False dichotomy avoided.

I make sure not to overcommit myself. A study shows that scheduling has to be considered independently of effort, ability and experience. If I am not doing what I think I should be doing, I try to change the environment so that not doing what I should be doing is harder than doing what I should be doing. I don't believe that the exercise of willpower is any kind of solution. Its usefulness is limited largely to the minimum expenditure necessary to operate within the environment one designs to encourage work.

Also, I try to operate on a long time horizon. If something I do isn't going to have a discernible impact 10,000 years from now, I consider whether the opportunity cost is too high.

Sheryl Sandberg recently gave a talk to Inc. where she used the term 'ruthless prioritisation' to describe her decision-making process. It basically comes down to finding the best thing you can do and making a lot of tough choices.

Now, she was discussing this concept from a business point of view, but speaking as someone who works from home, minds children, and runs a house, it also resonated with me. I have a long list of things to do on any given day, and only a certain number of hours in which to do them. Most days, I end up feeling guilty about not getting something done; it feels like I'm failing in one of my areas of responsibility. Or, worse, as you say, I try to get everything done concurrently and either fail or risk burnout.

The main thing that ruthless prioritisation does is give me the space to forgive myself for the things I couldn't do. I know that I calculated the best thing I could do on a given day and I worked on that. It makes postponing things a lot easier to handle.

And those things are absolutely essential when you constantly have more things to do than you can finish in one day, and with interdependencies on other people's work.

Preferring "actually doing the work" on stuff that is easy to finish because that is encouraged by your measurement could be quite disasteous,if it causes you to delay more important things, or to fail to address things that block other people.

If you assume that a goal is a long term accomplishment and the strategies you use are short term, then something like this will allow you to stick to a strategy. However, done to excess would imply doing things you hate all the time, against the peril of doing things you hate more, which will make your life miserable.

This line of thinking reminds me of most school systems, which uses somewhat the same strategy, ie. do this simple task, now, or in the immediate future, to some exact specification, and if you don't do it properly you'll get a bad grade.

I find it much more helpful to tread lightly when considering doing things you don't like in order to accomplish a goal. If you can find a way where you are enjoying yourself and working towards a goal at the same time, it is much better even if it seems likely to cause you to take longer at doing it.

For instance, I often switch projects during the day, rather than work on only a single project, getting bored with it, but pushing on and hoping that I'll get through it quick and be able to go onto the next one. By switching it up, not only am I happier and actually excited to work on the stuff I do, but there is a synergistic effect, since the concepts of one of the projects often applies to the others as well.

Timeboxing is, you do what you can within a fixed time limit. So you're more inclined to rigorously prioritize, stay close to a shippable state and reduce scope if you're running out of time.

I guess at some point one needs some discipline... but that's not very fun.

Isn't this the idea behind Getting Things Done in a nutshell?

"The difference between successful people and really successful people is that really successful people say no to almost everything."

That's very different. This is a message that is useful to hear for extremely driven ambitious people who are already successful - that it's better to spend all the time you spend working on a few carefully chosen things. It should not be interpreted as advice for people who are not extremely driven to not do things. The baseline assumption is that you already spend a substantial amount of time working on potentially productive things.

I stopped making a choice if I work on this project. I work on the project for an hour. Not because I want too (I might not) but because that is what I do.

When I hear those voices in my head that want to put it off, or I'm too tired, or let's just skip it today, we can make it up tomorrow. I (struggle sometimes to) ignore them. This isn't a question about wanting to spend that hour on the project. There isn't a question to have. I just do it.

Once you start the voice tends to go away because I'm too busy actually doing it.

I think this is why offices work the way they do. You are not given a choice. You show up to work and you have 8 hours to do it. Someone even does the planning for you! So you have nothing else to do, so it's not a choice. You just do.

As lame as it sounds, the Nike slogan in correct. (If you look you'll see all sorts of famous people with the same motto.) You just do it. Nothing else matters. That's the trick. It's incredibly hard and most people won't. But if you really want too succeed, then you will just do it.

And if not, then maybe you are beating yourself up over something that doesn't really matter to you. It's a valid question. Do you honestly want it? Or maybe something else is pushing you to want it, but you don't really care.

Different domains have different requirements, other comments suggest this is fine advice for sports.

Perhaps the original was "do the solution that will teach you the most"? But even then, there are cases where learning is not a goal.

"Do the thing you're most afraid of" has some caveats, presumably, like "where the actual worst case is not dying." Like, I'm afraid of being hit by a car if I run through a red light, so not planning on running red lights.