Why Creativity Trumps Productivity

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You see it everywhere now…

“How to get into flow and get more done.”

“Flow hacks for maximum productivity.”

“10X your output with flow states.”

The other day, I was on the phone with Steven Kotler, the author who brought the word flow into the mainstream and spent 15 years researching altered states of consciousness.

We were recounting old times and launches we did together when he mentioned his frustration that the work he dedicated decades to is now being co-opted by people who don’t understand it. Repackaged into productivity “hacks” by hustlers who don’t even know what flow actually is and more often lead others to burnout.

They treat flow like it’s just another shortcut.

Another way to squeeze more output from your day.

As if productivity is the answer to all your problems.

It’s a myth I see constantly in my research.

Many people say they want to be more productive…

When really, they want to be more creative.

They just don’t know it.

They want flow because they think it’ll help them crank out more work.

Finish the to-do list faster. Win at the productivity game.

But here’s what Kotler and I both know from years of working with creators at the highest levels:

The truth is, being more creative will make you more productive… but not in the way you think.

If you want to get more important work done, easier…

Your goal shouldn’t be productivity at all.

It should be creativity.

Productivity is about getting more done. It’s words per minute, it’s tasks per hour, compressing a week of work into 2 or 3 days.

Your employer wants you to be more ‘productive.’ They want you to accomplish what they pay you to do in less time.

Not so you can go home early, or enjoy that extra time you carved out. But so you can start the cycle again and redefine the standard for your role.

It’s a slippery slope, and those who do discover how to actually be more productive are incentivized to… stop. To pretend tasks take longer than they do.

And avoid the empty space that gets filled like a gas with more tasks from the managers who aren’t measured by their output, but instead by yours.

This is even more of a challenge with AI. Even if you do accomplish something faster using LLMs, that doesn’t make your job easier.

It just creates space to get filled.

This is called Parkinson’s Law: “Work expands to fill the time available for its completion.”

It’s why Bill Gates said, “If you want something done efficiently, give it to a lazy person.”

The lazy person won’t waste time. They’ll find the shortest path because they have to.

Then that becomes the new way of doing the job, so that extra space can be filled.

The only time this doesn’t apply is if you’re an entrepreneur and own your own business. Then productivity hacking can be fruitful for you.

80% of productivity hacks boil down to this: give yourself less time to do something, and you’ll be amazed that you can do it.

Because the truth is: many of the obstacles to productivity are not just laziness, but fear and resistance.

And extra time and space create room for those maladies to flourish.

It’s why when people become parents and their time vanishes, they still get the work done. Not always through outsourcing. Not through magic.

They just do what they can in the time they have… and discover they often still can.

That’s productivity.

Creativity is something else entirely.

Creativity is not doing more. Though that’s often the result.

Creativity is your nature.

It’s what you are when you stop performing. When you stop forcing. When the noise finally quiets.

It’s a process that begins long before you sit down to work, and continues long after you stand up.

And the problem with mistaking productivity for creativity… is that much of what people do to be more productive actually gets in the way of being more creative.

Because productivity optimizes the doing.

Creativity often requires you to stop doing entirely.

It makes sense why people chase productivity until they notice the sparks that used to light up their life have gone cold. Until they sit down to create something and realize the drive, the will, the dopamine… just isn’t there anymore.

That’s what happens when you trade creativity for productivity.

You optimize yourself into numbness.

Instead, creativity is a fire that must be tended.

Not forced. Not hacked. Tended.

It’s the state you enter when you stop trying to be productive and start being present.

Creativity is the state you enter when your inner noise quiets enough for new ideas to find you.

It isn’t something you push toward. Or driven by willpower, endurance, or perseverance.

It’s something you make space for.

When the fears, pressures, and distractions that fill your inner world dissolve, what remains is not emptiness.

It’s a field of infinite possibilities.

Where ideas don’t come from you.

They come to you.

