I can't find an online article where Merlin Mann discusses this but I remember very vividly him talking about why he stopped posting on 43Folders.com a decade ago. 43Folders was a GTD productivity porn site and after while Merlin decided that he didn't want to be "giving drugs to addicts" and stopped posting little "5 ways to write a better task title" articles for all the same reasons OP is writing about here.
A beautiful piece, thank you. But this is more about him prioritizing family over his book. It must have been on a podcast I remember him talking about how he kind of had a crisis of faith over running 43folders and stopped doing little "life hack" posts.
