Inspired by Nick Winter’s The Motivation Hacker, what has been effective for me is sending an e-mail to three friends from separate social circles with a listing of the amount of time I worked each day, broken down by task (I clock in and clock out of each item on my todo list). I also Beemind my work hours and include a link to my Beeminder in each of the daily emails. My friends think it’s fun, and even though it seems initially like it wouldn’t actually make work easier, since you are relying on avoiding future feelings of guilt to motivate you, it actually does make starting work emotionally much easier. It’s also fun to write a note each day to them (couple sentences, takes like 30 seconds). I also block my Internet. The key insight from The Motivation Hacker was to use overlapping commitment mechanisms to make work much easier, and I use three (Beeminder, the e-mails, and Internet blocking). Since I started this I have worked far far more hours per day, and much more emotionally easy, than I had before.
By the way, when you first contemplate writing an e-mail to your friends committing to send them a daily e-mail with your work log, you will be very scared. The reason you are scared is because you know that this will work and you’ll have to keep your commitment (if telling your friends you didn’t achieve a goal doesn’t bother you, maybe this commitment mechanism won’t work for you). This is a feature, not a bug.
Inspired by Nick Winter’s The Motivation Hacker, what has been effective for me is sending an e-mail to three friends from separate social circles with a listing of the amount of time I worked each day, broken down by task (I clock in and clock out of each item on my todo list). I also Beemind my work hours and include a link to my Beeminder in each of the daily emails. My friends think it’s fun, and even though it seems initially like it wouldn’t actually make work easier, since you are relying on avoiding future feelings of guilt to motivate you, it actually does make starting work emotionally much easier. It’s also fun to write a note each day to them (couple sentences, takes like 30 seconds). I also block my Internet. The key insight from The Motivation Hacker was to use overlapping commitment mechanisms to make work much easier, and I use three (Beeminder, the e-mails, and Internet blocking). Since I started this I have worked far far more hours per day, and much more emotionally easy, than I had before.
By the way, when you first contemplate writing an e-mail to your friends committing to send them a daily e-mail with your work log, you will be very scared. The reason you are scared is because you know that this will work and you’ll have to keep your commitment (if telling your friends you didn’t achieve a goal doesn’t bother you, maybe this commitment mechanism won’t work for you). This is a feature, not a bug.