And when your inner space is clear, they arrive whole—with everything you need to bring them to life. All the energy you need to execute them. And the blueprint from start to finish whole.

From the outside, this can look like productivity.

But it’s more like flow—someone producing more, faster, with less effort.

However, they don’t get there by trying to be more productive.

They get there by allowing themselves the space to be creative.

And creativity, when it’s real, trumps productivity in every way that matters.

Productivity asks, “How can I do more each day?”

Creativity asks, “What is the one thing I can do that makes everything else irrelevant?”

Productivity asks, “How can I do as much as possible?”

Creativity asks, “How can I do the best possible?”

Productivity asks, “How can I bend to my tasks and get them done?”

Creativity asks, “How can I build a life around who I am?”

Productivity is driving fast in the left lane on your morning commute.

Creativity is learning how to earn money from anywhere.

Productivity is rushing.

Creativity is learning to fly.

Creativity is not about wearing brighter colors or being a little quirky. It’s the differentiator. It’s freedom.

The people who are the most creative, you won’t even know they exist.

They’re doing what they desire most, without permission.

You may stumble upon them, but they’ll only ever be where they want to be.

In a world where everyone is optimizing, automating, batching, scheduling, and “10X-ing,” productivity has become a commodity.

Anyone can be productive. AI can be productive. Templates can be productive.

But creativity?

That can’t be automated.

It can’t be commoditized.

It can’t be replaced.

Creativity is a way of being.

And it’s the single force that lifts you out of the race entirely.

Productivity makes you better at running in circles.

Creativity shows you there was never a circle at all.

So if creativity is what we actually need, not productivity... then how do we get it?

This is the question I get asked most often.

“How do I actually be more creative?”

And people expect:

• A tactic

• A hack

• A morning routine

• Some secret artists have been hiding for centuries

The truth is simpler and more nuanced than that.

Creativity is not something you can switch on or off.

It’s the way you are when your inner conditions allow it.

It’s not about what’s around you.

It’s about what’s going on within you.

And your inner state changes the moment you understand this:

The real beginning of the creative process is not when you sit down to work.

It begins long before any effort takes place.

Creativity begins with clearing.

Before a creative spark can catch and become the idea that changes everything, the resistance inside you needs to fall away.

Not your calendar.

Not your environment.

You.

Your inner space.

The noise. The pressure. The fear. The identity you’re performing. The self you’re trying to maintain. The old stories about what you “should” be doing.

All of it has to dissolve enough for something new to appear.

This is why your most creative moments probably happened when something in your world got shaken up.

When you got broken up with. When you moved across the country. When a big job ended.

It doesn’t always have to be something life-altering.

Sometimes it’s just the welling up of dissatisfaction that finally permits you to walk away. Or a moment of awe that blows the dust off your old perception.

Creativity, once lost, often returns with this type of creative destruction.

The kind that clears the resistance. The kind that humbles you just enough that your old ways of forcing things fall away.

When those internal walls crumble, the world doesn’t just look different.

It is different.

To you.

And you’re finally able to express what’s been there all along.

Suddenly, you see possibilities you couldn’t see before. Not because they weren’t there, but because you weren’t in the state to perceive them before.

If there’s a secret to being more creative, it’s this:

Creative ideas arrive when you become the kind of person those ideas can reach.

Not someone stressed or hurried.

Not someone clinging to certainty, performing for others, trying to impress.

Not someone trying to “be more productive.”

Creativity requires something simpler: inner quiet.

So instead of guessing what you should be doing… you can feel what’s right to do. Instead of doing as much as you can, you focus on what’s worth doing.

That’s when epiphanies come.

And that’s the shift that allows:

Effort to become receiving.

Generating to become discovering.

And the ideas that arrive in this state are different than any other.

They carry their own momentum, their own direction, everything you need to execute them.

You just have to tend to them when they show up.

And tend to yourself, so they can.

Which means the real work of being more creative isn’t about adding anything.

