Today's magic number was 25. (I started a few days after New Year's.) 5x10 push ups seems rather out of my range just yet - but 5x5 was a massive improvement, pain-wise, over 1x25. My main thought at the end of those: "Oh, if /that's/ all it's going to hurt from now on, this is going to be /easy/..."
So even if no other suggestion helps much - this one particular comment could make the difference. I'd up-vote it more than once, if I could. :)
Glad to hear I could be of help.
There's no reason why you shouldn't apply this to your other exercises too if you want to progress faster and less painfully. You might want to experiment with the number of sets to see what works best for you or vary the figure simply to make things a bit less monotonic. It's still nice to have "challenge days" every once in a while to see how awesomely many repetitions you can do at once.
"Cryonics has a 95% chance of failure, by my estimation; it would be downright /embarrassing/ to die on the day before real immortality is discovered. Thus, I want to improve my general health and longevity."
That thought has gotten me through three weeks of gradually increasing exercise and diet improvement (I'm eating an apple right now) - but my enthusiasm is starting to flag. So I'm looking for new thoughts that will help me keep going, and keep improving. A few possibilities that I've thought of:
Pride: "If I'm so smart, then I should be able to do /better/ than those other people who don't even know about Bayesian updates, let alone the existence of akrasia..."
Sloth: "If I stop now, it's going to be /so much/ harder and more painful to start up again, instead of just keeping on keeping on..."
Desire: "I already like hiking and camping - if I keep this up, I'll be able to carry enough weight to finally take that long trip I've occasionally considered..."
Curiosity: "I'm as geeky a nerd as you can find. I wonder how far I can hack my own body?"
Pride again: "I already keep a hiker's first-aid kit in my pocket, and make other preparations for events that happen rarely. How stupid do I have to be not to put at least that much effort into making my everyday life easier?"
Does anyone have any experience in such self-motivation? Does this set of mental tricks seem like a sufficiently viable approach? Are there any other approaches that seem worth a shot?