I suspect this works because your brain experiences reinforcement from completing a task (small or big), and the longer you’ve been working without any kind of reinforcement, the more willpower you must expend to continue. (This is also my explanation for findings related to laughter being helpful for ego-depletion.) If my hypothesis is correct, if you could hack your internal sense of reinforcement, that could be another way around this problem (e.g. if you notice that you’ve been working on a task for a while without experiencing any external reinforcement, but it’s a task that you endorse, you could think to yourself “man, I’m a pretty badass, determined person aren’t I”).
I suspect this works because your brain experiences reinforcement from completing a task (small or big), and the longer you’ve been working without any kind of reinforcement, the more willpower you must expend to continue. (This is also my explanation for findings related to laughter being helpful for ego-depletion.) If my hypothesis is correct, if you could hack your internal sense of reinforcement, that could be another way around this problem (e.g. if you notice that you’ve been working on a task for a while without experiencing any external reinforcement, but it’s a task that you endorse, you could think to yourself “man, I’m a pretty badass, determined person aren’t I”).