Some more standard advice would be to make some kind of public commitment to it, so there’s somebody else to hold you accountable. This could be kind of difficult when it’s something as unimportant as a video game, as that might make you look pretty weird (depending on your friends and your relationships with them), but you could do it very casually; even just mentioning the task in passing in a conversation would probably help.
I also find that making a “public” commitment helps even when it’s not actually public; just consciously focusing on the subject and committing to hold yourself accountable for doing it at a certain time can be surprisingly effective (I like to say it out loud, as this seems to help, but I talk to myself a lot anyway so it might just be a personal thing). I can’t really vouch for this method’s effectiveness, though; I’ve never really tried to permanently solve a recurring problem like the one you describe with it, I’ve only used it as a band-aid to get past the “ugh field” a few times. It may lose its effectiveness with repetition, if it even ever works at all for you.
A last possibility in this category, depending on how serious you are about this, would be to try something like Beeminder that would ideally give you the motivation to push past the “ugh field” and get used to doing what you need to do. Since I don’t yet know how to embed links in words, here it is: https://www.beeminder.com/
For something more fun, if probably less practical, you could try to drug yourself into forming a habit. You’ve probably heard of people trying to use reinforcement learning on themselves, basically—allowing themselves to eat candy (or some other kind of reward) when they do the target activity. I’m really doubtful that this is actually useful for most people (though I haven’t looked much into it—I just have a vague, bad feeling about it; it’s probably worth investigating). Luckily, though, you can try something better: using nicotine to turbo-boost your habit formation.
This is probably wildly irresponsible, and I don’t really recommend it, but it’s worth hearing about, at least. Of course, you’ll need to take into account the extra cost of getting nicotine gum (or patches—just don’t smoke, that’s definitely not worth it), as well as whatever psychological costs the chance of getting addicted to the drug might entail. I’m not going to go into specifics, but instead just show you to the source of the idea (which I just discovered fairly recently, which is probably a large part of the reason I’m bringing up nicotine at all):
http://www.gwern.net/Nicotine#habit-formation
I am NOT going to drug myself into forming a habit. This is a ~25 euro/hour, 1 hour per week side hobby, which I could miss without any problems. … Maybe that’s the wrong counterargument but I feel it’s too dangerous for the rewards involved. (I wouldn’t try smoking if you gave me money because I hear from people that it’s hard to quit.)
The public commitment thing is something I use myself from time to time, and I can make use of it—I will make use of it a bit more (I even used this post as a sort of public commitment) but the whole idea of a “real money game” is already pretty weird to my co-workers (They’re more comfortable with the explanation “It’s a casino styled like an mmo and I make money via arbitrage over the chips”) so it’s kind of hard to weave into the conversation. But I can talk about it with family or someone—not like I have to discuss it in detail with them, more like a casual mention. Worth trying, at least.
Some more standard advice would be to make some kind of public commitment to it, so there’s somebody else to hold you accountable. This could be kind of difficult when it’s something as unimportant as a video game, as that might make you look pretty weird (depending on your friends and your relationships with them), but you could do it very casually; even just mentioning the task in passing in a conversation would probably help. I also find that making a “public” commitment helps even when it’s not actually public; just consciously focusing on the subject and committing to hold yourself accountable for doing it at a certain time can be surprisingly effective (I like to say it out loud, as this seems to help, but I talk to myself a lot anyway so it might just be a personal thing). I can’t really vouch for this method’s effectiveness, though; I’ve never really tried to permanently solve a recurring problem like the one you describe with it, I’ve only used it as a band-aid to get past the “ugh field” a few times. It may lose its effectiveness with repetition, if it even ever works at all for you. A last possibility in this category, depending on how serious you are about this, would be to try something like Beeminder that would ideally give you the motivation to push past the “ugh field” and get used to doing what you need to do. Since I don’t yet know how to embed links in words, here it is: https://www.beeminder.com/
For something more fun, if probably less practical, you could try to drug yourself into forming a habit. You’ve probably heard of people trying to use reinforcement learning on themselves, basically—allowing themselves to eat candy (or some other kind of reward) when they do the target activity. I’m really doubtful that this is actually useful for most people (though I haven’t looked much into it—I just have a vague, bad feeling about it; it’s probably worth investigating). Luckily, though, you can try something better: using nicotine to turbo-boost your habit formation. This is probably wildly irresponsible, and I don’t really recommend it, but it’s worth hearing about, at least. Of course, you’ll need to take into account the extra cost of getting nicotine gum (or patches—just don’t smoke, that’s definitely not worth it), as well as whatever psychological costs the chance of getting addicted to the drug might entail. I’m not going to go into specifics, but instead just show you to the source of the idea (which I just discovered fairly recently, which is probably a large part of the reason I’m bringing up nicotine at all): http://www.gwern.net/Nicotine#habit-formation
I am NOT going to drug myself into forming a habit. This is a ~25 euro/hour, 1 hour per week side hobby, which I could miss without any problems. … Maybe that’s the wrong counterargument but I feel it’s too dangerous for the rewards involved. (I wouldn’t try smoking if you gave me money because I hear from people that it’s hard to quit.)
The public commitment thing is something I use myself from time to time, and I can make use of it—I will make use of it a bit more (I even used this post as a sort of public commitment) but the whole idea of a “real money game” is already pretty weird to my co-workers (They’re more comfortable with the explanation “It’s a casino styled like an mmo and I make money via arbitrage over the chips”) so it’s kind of hard to weave into the conversation. But I can talk about it with family or someone—not like I have to discuss it in detail with them, more like a casual mention. Worth trying, at least.
Nicotine use and smoking are not at all the same thing. Did you read the link?
I did not read the link.
But I also think that drugging myself like that for this is not OK.