One of my last year's most productive days, I was stuck in a small hotel room on a business trip for a entire day, with a 13-inch laptop on shit wifi. In just a few hours I wrote one of the most useful document for my job in the last couple of years. I guess I had nothing else to do, and had no distractions.
Both at my office and home, I have all kinds of ergonomic setup, great connection, comfortable drinks, whatever. And I work ok there most of the time, but I got more focused and productive stuck in a hotel on a small laptop and a wooden chair…
Recently this video [1] got my the same impression. A dozen content producers in the "productivity" niche show their workplace. Obviously there are some high-tech desks full of expensive latest tech, but also some simple laptops and a wooden chair. In the end it doesn't matter, they're all producing good output regardless of their productivity setup.
So it looks more like a hobby than an actual link to being productive. It's really not about the apps or setup.
You see it very often on HN with all the articles about tweaking your productivity, scheduling everything, writing what you're doing every 15 minutes in a logbook as to not lose a single second of your life to "unproductivity", &c.
We're applying machine concepts to human life as if all that mattered was how much "things" you can produce and how much other things it allows you to consume