It's classic productivity app bias. You start using a new app and because of the newness placebo, you get a boost in performance. You post about how amazing and cool it is, tell all your friends, then you get that crash back to baseline. At best, it just becomes a regular part of your routine. More commonly you dump it for the next cool productivity tool.
I'm doubtful it's a 'productivity' issue so much as a 'status' issue. The product is positioned as a brand, not a tech.
It's actually a confusing thing in marketing.
Products that are sold for aesthetic reasons - i.e. fashion - well that's obviously aspirational.
But most products that are sold even on the basis of features - those features are never used. It's the features themselves that are aspirational.
There's a late night infomercial on right now selling hoodies. They make it green, call it the 'tactical hoodie' and use the most ridiculous, masculine/alpha, quasi military language to describe it. All the 'zippers' and 'pockets' and 'the peak on the hood to keep your night vision' etc..
It's just a basic green hoodie ... but described as though it's for Special Forces Operators i.e. aspirational marketing.
FYI that products are sold aspirationally doesn't mean they are bad, they can be good, even better, just that you're probably going to end up paying a hefty margin.
Good example of this kind of positioning:
"You sent a critical email, but didn't hear back. Why? Your message was buried by countless more that arrived later. With Superhuman, you can get back to the top of their inbox. When you send an email, just choose a time — for example, Monday at 8:55 am — and we'll deliver it precisely then. When your contact starts their day, they'll see your message first. No matter when you work, send at the perfect moment. "
It's a ridiculously mundane feature, sadly one that took forever to appear on most clients, but it's now universally available, called out as some amazing thing and contextualized in the locus of the problem i.e. "Your message gets read first!". Smart but a bit hapless.
I cannot think any productivity tool that has sticked only sake of productivity. It is always productivity + something where tool shines. Eg using vim at server through ssh.
