How to get yourself to do things (2015)

Anything about procrastination always makes me think of "structured procrastination" [0], which frequently comes up here [1]

[0] http://www.structuredprocrastination.com/

[1] https://hn.algolia.com/?q=structured+procrastination

Best advice I read (I think here on HN):

Make it work, not crash, fast, pretty — in that order.

Not a bad piece, but for me it turns out almost all of my so-called procrastination and laziness is rooted in a congenital medical condition. When I can manage to take good care of myself, energy and mental focus lead to productivity. When I can't, then I look like some kind of loser to the outside world.

I suspect that under recognized health issues are a common factor in such patterns. I knew a guy who swore he wasn't allergic to anything but began every single day with something like an entire pot of coffee and ended it with up to an entire bottle of wine. Uppers in the morning and downers at night is a common medical approach to managing severe allergies.

The other thing that helped me enormously was reading some book from a library when I was living in Germany in my mid twenties. (No, I have no idea what the book was called.)

It covered an idea that was supposedly fairly common before modern psychology became popular. The idea was that you have a certain budgeted ability to do a particular type of thing and if you aren't getting enough of that thing, you will do more of that type of thing voluntarily (as a hobby) and if you are being forced to do more of that type of thing than your internal budget supports, you will start experiencing burnout.

Programmers routinely give a variety of anecdotal testimony that fits with this concept. Some can program all day at work and come home and program some more to work on a side project. Some are so done with it after programming all day. Others loved it when it was their hobby but have come to hate it now that it is their day job. Their internal budget only supports doing this part-time and such people tend to change careers at some point and then eventually rediscover their love of programming as a hobby.

I think one key to making life work is figuring out how much internal budget you have for different sorts of things and arranging a life that fairly consistently uses up that budget without demanding more and also somehow pays the bills. And then everyone thinks you rock and you get to be contented.

And few of us get told that. We usually get told x, y and z external things matter a great deal and we need to somehow conform to that instead of being told our lives should be designed around ourselves and that's the path to success.

What is the medical condition if you don't mind me asking? And what does taking good care of oneself mean? Sleep enough? Exercise?