> The trick is to work your own motivation into your workflow "I'll get a coffee when I finish my emails". "When I finish writing this draft, I'll get a beer". "I'm going to slog through this, and then take myself out to dinner". Whatever tickles your fancy.

I don’t understand this, I have tried it but the willpower trick doesn’t work on me. If I want to do the task I’ll do it and if I want a coffee I’ll get a coffee. Denying myself the coffee when I don’t want to do the task just makes me less caffeinated while I procrastinate and takes almost the same discipline as just doing the task. I have to reason the ”lizard brain” into at least being neutral or ambivalent about doing the task.

I know 'me too' comments are not welcome here, so my justification for this reply is that it highlights an apparent minority of folks here who really struggle with all the standard tools for so-called procrastination and so-called productivity.

I agree about the lizard brain motivation. It seems that checkboxes are a simple shortcut to achieving that motivation for many. They don't work for me, my experience is similar to yours.

I've realised that if I can find something rewarding to enthuse me, then I can tackle a task. And that reward needs to outweigh distractions, it's no good saying I can have two marshmallows later, I'll take one now thanks. So I try to focus on any aspect of a task that I might find rewarding in the present moment, and if I'm lucky it will push competing distractions aside enough that I can get started.

Every. Damn. Course. That I've ever attended has pointed to 'check the boxes' rather than 'find your motivation'. Checking boxes feels like walling myself into a tomb (see other comments in this thread). It's beyond frustrating.

Yeah, doesn't really work for me either - even when I knew that I'd be much happier after completing the task (e.g., cleaning my room), but nope. I'd just sit there, staring at what I had to do, unable to do it. Then I started reading about ADHD and executive dysfunction and it started to explain a lot - at least for me, the task has to be relatively enjoyable in and of itself for me to do it. The prospect of a reward afterwards doesn't change that and doesn't motivate me to do it. Now I take medication and it's made a noticeable difference to how difficult it is to do unenjoyable tasks.

I have the same difficulty: I can't bargain with myself that way and, ultimately, I feel like I'm acting as both a parent and a child at the same time.

I basically won't get something done unless I actually want to, or if there is an element of external accountability, but sometimes I can encourage myself into it if it feels like unburdening myself.

This is why I like Apple's framing of it as "reminders" vs tasks/todos. Also helps me separate my physical journal which is full of tasks, to the app which is for reminders. Functionally identical, yet understood very differently. Reminders becomes an offload of things to remember when the notification hits. Journal becomes a handful of focuses for the day/week rather than a strict "complete all of these or suffer" list.

Some people use calendar to replace how I use reminders, which also works but I find the simple list format of reminders to be far more effective at keeping things simple without restricting to a monthly view. Especially the "all" list!

Google Calendar "agenda view" may help with the last part.

What you mention is a reward, not motivation. If rewards motivate you, this works. If not, you need a different source.

What else is there except reward or punishment?

You're rewarded for doing something with something extrinsic (nice food, money, new toy) or intrinsic (doing the thing makes it rewarding), or punished with something extrinsic (jail, fine) for doing bad things, or intrinsic (guilt, social exclusion).

Incentives and disincentives rule society, learning to harness habits and incentives has helped me improve my life remarkably

If you've figured out something else, I'm sure I'm not the only one curious!

For some people, presumably like OP, rewards and punishments are not motivation; I have anhedonia and a cluster of other problems (including ADHD); rewards do not work because I don't look forward to anything, and punishments do not work because I do not care. Motivation is hard to find.

This comment is like someone snuck into my brain, took notes on how it operates and wrote it in a comment.

Damn.

I'd describe intrinsic rewards as "the thing, in and of itself, is enjoyable" and so if you're motivated primarily by intrinsic rewards, then doing anything that doesn't tickle that part of your brain tends to be somewhere between difficult and impossible and it's often the fear of punishment that finally forces you to do something. This is basically ADHD in a nutshell: can't do the thing because it's not fun, but oh crap the deadline is tomorrow so it must be done now because otherwise failure/get fired/etc.

So it's not so much about incentives or rewards, but that some people are motivated by things that aren't straightforward to control. Can you make unenjoyable tasks enjoyable? Maybe, if you understand that's the issue in the first place, and whatever it is that triggers that for you is something you can add to a task. e.g., a very common ADHD hack is doing something for other people - if you find it difficult to clean just for yourself, but you have guests coming over? Suddenly you're a cleaning machine; or perhaps you struggle to do boring, repetitive tasks in silence but add some music and off you go!

This is, incidentally, what makes being a manager actually challenging. People who are motivated by extrinsic rewards? Probably not super-difficult to motivate (raises, bonuses, public recognition, promotions, etc, are all tools for this). People who are motivated by intrinsic rewards? Well, that's a bit trickier, and I'm not sure what tools a manager would have available to them in this situation.

> People who are motivated by intrinsic rewards? Well, that's a bit trickier, and I'm not sure what tools a manager would have available to them in this situation.

They're not easy, and you don't want a lone wolf on your hands, but you do want to give these types a really long leash so they have the freedom to work on something they do enjoy. Then they'll give it 200%.

These are your rangers, your scouts, your trailblazers; they always seek excitement and there is no taming them for the banality of routine. So harness that by directing them toward experimental/greenfield projects that align with your/company's interests. They're the ones who'll find the new big thing, because they will quit before they allow themselves to get bogged down with yesterday's bullshit work (however critical it may actually be).

> What else is there except reward or punishment?

Nothing in terms of categories, but many people have "non-standard" coefficients in those mechanisms. Like:

> doing something with something extrinsic (nice food, money, new toy)

Those things are pleasurable and nice, but they don't work for me as a reward unless I can get them in under half an hour or so. My brain won't make the motivational connection between a task and a reward if the delay is larger.

The fundamental reward/motivation mechanism is the same, but it feels like (and I understand it actually is like) the "time discounting" has the exponential factor so large that it effectively becomes a step function - rewards become either "approximately now" or "approximately never".

Yes, this means that most of the things expected of adults are, for me, entirely unrewarding and thus nearly impossible to motivate to do. No, this is not a hyperbole. This is why several people in this thread are swearing to the motivational value of ticking a check box, and why I'm joining them in this - for a lot of mundane, daily tasks, ticking off a box is the only reward our brains can process.

(Sometimes the check box may work as a crutch, allowing enough successes in a row on an activity to let the brain pick up on a slightly more distant reward, and/or just habituate. This is, kid you not, how I had to re-habituate brushing my teeth a couple times in my life. Ain't ADHD great.)

Yeah, the only other motivation I get is something like excitement or curiosity, which is what motivates me to work on my art, but for me it does not tend to work for anything but making art.

I think the point is that punishments aren't always effective, and rewards can be difficult to identify.

> On the other hand, at least for those of us with unreliable memories, lists are essential.

Wouldn’t an array be more appropriate if you are memory limited?