Ok, HOW do you "force yourself"? I can do it for tightly aligned tasks, for a short period, but burn out rapidly. Back at university, I managed to induce heart arrhythmia pushing myself this way.

It also doesn't help with the initiator issue. HOW do you get yourself moving in the first place? I can reliably do it a couple of times a day, but day to day life needs more than that for basic maintenance.

Oh, and don't get me wrong, I'm functional, but it runs me at my mental limit all the time. Parenting pushed that to the next level. I'm permanently riding the knife edge of burnout.

[–] MonkeMischief 2 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

(1 week without a response) Well played 🤭

There ya go. I'm glad they could "just force themselves" and I REALLY do think tying together tasks, with environment, with timing, etc... really is key, but that's the worst part of it, that intangible "something" that sparks your brain into "just doing the thing and getting it over with."

Why do we have it sometimes and not others? Where can we get it when it's missing? Do we have to panic ourselves into EVERY task?

At some point it's just really hard constantly researching how to esoterically "program yourself" when the results will be wildly inconsistent on the best of days and all the normie books on productivity are like "Have you turned off your phone and tried making a list??? 😮👉🗒️ 😱"

... And then you look up the author and they're some corporate manager who just ~~discovered the secrets to personal mastery~~ hired 2 personal assistants and now they're doing just fine. "And you can too!"