You shouldn’t have a to-do list, you should just put stuff into your calendar. Schedule it. -Paraphrasing Tim Ferris on the Modern Wisdom podcast

My challenge, information-wise, isn't about finding a needle in a haystack. It's that I'm confronted on a daily basis, in Carr's words, by "haystack-sized piles of needles." — Oliver Burkeman

If you can't see a path to something you'd be proud of, then you should revise your plan so it does have that potential. -John Schulman, on research, in “An Opinionated Guide to ML Research”