I have the same problem recently. I think “the health situation” has made this more of a problem for me by throwing a lot of my habits and structure up in the air.
Two points:
First, my current mental model is that I have two powerful ways to get things done:
- habits
- beeminder
Habits are hard to start and maintain, but they tend to be very efficient when they get going – you don’t spend a lot of time thinking about them, and the actual doing of them and how they fit into everything else you do gets very efficient too. I think those two (beeminder and habits) don’t always reinforce each other – see my posts here.
As others have said, maybe you’re doing too much 2. and not enough 1.
(By the way, what’s missing from my list? I feel sure there must be other things that should go in there, but I don’t know what they are!)
Second: David Sparks on the Focused podcast has a concept he refers to as “Moving the needle”. He has a few things that are either what he’s actually wanting to spend productive time on, or proxies for that (core work that makes him money so he can do what he wants in the rest of his life). He counts roughly how long in hours he spends on those things. What he’s counting is the productive core of the work, not all the inevitable admin and fluff that goes around it. Probably I’m butchering this a bit, if you’re interested I recommend listening to their episode on this.
People also talk about the metaphor of filling up a jar with sand, rocks, and water. If you want to get some of all three in the jar (without spills), which do you put in first (hint: rocks)? The rocks are the harder, bigger things, which often are the more interesting/fulfilling things. The sand and water of your daily tasks fill up the jar and stop you putting in the rocks if they go in first. There’s always more sand and water. “First” here might mean first in the week, or in the day.
So, some ideas: 1. cut down the beeminding a bit and work on a small set of habits (for which beeminding might help, but only if used mindfully with that aim in mind I think) 2. maybe the first habit is: after your morning routine, start the day by moving the needle?