d get distracted by a great idea for a matching sofa. We were addicted to the brainstorm. We mistook motion for progress, pivoting into oblivion because it was more exciting than the boring, methodical work of execution.
In both cases, we were avoiding the real work by engaging in a fantasy of it. We were focused on "being productive" instead of actually producing a result.
The Physics of Actually Getting a Wardrobe Built
In my case there is no lift... in yours, there is no hack.
Confronted with four flights of stairs and a ton of MDF, the entire abstract notion of "productivity" evaporates. It's useless. There is only the physics of the problem.
You don't think, "How can I productively assemble this wardrobe?" You think, "I need to get this specific box to the next landing." The overwhelming concept of "wardrobe" is replaced by a sequence of simple, physical commands.
This is the principle I built Quantizar on. It’s designed to destroy the meta-game. You feed it your big, terrifying, abstract goal—the thing you're procrastinating on by reading productivity blogs—and it forces you to break it down. It vaporizes the conceptual fog and leaves you with a list of simple, physical verbs.
It's not another system to manage. It's a tool to get you out of your head and back to the work. It takes you from "I need to build a business" to "Okay, first step: write the sales offer." It turns the monolith into a series of manageable, non-negotiable steps.
A Manifesto for Producing, Not Perfecting
A month later, the wardrobe is built. It holds my clothes. It serves its function.
The drawers wobble a little. They still need a bit of wood glue for stability, a five-minute job I haven't gotten around to yet... but that's the point. I know they wobble because I've put them together and they are real, it's not something I could have predicted.
I have a functional piece of furniture. I produced a result.
Stop trying to fix your productivity. It's a ghost. It's a distraction. Focus on what you actually want to produce.
If you're tired of the meta-game and just want a tool that helps you confront the physical reality of the work in front of you, that’s what I'm building. It’s for people who want to stop organizing and start creating. For people who understand that a wobbly, finished wardrobe is infinitely better than a perfect, theoretical one.