Solveit et coagula
There's a popular productivity tool called the Eisenhower Matrix which a lot of people look at and feel like has some intuitive appeal, but because most of us aren't co-ordinating the Allied liberation of Europe, it doesn't quite do what you want. Lots of people can't just delegate stuff, and also most people don't have true 'dump' tasks they can just not do. The Solve-It grid, which I discovered recently, is more useful.
(for some reason the article on this that I got linked to doesn't have a visual version of the diagram? Is the creator of it famously litigious or something? I cannot imagine writing a piece where I describe a diagram and not including an image of that diagram. I include one from here.)
Anyway: I've found this to be a really helpful way of looking at things. Tasks can occupy certain areas of the grid but also I can also be in those areas of the grid in terms of general mood. When I'm green, I feel like I'm never going to be anything but green! When I'm red for a long time, perversely I can often feel extremely productive, when what I actually am is "on the edge of burnout". Blue is easy to get stuck in, and Yellow tasks, for me, tend to either flip blue (if they're easy enough and I'm trying to distract myself from some other, bigger yellow or red tasks) or flip red—the description in the article of the report due in tomorrow. This is actually really helpful: if you can identify what state all your tasks are in right now, you can use that to try and motivate you: I know this is yellow right now, but it's only going to flip to red in a few days and that'll be stressful; I want to get all this Yellow out of the way so I can fully enjoy the Green stuff I've got coming up, etc. It's jolly useful.
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