The Productivity Trap Of Successful People
Even the most successful people suffer from this productivity trap. The good news is, there's a simple fix you can start using today.
It started with a harmless scroll.
One Zoom meeting ended, and I had exactly seven minutes before the next. Just enough time to check my phone.
In those seven minutes, I watched an AI cat dance, skimmed 22 photos from a friend's Cabo vacation, and promptly forgot the to-do list I'd been mentally organizing.
This wasn't an isolated incident. It was the third time that day I'd lost time to mindless distractions.
I didn't realize it then, but I was burning through what I call micromoments—the small, easily overlooked pockets of time between tasks that quietly slip away.
Micromoments surround us constantly. Five minutes waiting for coffee to brew. Three minutes idling at a stoplight. Eight minutes between when you pull into the parking lot and your kid’s soccer practice wraps up.
Technology is designed to have us habitually fill these micromoments with digital noise. We reflexively reach for our phones the second we have any downtime.
What began as an innocent pattern became a startling wake-up call for me. After tracking these micromoments for just a week, I discovered I was "losing" nearly two hours a day to unproductive fillers.
Just like that, time vanished. No progress. No purpose. Just noise.
And what’s worse: the scrolling didn’t just waste time. It actively made me feel worse, flooding me with stressful news and unnecessary context switching.
Better time management
When I started deliberately reclaiming these moments to connect, move, reflect, or recharge, my entire day transformed. I felt more intentional. More fulfilled. More in control.
But it wasn’t always that way.
The rat race of productivity is hard to escape
The word people consistently use to describe me is "intense."
I've always considered myself compassionate and caring, but I understand why "intense" sticks.
I was raised in a family of lawyers in a major metropolitan area, where productivity reigned supreme. Tight deadlines. Billable hours. Back-to-back meetings. Conference calls conducted from school pick-up lines.
That rhythm followed me from childhood through adulthood. For years, the fast-paced, achievement-driven culture of tech startups was my norm, and I thrived in it. The more structure, output, and hyperfocus I stacked into a day, the more at home I felt.
I didn’t recognize the stress and mental fatigue of this “always-on” culture because I didn’t know any different.
But somewhere in my second decade of working in tech marketing, the cracks started to show. I became more acutely aware of how much time I was losing to unproductive digital noise and context shifting when I suddenly started working remotely during the COVID pandemic lockdown. I began to notice the impact the constant deluge of information and context shifting had on every corner of my life.
Even on my most productive days when every task box was checked, I still felt profoundly unfulfilled.
Movement doesn’t necessarily mean momentum
In moments when I wasn’t actively working or pursuing a goal, I felt aimless and bored. I’d pick up my phone without even noticing I was doing it.
The dopamine hits from scrolling my phone disappeared as quickly as they came.
That's the insidious nature of what scholar Brigid Schulte calls "time confetti"—fragmented moments that leave us shifting from one pseudo-productive task to another without making meaningful progress toward our goals.
The three-step approach to reclaiming micromoments
The key to reclaiming micromoments isn’t cramming more productivity into already-hectic days. It's infusing meaning into the time we currently waste.
The key to using micromoments well is committing to how you’ll spend them before they arise.
If you wait until you have a four-minute gap between meetings to decide how you’ll spend it, it’s already too late to figure out how to use it well.
That’s why I started deciding in advance how I’ll spend these time blocks before they arise.
Here’s how you can do the same.
Step 1: Identify Your Micromoments
You can’t solve a problem you don’t understand.
I started by noticing the pattern of when I had micromoments in my day. I’d automatically reach for my phone to “check” on emails, text messages, or scroll online reflexively when I had a few minutes of downtime. I wasn’t choosing how to spend those moments proactively—I was on autopilot to fill the trigger of boredom.
Awareness, without judgment or self-shaming, is the first step.
Step 2: Transform Your Micromoments
Once you've identified where micromoments typically pop up, you can transform them from empty calories into nourishment for your mind and spirit.
Instead of defaulting to digital distractions, commit in advance to simple activities that require a similar motion and offer a similar dopamine hit to the ones you’re currently doing, but add meaning:
Replace scrolling with jotting down three things you're grateful for.
Replace impulse shopping online with putting books on hold at your local library.
