I don't find this to be true (in my case) for repeatable tasks like chores. Sure, ticking the box may provide a little relief, but knowing that it has to be done all over again the next week, endlessly, doesn't help with finding satisfaction.
There are other consequences too -- in-laws induce shame. Other visitors induce shame, but if I have them every other week, the panic-clean before the arrival of in-laws is only slightly bigger than the routine-clean. And with 2 adults and a child with ADHD, messes build fast if we don't stay on top of it.
So when I say ticking the box is it's own reward... really it's the "I'm keeping the monster at bay with the stroke of a pen at the end of 10 minutes of drudgery."
Walling oneself into a tomb - exactly.
Life must extremely stressful to those for whom every discrete thing is a countdown to death.
Many people consider the day-to-day grind of a job as being akin to death; for OP and similar people, these daily tasks are the same thing
For me, it's about the uniformity of the checkbox experience. It reduces any achiement to "just another brick in the wall". Apparently for others, the same uniformity turns the tasks into something more like a game.
At the end of a day, I like to go back and look at artifacts that resulted from my efforts. Maybe I wrote something, or drew some sketches, or at least had a productive conversation in digital format. Re-reading those outputs feels meaningful in a way that looking at ticked boxes doesn't.
(In my day job I work on video meeting recording systems, among other things. One of the projects that I currently find very motivating is to produce better artifacts from meetings, e.g. automatically created video summaries with context-relevant graphics. Maybe my own love of reviewing work artifacts is why this feels so relevant, and somebody else will find them meaningless because the act of ticking a box — "Discussed X with N" — provided the same satisfaction.)
To-Do Lists is one of them. Where she sees a way to organize herself and gets pleasure from "completing" lists, I see attempts to quantify an overwhelming amount of tasks that has no conveivable end. For my part, I have learned to adopt the mindset of "work stops when I decide I am done working," while is a healthy action for me that helps prevent my anxiety from running the show (and running me down), where as that same mindset would be abhorant to my wife. The funny part is that we both maintain about the same level of productivity overall, despite the opposing methods.
I suppose the take-away I am getting at is things like To-Do lists are going to be subjective, but the markets (particularly individuals that benefit from To-Do Lists) are going to treat them like a panacea for all that ails us. I refer to this promotion as Life Hack Hype, but I don't know if anyone shares my veiw or experiences on that.
FWIW, despite being more like GP's wife than GP themselves, "the process of quantifying the problem could become its own problem" is very much the case for me. It leads to some unique, hilarious (to an outside observer) ways of suffering.
I was born with ADD, but developed GAD in my 30s in response to living with ADD.
My medication is still working very well, but I've lost the drive of wanting to do things in an ordered fashion and decided to embrace my ADHD-fueled unstructured focus. I still use alarms and calendars for important stuff, I have a decent, productive daily routine, but the rest I play by ear and feel. It's exhilarating to have the focus to do things without the tyranny of the laundry list.
I got too much stuff to do already to also tick what's on my todo list.
Mode 1: I've accepted that chores are something I have to do.
I have "system 2" reasons to be doing them, such as "keeps me in good standing with my spouse", "makes home stay pleasant to be in, as opposed to a biological hazard", or "not doing them will later make me question my status as an adult human being". Those are all "system 2" things though, meaning they provide approximately zero motivation at the moment when I'm attempting, or considering, to do a chore.
What works here is, using "system 2" motivation to refine my TODO list - an activity that is self-rewarding by giving me that "oh I am very smart" feeling. And then, when it's time to do something, having checkboxes to tick provide some immediate reward I can parse "in the moment". Not much, but better than the default, which is no reward at all.
Mode 2: All this is modern recreation of the Sisyphus story.
Chores are a waste of life. It's one of the biggest tragedies of humanity that we haven't yet automated away or designed away the need for maintenance work. Developing self-cleaning, self-maintaining technologies and solutions sounds like a line of work I'd like to be in.
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The important bit of personal growth for me was to put a force field between those two modes of thinking, so that I can still process thoughts related to Mode 2, without having them interfering with my ability to do anything.
I adopted a certain baseline of living as part of my core identity. People like me keep the house clean always, and tidy mostly. People like me remove anything with an odor immediately (50% full trash but it smells? gotta go right now.)
Couple that with the 2 minute rule "if it takes less than 2 minutes do it right now" and it's really changed how I live.
When I started using a todo list I was very conceptual about it "this is something that must be done, therefore it goes on the list.
But really it's more about which tasks need to be present on a list. I don't need to be reminded to eat every day, and if I do, that's the job of an alarm. On the other hand if I need to soak lentils while I make breakfast tomorrow, that might go in my todo list.