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gimpf comments on Defeating Ugh Fields In Practice - Less Wrong
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I find that a great way to self-motivate is to tie an action to intermittent, stimulating rewards. That's how mice get addicted to pushing levers, right? That's how people get addicted to WoW and similar games, right? But you can harness the power for good instead of evil.
Exercise. I keep an exercise log in a public forum. Every now and then, someone comes by with a comment like "Great workout!" The prospect of getting those intermittent, stimulating responses -- which I only get if I post regularly -- is great motivation to keep exercising.
Studying. I often find that my problem, when reading a technical book, is that I finish a chapter and don't review and summarize it. I'm in too much of a hurry. Solution: now I post summaries on a blog. I get intermittent rewards in the form of blog hits and comments.
The general theme here is that publicizing your goals is an easy, effective way to get intermittent rewards.
on quality: it takes me about 40 minutes to write a summary of something that I've already read and understood. That's about the level of detail and quality I need, for my own learning purposes. It might even be informative to other people. Summarizing is a modest goal, I think, and it shouldn't take anything like "genius."
Quality matters if you have a community that's interested in your work; you'll get more "nice job" comments if it IS a nice job.