Curiosity is one of my major low-level motivators. For example, when debugging, it helps me to consciously refocus from "Let's get X done. Obviously, it's not done yet." to "I've programmed it to do X. How come it does Y instead?" One could say that it boosts productivity just because it is a better-specified goal; but it feels like curiosity working.

Curiosity is also one of my major drives behind procrastination; the other is "getting (irrelevant) things done".