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).
-Reward myself with yummy snacks; was effective for a time, but did not last; not sure what the psychological effect there is.
I understand that this is called an extinction burst.
The idea for this came to me when reading nyan_sandwich's "An akrasia case study." I outlined the idea itself in my comment in that thread.
So here's the plan:
Let me emphasize one more time that we are not looking for solutions in this thread. Please don't give each other suggestions! If you think you're on to something hot in terms of the "kicking" aspect of the Art, please show us with a description of how the technique worked for you on a specific instance - but share the instance first. The goal here is not to demonstrate that you have a clever anti-akrasia technique. The goal instead is to see what different instances of akrasia and attempts to tackle it actually look like.
If at all possible, please share both successes and failures. This is especially helpful if we can see successes and failures of the same technique. This helps to balance out positive bias and gives us a better idea of the parameters within which different techniques work. Be especially wary if you have a favorite anti-akrasia technique because of the subconscious desire to attempt to change reality by pretending your favorite technique is actually perfect. If you do have a favorite technique, please actively seek out its true weak points.
Let's crack this thing!