To be honest, I didn't read it. Reading articles about productivity makes me feel like I'm doing something wrong, when I'm perfectly happy otherwise. They're the Instagram of work life for me.
EDIT: I went back and read it, I agree with most of what he says (and my original comment wasn't very relevant to this particular article), I would just add "don't stress about productivity, most of the time it's fine to just do what you like".
So, what you're saying is that you find it hurts your productivity to read productivity articles, so you try not to put yourself into the position where you have to read them?
On a more serious note, I feel like "maximizing" "productivity" on things you are passionate about is largely wasted effort (unless the thing you are passionate about is "maximizing" "productivity")...
> So, what you're saying is that you find it hurts your productivity to read productivity articles, so you try not to put yourself into the position where you have to read them?
No, it hurts my happiness to read productivity articles, so I skip them.
Neurologically, it might actually be justified—there's a recent hypothesis that we're wired to "decrease uncertainty" more than any other terminal preference, i.e. that "being productive" (in the sense of doing things to ensure that a situation will resolve a particular way) is an end unto itself, that we pursue regardless of whether it makes us happy. (I like this hypothesis because it neatly explains why the experiences of happiness, of contentment, and of motivation, are all effectively orthogonal, and many people can have one of the three while never having the other two. It also explains why people tend to feel relief when a negative event they've been attempting to prevent finally happens anyway.)
As well, there is a reason that Buddhism's viewpoints on dukkha and nirvana needed to be invented/discovered and taught (and that people struggle to learn them.) The idea that there is a happiness that exists as a state of *being8, that does not involve "doing", is not, seemingly, an instinctual belief among human beings—or even one that's very easy to convince people of.
I'd like to agree wholeheartedly about reading articles makes you feel like you're doing something wrong. I feel this way about almost all non-technical work books and articles and tend to avoid them.
EDIT: I went back and read it, I agree with most of what he says (and my original comment wasn't very relevant to this particular article), I would just add "don't stress about productivity, most of the time it's fine to just do what you like".