I wonder if people with (adult) ADD are more susceptible to this. Same as the author, I would like to hear the story of someone breaking the cycle for good.
I have settled on the idea of "Minimal Viable Day" and "Minimal Viable Week" ... what are things that, if I did those things AND NOTHING ELSE, I would consider the day and week a success.
Friday afternoon, I create a MVW todo item with 2-3 important things in it for the next week. Every morning I create MVD todo item with several things in it (often a bunch of smaller items and one or two largish items).
Everything else goes into the todo list and is ignored until the next MVD/MVW checkpoint.
Now I ignore all other "productivity hacks" and focus on doing this one.
- I have an inbox. Everything I agree to do that I can't do in the next couple of minutes goes in there. "Buy dogfood". "Paint the house". "Do a thing for work". Everything.
- I triage the inbox and put starting dates on everything I can't do right now (like "buy a Christmas ornament") so that they'll show up on my daily to-do list when the time comes.
- I review everything weekly, add stuff I've forgotten, and delete things I've finished or abandoned.
And that's about it. Thing is, without this system, I can't and won't remember to do any of the things I need to. It doesn't matter how important it is to me to make sure I buy an anniversary card for my wife: I'll forget until it's too late. The above is how I walk the line between "letting my life fall apart due to disorganization and forgetfulness" and "wasting time optimizing a fancy process".
I do have a similar approach like you. What I'm f..ing furious about it is, that I had to reach my middle 20s in order to realize I have to have something like this at all(!). Why personal time organization isn't taught at schools is beyond me. For me the system I try to keep in place is: - Daily task list (personal) - this absolutely has to be done today (or it needs to be replaned) - Daily task list (work) - has to be done today or I have to make a more long term plan - Weekly house(hold) tasks - (this one I started recently) - I go through major stuff I have to do around the house (fence, paint ect) - Long term work project list - this holds everything I need to do for work... again less interesting issues gets re-prioritized often based on "current interest" - Calendar reminders (double/triple alerts)- stuff not to forget
What I'm especially bad is tackling things that have a steep effort curve and don't produce a tangible "benefit (dopamine hit)" until further on. This I'm looking into hacking....perhaps the scrum point system is something that makes sense (and also recommended by comment above)
For that last bit, I'm pretty good about breaking bigger projects down into smaller pieces. After "paint the living room" lands in my inbox, I'll decompose that into things like "look for nice paint colors", and "ask my wife what kind of curtains she likes". Each of those is easy to do for that quick dopamine hit.