One of my favorite habits is to, first thing, when I know what I want to do today, like today I wanted to stay in bed and watch Inuyasha, it’s to grab my planner and think “Okay, what do I want to do before that?” If nothing, great! I’ll enjoy the show so much more. This makes such a huge difference to the quality of my day.
And if something, that’s also good! It’s a great catch knowing that I won’t have forgotten them or had them gnaw on me. Like today, I had projects that were even more worthwhile to work on so I was so grateful to my past self for having written them up (and I was also cursing my past self for writing some of them so illegibly that I have no idea what it’s supposed to say).
Of course, what I want to do might get a lot of its value from the end goal of that task rather the task itself. If that weren’t the case a lot of people might never want to go to work in the morning. A lot of jobs are fun but not a lot of jobs are more fun than watching cartoons.
Now, as always, when deciding what to do, do not neglect the value of rest. Point of GTD is not to kill us with overwork, it’s to be a bookmark of everything we’re not doing so we can more fully do what we are doing; which might be resting.
I’ve found this especially good when working on longer projects like a novel. First thing everyday being like “okay, today I want to work on the novel” and then only doing the most urgent and important stuff before writing has worked really well. I, uh, might need a nudge every morning to remember that I do have that big project. Like a post-it on the mirror or a note by my bed.