I love the future. I love thinking about how things will be 100% better
in it. I'll have more time, I'll have more knowledge and I'll do those
bigs things that I just don't have time for right now in the present.
Which leads me to my next way to achieve 0% productivity:
Talk about improving things “in the future”, without listing out specific POCs, timelines, and so on.
With how busy our lives are being unproductive, it can be difficult to fit in all the unproductive work we want to. That's why we often look to the future as our way out of the current mess.
Process slowing you down? Let's fix it in the future.
Some technology causing bottlenecks in getting work done? We'll totally fix that next time around.
No matter what the roadblock to getting something done, chances are people are more than happy to talk about removing said problem in the future. But lacking from that talk is any sort of concrete plan. No timelines are set (or if they are, they're completely arbitrary), no resources are assigned and no follow up is discussed.
And that's usually where the conversation ends. You talk about the issues in a retrospective meeting or informally during your lunch break, but then immediately forget about it because some issue caught fire while you were away and now you need to fix whatever that issue is. By the time you end up resolving the minor emergency, the conversation you had where you planned out a grand future is all but forgotten.
Instead of constantly feeling frustrated with the present and longing for the future, take some time to set concrete timelines, points-of-contacts and anything else that will take an abstract idea and make it real. Taking the time for this will make sure that your faulty human memory won't get in the way of making things in the future.