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gwern comments on Working hurts less than procrastinating, we fear the twinge of starting - Less Wrong
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I've often heard people say things to the effect of work not being so unpleasant once you've actually gotten into the swing of it, but I've never found that to be the case. I generally only find the act of working less painful than procrastinating when I'm right up against a deadline. Otherwise, even a half hour or so into it, it still feels easier to stop than continue. I'm also quite terrible at creating self imposed deadlines.
In order to increase the pain of procrastination, and the reward of working, I find it extremely helpful to have someone else waiting on me to get it done. It's much harder for me to bear disappointing others than failing to meet my own goals.
I think you may be unusual in this respect. This post rings very true for me, especially given my relationship with exercise. In general, I do find actual work not so bad as my endless delaying would suggest it is, and this is true from important things like paying traffic tickets down to more minor ones like the daily Mnemosyne review or n-backing.
I probably am unusual in this respect, but I don't know if I'm unusual among the set of people who suffer from fairly severe ADD.
I have ADD, and I think that I'm somewhere between the two extremes. Although not working is always more fun than working, I find that I can get in the flow on occasion, and crank out a lot. But even my strongest flows are punctuated by many distractions.
Desrtopa: Most of the time, I feel pretty much exactly the way you do. I've been told that I probably would've been diagnosed with ADD when I was younger if that had been something doctor's in my neck of the woods did then. The OP did strike a chord with me for those times when the deadline is approaching and I'm trying to get myself to start working and avoid overtime.
In my engineering work, I rarely am able to complete a single task in one day. My analysis or design projects generally require some trial-and-error, or reading up on a subject to, sort of, load the right software into my brain, etc. It's always so easy to stop doing that long-term, open-ended task and start doing some short-term, close-ended task like reading an article or a webcomic. I think, when I complete that article or whatever, I build up a reward cycle for that kind of action.