The cycle stopped bothering me so much when I realized that’s what it is: a cycle. It ebbs and flows with my energy levels. And frankly part of why I can’t keep it up is probably because I’m putting too much demand on myself. If I need to take a break, I guess that’s just what needs to happen. I’ll probably pick up a more productive routine again next week.

For a decade or two I've gone back and forth between paper and electronic note-taking and I think that's OK, I don't have to find one perfect forever system for everything.

For a calendar, my wife hung this acrylic calendar on the kitchen wall and we update it at the beginning of every month. I try to add things as they come up, and I often forget to add things if they are in future months, but it's helped for me to keep track of family arrangements. Any personal appointments I make on my own I try to put immediately into my google calendar, and then my work calendar is completely separate. As I'm typing this I realize I rely heavily on others to manage most of my time...

Notes are a jumbled mess - though I continue to use them sporadically.

P.S. Nice Mitch Hedberg reference

I don't think I've had an empty task list in my entire professional career outside of changing jobs and effectively declaring task bankruptcy. Todoist's end of day notification often says something like "review the 54 tasks remaining for the day".. One day someone will figure out a system that works for every ADHDer in the modern world and we'll have a new tech/space/etc renaissance, haha

Incidentally I saw this meme on Twitter while procrastinating something or other earlier, quite apt https://img.imgy.org/1xkR.jpg

Best of luck to you, me, everyone else struggling with this one!

Otherwise they work well at first but quickly become giant guilt piles, aka "54 tasks remaining for the day" syndrome.

(Also then you never get the satisfaction of clearing your daily list, because it is one neverending eternal infinite list)

Which of your 54 daily tasks should be put on a "tomorrow" or "next week" or "next year" list? Which of them truly need to be done in the next 24 hours?

In the meantime I'll give my task list a realistic "when does this really need doing, if at all" audit, nice one

Some people have great success with his system as described! I don't want to prejudice your thinking!

But I think perhaps 10x as many people found a lot of value from the principles he describes and adopting the bits of his system that work for them. (I am one of them) I'm just mentioning that in case you start reading and think "uhhhh this is overkill".

Above all else: good luck!!

Eat the fish, spit the bones! :)

Cheers!

    And then some time later I would [will] try 
    again, under the blissful delusion that this 
    time it will stick 

Just an idea w.r.t. systems. Have you tried prioritizing "ease of use" over "completeness and awesomeness"?

I made some progress myself that way lately. I was always trying to organize things in some kind of... I don't know? perfect and aesthetically pleasing way? In hindsight, I think I was telling myself I had to get to some perfect system like these garages, where everything is perfectly organized and has a purpose and place.

https://www.pinterest.com/pin/721209327810494107/

Instead what worked for me in the end was a bunch of clear plastic bins from Home Depot, with big labels on them. They are not literally childrens' bins but in spirit, the end solution for me was not too far away from this:

https://www.google.com/search?um=1&hl=en&safe=active&nfpr=1&...

Point being, what finally worked for me was the system with the lowest possible friction, not the "best" system.