Adapted by:
Javier Lacort
Senior WriterI write long-form content at Xataka about the intersection between technology, business and society. I also host the daily Spanish podcast Loop infinito (Infinite Loop), where we analyze Apple news and put it into perspective.
Karen Alfaro
WriterCommunications professional with a decade of experience as a copywriter, proofreader, and editor. As a travel and science journalist, I've collaborated with several print and digital outlets around the world. I'm passionate about culture, music, food, history, and innovative technologies.
I was scrolling through X the other day, dodging Studio Ghibli-style memes, when I came across a quote from entrepreneur Justin Welsh:
“Your goal isn’t productivity—it’s control. Do fewer things, more intentionally, until everything you do is exactly what you want.”
It was one of the many musings he tosses out like a rock into water—but this one dropped like a stone into a pond, sending out concentric waves of nods—mine included.
Productivity has become people’s Trojan horse. It seduces them with the promise of liberation but installs a regime of constant self-monitoring—mea culpa. Many people now see efficiency as a virtue without asking a basic question: efficient for what? For whom?
The personal optimization industry, and productivity enthusiasts in particular, are chasing a mirage. People pursue systems and tools that claim to make them more productive, when what they truly want is autonomy and control over their time.
Optimization hits a ceiling early. But intentional constraint evolves more deeply. In other words, freedom comes from the discipline of saying no—by understanding what truly matters and digging protective ditches around it.
Welsh suggests stopping treating productivity as the goal and start viewing it as the natural result of personal autonomy. We need to become masters of our agenda again, not servants to our calendar—at least as much as our jobs allow.
“Productivity,” then, becomes another word for “control.” Not the obsessive kind peddled in self-help books with power ties, but a deeper kind: the ability to make conscious choices, and to measure success not by output but by intention.
That is what makes Welsh’s phrase powerful. It’s not another technique for squeezing more out of the day—it’s a reminder of something people already know but often forget: Life is measured not in tasks completed, but in choices consciously made.
Image | Piyush Agarwal (Unsplash)
Related | We Have a Lot of Digital Superstitions. They Just Stifle Our Productivity
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