I've definitely found that if I can trick myself into getting started, I often end up looking back on a productive day. The Pomodoro approach has been somewhat

I've definitely found that if I can trick myself into getting started, I often end up looking back on a productive day. The Pomodoro approach has been somewhat successful in making this happen. Another approach that works well for me is the 'Final Version' productivity 'system' by Mark Forster [1]. The key trick is that it's okay to just do 'a bit' of something on your list and then mark it as completed (and re-add it to the end of the list). In the past I've been a heavy GTD user. I abandoned GTD mostly because I feel it doesn't really fit my kind of work, but I still apply two GTD principles because they're also primarily about lowering the barrier to getting started: 1) turn big tasks into small steps that are easier to get started with, and 2) the 'two minute rule' where if you can do something in two minutes time or less, just do it immediately and don't bother adding it to your system. I've come to the conclusion that for me, the 'getting started' part is so important to optimize for that everything else feels like little more productivity porn, at least until I get that part somewhat working. [1]: http://markforster.squarespace.com/blog/2015/5/21/the-final-version-perfected-fvp.html http://markforster.squarespace.com/blog/2015/5/21/the-final-...