I'm convinced that at some point looking like being productive and being productive becomes the same thing.

The issue, in my experience, is that there is a lot of productive work that does not look productive at first glance. Long term work may not look productive for years until it suddenly is tremendously productive. And there is a lot of quiet and often thankless maintenance work that goes on largely unnoticed that helps others do their jobs well. Both have value despite superficially looking unproductive at times. I'd argue that both look productive at long time scales but unproductive at short time scales.

There's a point where they meet, but "faking it until you make it" doesn't work for productivity in the same way it doesn't work for getting rich.

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