Productivity is physical, creativity is mental.

Naval drops truth bombs in tweet-sized doses, and this one nails the difference between doing and thinking. Marketers often mash the two together, but separating them supercharges both.

The marketing insight

Productivity is about output: writing emails, launching ads, posting content. Creativity is about input: thinking, connecting dots, generating new angles. If you mix them, you end up busy but not brilliant.

Why it works

• Creative work needs space; productive work needs structure.
• Separating them keeps your brain from switching gears.
• It’s how top marketers write genius ideas one day and crank out 10 landing pages the next.

Examples

• Ogilvy spent mornings thinking, afternoons producing ads.
• Pixar uses “braintrust” meetings for ideas, then production teams execute separately.
• Writers like James Clear batch creative ideation and execution on different days.