>I don't know about most people, but this works terribly for me. Motivation is huge for my happiness, so I want to do something when I'm in the mood for it.

That's a sure-fire recipe for never doing most things one needs to do, because most of those things are not things that one looks forward to anyway.

Even for the core work someone does (e.g. writing for a writer), people mention time and again that setting up times in advance and committing to them works better than getting in the mood.

I concur. If you schedule in advance, it's much easier to break through the initial emotional barrier of starting the thing you're anxious about.

I used to hate scheduling, now I swear by it. The change was entirely in my understanding what "scheduling" means. I used to treat this as iron-strong commitments. Those made me dislike scheduling because I felt I'm losing autonomy over my own life. Now, I treat scheduling in advance as my best-effort plan for efficiently doing what I want, subject to revision at any point I deem necessary. I found allowing myself to shuffle the schedule around as I need made it feel liberating, and my worries about losing autonomy pretty much disappeared.

You may want to try SkedPal. The Fuzzy Planning behind it works exactly as you described. http://www.skedpal.net/help/skedpal-basic-scheduling-concept...

Depends on what makes you happy, though. If you focus on the satisfaction of crossing a dreaded task off the list after you've been avoiding it for a few days, that can make the task an attractive choice.

This mentality can be a little dangerous. You're training yourself to cater to your moods. This can result in important but not urgent tasks that you're never really in the mood to do never getting done. Or, if it's a task that has to be done, a lot of resistance because you're used to waiting for motivation to kick in.

For me, a better approach has been to consciously force myself to do things I don't feel like doing. I push through low energy, distractions, or boredom and just get it done.

You might expect this to lead to sub-optimal performance or suffering through unenjoyable tasks. Sometimes it does, but in my experience, a more common result is the good feeling of having pushed through a barrier and found a second, or third wind.

I used to try this method, but it's never worked for me. My productivity is so incredibly low when I'm trying to work on something I don't want to do that it's just a big waste of time.

If it's something actually important I'll do it eventually. If it's something I truly dread, I might do it at the last possible moment, but I'll do it.

Perhaps there's a middle ground.

I've found that my moods are fairly cyclic. I'm high energy in the a.m., start to trail off in the afternoon and then catch a second wind after dinner. To the extent I'm able I structure my day around these cycles, reserving the high-concentration/creativity tasks for the a.m. and the more mindless/mundane for the afternoon. Evening's a free-for-all depending on whether I still have work to do or not.

Different approaches work for different people. I wish people would understand that, instead of assuming that what works for other people is ~secretly harmful~ and they should just use what works for the speaker.

The first and only ironclad law of productivity is "Do what works."

But the corollary of that law is "try and figure out what works for you". So test the different approaches, instead of assuming they won't work for you; evaluate them honestly, and stick to those that produce results.

"Master, what is the way to be disciplined in the Tao?"

"When hungry, eat. When tired, sleep!"

The main point of the article is not that scheduling is superior to TODO lists. Instead it is that continually adding to a TODO list is bad and instead making a schedule makes that impossible.

I feel using a TODO list with time estimates would give the benefits from the article was also letting you schedule flexibly as you feel like it. By putting the time estimates in it makes it easier to say no to tasks that don't have to be done.

Watch out for 'Trivial Accomplishments'.

It's a term I came up with as I observed myself making todo lists, completing them, feeling good about it, but realizing that I'm not getting from A to B on important projects. It's (comparatively) easy to make todo items like 'buy milk', 'get haircut', 'go on date with X', 'read 1 chapter of <book>', but these are what I call trivial accomplishments. Having a todo list 100% made up of these is a good way to fool yourself, because you will feel good about yourself (for a while), because that's just how we work, the illusion of progress fools the brain.

Way out: Separate todo lists into trivial and non-trivial, eg. I have a separate Trello list for each. Make sure your non-trivial list is not empty and you make progress on it. Hard items are writing/output versus reading/input. Another good way to identify them is if they're about Deliberate Practice.

Totally agree that scheduling is not for everyone. I've also read a lot of so called productivity expert saying that you should write down all the things in mind without bothering scheduling them. IMHO, there's no single solution for personal productivity boost but to work hard and figure out the best solution for yourself.

Different tools for different cases. What I find helpful (as long as I'm in a mood to stick to it):

- Writing down all the things in my mind (i.e. mind dump) - tremendously reduces my stress and clears my head; a good mind dump makes my mind feel temporary empty, unburdened. After doing that I usually quickly review what I wrote down and make a conscious decision about what to do with each item (e.g. put it on a TODO list, ignore it, shoot a mail about it and forget), so that those things don't start immediately cluttering my head again.

- Big todo lists - mostly useful to keep track of random errands that I'd otherwise have to remember. I'm e.g. happy to tell that I don't remember when my rent is due, or when I have to remind a friend about sending me the details of a project - but I'm confident that my todo list will remind me at the appropriate moment.

- Improvised, throwaway todo lists - help me focus on a difficult task through the process of breaking it down into steps small enough I can execute them one-by-one without getting a panic attack.

- Scheduling - works for me if I schedule blocks dedicated to particular task or project - like "work", "project X", "random", "HN break". Helps me focus without triggering my otherwise usual anxiety attacks. Also I make sure to schedule "random / shallow work" blocks regularly, which exist to ensure I do process my todo lists, that would otherwise go stale.