INSTANCE
I was supposed to have things done ahead of time for a roleplaying game I was GMing (the GM is the guy who makes up the scenarios, for those who don’t know). Frequently this did not happen due to me finding anything else to do during the times I had scheduled myself to work on it. Ended up winging my sessions very frequently, and it showed.
ATTEMPTED SOLUTIONS
-Remove distractions; this failed miserably. I am apparently capable of distracting myself for hours on end by thinking about physics if the need arises.
-Don’t schedule time to work, just do it when I feel like it; I worked a bit more since I felt less forced into it, but plateaued at a lower rate than I hoped.
-Reward myself with yummy snacks; was effective for a time, but did not last; not sure what the psychological effect there is.
CURRENT WORKING SOLUTION
In desperation, I decided on a ‘fight-fire-with-fire’ strategy. I have the typical aversion to performing menial tasks (and occasionally my homework as well), so rather than scheduling two separate blocks of time for ‘housework’ and ‘GM work’ I scheduled a larger time block for ‘Housework and/or GM work’. Turned out to be fairly effective, it allowed me to alternate between two nasty tasks without burning out (since I could simply walk away from the dishes when I got sick of them and go play with steampunk spaceships, or vice versa).
Note, however, a couple potential pitfalls to this trick: you need to have enough recurring nasty tasks that you won’t run out of them, and depending on how fast you get sick of things you may switch between tasks at an unacceptable rate (for the record, my switch rate seems to be slowly increasing over time, so this may not work as a permanent solution).
INSTANCE I was supposed to have things done ahead of time for a roleplaying game I was GMing (the GM is the guy who makes up the scenarios, for those who don’t know). Frequently this did not happen due to me finding anything else to do during the times I had scheduled myself to work on it. Ended up winging my sessions very frequently, and it showed.
ATTEMPTED SOLUTIONS
-Remove distractions; this failed miserably. I am apparently capable of distracting myself for hours on end by thinking about physics if the need arises.
-Don’t schedule time to work, just do it when I feel like it; I worked a bit more since I felt less forced into it, but plateaued at a lower rate than I hoped.
-Reward myself with yummy snacks; was effective for a time, but did not last; not sure what the psychological effect there is.
CURRENT WORKING SOLUTION In desperation, I decided on a ‘fight-fire-with-fire’ strategy. I have the typical aversion to performing menial tasks (and occasionally my homework as well), so rather than scheduling two separate blocks of time for ‘housework’ and ‘GM work’ I scheduled a larger time block for ‘Housework and/or GM work’. Turned out to be fairly effective, it allowed me to alternate between two nasty tasks without burning out (since I could simply walk away from the dishes when I got sick of them and go play with steampunk spaceships, or vice versa).
Note, however, a couple potential pitfalls to this trick: you need to have enough recurring nasty tasks that you won’t run out of them, and depending on how fast you get sick of things you may switch between tasks at an unacceptable rate (for the record, my switch rate seems to be slowly increasing over time, so this may not work as a permanent solution).
I understand that this is called an extinction burst.