I have found that the quickest way to get me to do something I’ve wanted to do but have been putting off for a while is to give me something else that I absolutely have to do, but I really don’t want to do.
Example: I’ve been meaning to organize, reduce, and clean up my financial records for some time. I had a giant pile on my living room chair that piled up for over a year of old bills and other things I needed to keep, I had a filing cabinet full of stuff I mostly no longer needed, and I had a couple binders full of stuff that could be pruned significantly.
I have been unemployed for seven months, yet just in the last few days have I actually managed to make real progress in going through all this stuff. I shredded an entire trash bag worth of shit between last night and this morning (well, this afternoon, since last night I broke my old shredder and had to get a new one this morning).
And why am I finally making progress? Because I have to study for the GREs. Yes, because I have something else that I really, really don’t want to do (ie. relearn a whole shitload of math), this thing that I’ve been meaning to do but is kind of a pain in the ass suddenly becomes a much more attractive option.
I may not be getting done what needs to get done sooner, but I’m getting SOMETHING done, dammit.