I read this, and some time later I started trying it.

I misremembered, so I've been counting from 1 to 10. Interesting thing is that I generally start getting up as I say the "1", or before. It seems that by the time I've decided to employ the technique, I'm actually ready to get up - I just need something to focus my mind and get out of the "monkey mind" thing that Buddhism talks about. The little bit of focus I get from deciding to count is enough to switch my brain into action.

Next: to try it for starting a work task I'm avoiding. I'll combine it with monoidealism (stopping everything else, and thinking about the task, but not doing it) then at some point deciding to do the countdown. Or the count up.