Trade notification-checking for sending a thoughtful message to a friend.
These small shifts don’t just make minutes more enjoyable. They rewire your brain to feel more autonomy and agency over how you spend your time.
Step 3: Build the Habit
Reclaiming your time doesn’t require radical change. Small, consistent steps compound over time.
I began setting intentions for how I’d spend the week’s micromoments on Sunday evenings, with a list of three micromoment activities I’d do in 90-15 minute breaks when they arose.
As James Clear notes in Atomic Habits, "The seed of every habit is a single tiny decision." Stack enough of those decisions together, and you’ve got cemented habits.
Here’s how that looks in my day-to-day life:
Before 10am, I like to step outside and take five grounding breaths when I have 2-10 minute breaks.
Between 10am and 2pm, I lean into reflection or learning: reading a few pages of a book, journaling, or listening to a podcast I’ve pre-saved on Spotify.
After 2pm, I choose physical activity, and do planks or pushups in micromoment gaps.
Five types of micromoments
After years of research, I realized that much of the science behind the small exercises and activities that boost mental well-being fell into five categories. Each offers a small but meaningful way to enrich your life, one moment at a time.
1. Reflection
Research shows that reflection on daily experiences significantly enhances psychological well-being. Even a short pause can reset your mind and provide unexpected clarity.
Try one of these:
The Gain Game: Note one recent accomplishment and one win you want in the next week.
Look Back, Appreciate Forward: Answer the question: “What’s something about your life that would surprise your 20-year-old self? What does this reveal about your growth?”
2. Connection
According to research, people with strong social connections have lower risks of many health problems.
You can easily improve your social connections during micromoments by:
Sending a two-minute voice memo to a friend.
Keeping cards on your desk to send handwritten notes to friends you haven’t seen in a while.
Making eye-contact with a stranger on the street or at a store.
3. Physical Activity
Even short bursts of movement, what exercise scientists call “activity snacks”, can improve mood, focus, and overall health. These brief physical interventions reset both body and mind.
Simple ways to build physical activity into micromoments:
Try a one-minute plank or three-minute wall sit.
Do a quick push-up ladder: 5 push-ups, rest, 4 push-ups, rest, all the way down to 1.
4. Learning
"Microlearning"—absorbing information in small, focused doses—has been shown to improve knowledge retention and mental agility. Even a few minutes to learn something new can create a sense of growth and progress.
Quick learning activities:
Set a timer on your phone, and read as many pages of a book as you can during the gap in your schedule.
Listen to five minutes of an educational podcast.
Write down one new idea you've encountered recently.
5. Nature
Studies confirm that spending five minutes in nature reduces stress and improves focus. Stepping outside can provide an immediate mental reset and heightened presence.
Simple nature moments:
Step outside and take five deep breaths.
Look up and identify three shapes in the clouds.
Listen for three distinct natural sounds in your environment. These could be birds, wind, or branches moving on a tree.
Micromoments compound
These steps sound small, but their cumulative impact is shown to rewire neural pathways and improve creativity.
Because they’re so easy to implement, the key is simply starting and iterating as they become more habitual. With consistency, these new choices quickly become foundational habits.
Occam’s Razor supports the idea that the simplest solution is usually the best one.
Instead of scrolling between meetings, I started writing quick notes to friends in those four-minute gaps.
Rather than thumbing through work emails in the seven minutes before my next task, I called my dad just to say hello.
This shift didn’t happen overnight, but these better choices became increasingly habitual. As reclaimed moments became habits, my anxiety and cravings for quick dopamine hits softened. Eventually, I found myself experiencing genuine optimism and excitement at both the beginning and end of each day.
What I’ve learned in all this is that the value of micromoments lies in their cumulative effect. One small change at a time, they build momentum toward a life that feels more aligned, more intentional, and more our own.
A new perspective on time
When we shift our perspective and claim our micromoments, fleeting moments bring value instead of draining our energy. They nurture our well-being and bring us closer to the life we want to live.
Yes, unproductive time will still claim parts of our days. We’re human, after all. But by consciously choosing how to spend small moments, we maximize our time management and the value we get from each day.
I'm going to step away from the keyboard now and take five deep breaths outside.
What are you going to do with your next micromoment?
