[JohnsonB]

>The more productive you are, the more likely you are to get down on yourself and think at the end of the day, “I wasn’t very productive today.”

Wow, that sounds like an incredibly unjustified relationship, with only the superficial support of its counter-intuitive nature. In my experience, the opposite happens, the more you do in a day, the more you recognize and remember that you accomplished that day, and consequentially, feel that you accomplished. Which by the way, is exactly what the anti-todo list is, except with a mental list of remembered accomplishments, rather than manually recorded ones. The latter act should only be necessary if an individual has a particular problem recognizing what they've accomplished in a day; I don't think this is some deep insight or universal principle.

[NathanCollins]

In the context of the article, I think the justification was: assuming you're more productive in quality and not quantity, because you're working towards ambitious goals, then on most days you will not complete a recognized goal. The suggestion is to go out of your way to recognize your smaller day-to-day accomplishments which help you reach the big goal.

[colomon]

For me there are definitely days when I do a lot and find myself wondering why I was unproductive at the end of the day. Generally it happens when I do things that aren't directly programming. I will find myself feeling blue at the end of the day because I haven't accomplished any useful programming. Then I stop and think, and realized I spent hours e-mailing customers and potential customers, and all afternoon working on my taxes. Not a bad day's work, but because I'm biased to think of programming as my real work, it feels like I haven't accomplished anything.

Of course, there are also days when it feels like I haven't accomplished anything because I haven't actually accomplished anything.