Does My Action Now Bring a Publication Closer to the Finish Line?

If you spend a lot of time collecting articles from the internet, tagging them, and none of that brings you closer to a finished manuscript or insight, then it's not more efficient. It's less efficient. So I think it's very much an illusion of putting less effort into it, because you do put less effort but also put no effort into getting closer to the finish line. And yeah, it's really about thinking, how does what I read contribute to my understanding of something I decided deliberately to work on?"