With my bipolar depression, I have on and off success using lists to make my days productive. Sometimes I respond to one type of list and sometimes another.

One list that worked well for me recently was to set down one task for each day of that week. Each task was something not particularly difficult but one I'd been putting off. For example, I had a stack of boxes that needed to be taken to UPS. Not difficult, right? Yet I'd put that task off for months!

All the tasks I chose for that...