It’s about removing what snuffs ideas out before they can arrive:

• Fear

• Urgency

• Comparison

• Distraction

• Self-judgment

• Performing for approval

• Trying to “get it right.”

• Trying to be productive every minute

Some productivity advice is actually creativity advice in disguise.

Like the simple wisdom Steven Kotler once gave me: “Just close the fuc**ing door.”

He said this is the most powerful flow hack of them all.

And it’s because… it silences the distractions.

When your life and your head are less filled with noise, the signal comes through again.

Creative momentum returns, not as effort, but as natural movement. Like walking, but for your hands.

And that’s when your senses heighten.

Not just your physical senses… your nose, eyes, ears.

But your internal sense for good ideas. For things actually worth doing.

This is the #1 obstacle to creativity.

Many people seeking productivity advice are actually looking for ways to trick themselves into doing work they don’t want to do.

Ask them if they want to do it, and they’ll say, “Yes, well, I want to get paid.”

Or “Yes, I should do it.” It would be wise. Or smart. Or everyone else is doing it.

But that’s not desire. That’s obligation dressed up as choice.

I remember once having to drive across the city for an appointment I didn’t want to go to.

It took me all day to work up the will. It felt like I was wearing a vest full of rocks.

The next day, I heard a game I wanted had come out. I jumped in the car, drove to the store, got it, and was back home booting it up before I realized…

I’d just done effortlessly what I’d dreaded doing the day before.

It was the same action. The same effort. The route I had to take was even longer, and traffic was worse. But it felt different.

The difference was desire.

I actually wanted to go.

Which made me question:

Not as often as you’d think.

Most of the time, they’re just convincing themselves they should.

Or someone else is.

People spend their whole lives on shoulds… then wonder why they have no energy left for what they actually want.

Until eventually, they don’t desire anything at all.

Their creative fire burns out.

Desire no longer comes through.

Or they tell themselves it’s wrong to desire. Irresponsible. Selfish.

But there is a hidden value to desire that most people underestimate.

Desire teaches you to pick up on the signal for creative sparks and trust them.

And the more you build your life around desire, the better you get at picking up on that signal and trusting it. The better you get at following it.

When you follow desire… you start to look like you’ve mastered every productivity hack on earth.

When really, the answer is simpler and more profound:

You’re just doing what you actually want to do.

When you clear the noise, what once slipped through the cracks now catches your attention.

A sentence forms with a little more clarity.

A feeling asks to be explored.

A possibility that felt impossible last week now feels interesting.

Creativity begins with these subtle openings, quiet moments when you feel drawn toward something without needing to explain why.

People who consistently create meaningful work rarely do it through force.

They build a relationship with the part of themselves that senses what wants to come next.

They learn to trust small signals. The ones that rise when things are calm enough to feel them.

When doubt surfaces, they give themselves room to breathe rather than collapsing into old stories about what they can or cannot do.

A creative life is shaped through hundreds of these small movements.

It happens through continuous attention to what makes you feel alive.

If you want to be more creative, stay close to what pulls you. Give it space.

Let it grow at the pace it wants to grow.

Over time, these small choices shape your work, your identity, and the life you are able to imagine for yourself.

Suddenly, you’re getting into flow more often. You’re looking wildly productive on the outside.

But it’s because you’ve created space to be creative. And you’re learning to trust your desire again and follow it to the unexpected places it leads you.

P.S. Ready to clear the resistance that’s keeping your creative fire from igniting?

The reason you can’t access your creativity isn’t laziness. It’s resistance.

And there’s a science-backed way to transcend it. I’m offering free access to my workshop, Unearth, where you’ll discover:

- The 4 Forces that limit your creative potential—and how to harness them instead of fighting them

- Why the changes you want to make must start within (not with more productivity hacks)

- How to create sustained flow, where focus, clarity, and creativity arise effortlessly

This is the clearing work that makes everything else possible.

Go here to check it out.