I've had discussions about productivity off and on with other developers and managers for my entire career, and it seems that most of us have cycles of producti

I've had discussions about productivity off and on with other developers and managers for my entire career, and it seems that most of us have cycles of productivity. It will depend somewhat on what type of work you do, but it can be quite reasonable to have periods of significant creativity and productivity, and then periods of cooling where not much gets done (but perhaps the brain is busy sorting and clearing connections, leading to the next breakthrough and productive phase). Perhaps at a big company with a long lived product where you're just doing enhancement and maintenance (especially where tasks are doled out in tickets), it could be possible to be "productive" most of the time. But that's hopefully not a scenario most people find themselves in unless they only write software for money and otherwise have no interest.