I have moved this post to my blog: http://squirrelinhell.blogspot.com/2016/03/abuse-of-productivity-systems.html
I don't know if anything can be changed to fix the mistakes.
I had a broader range of "success" scenarios in mind, see note to the question.
I have moved this post to my blog: http://squirrelinhell.blogspot.com/2016/03/abuse-of-productivity-systems.html