Tell yourself you can have a treat afterwards. If I could get it to you, there is a biscuit here with your name on it. And doubtlessly you can find or think of many treats and rewards for yourself – and this is reportedly one way to get yourself to do stuff.

…my father created a system of small rewards to help me get through schoolwork. The fundamental basis of the system is counter-intuitive: If you want to get five tasks done, my father always said, first find five additional but enjoyable tasks to do.

Sidin Vadukut writing on Quartz. He makes it sound there as if you have to reward yourself with another task and I like the way that works but he's speaking more broadly than that. He's saying that you can, for instance, research something you're interested in buying. That could be your treat for doing the horrible thing. It doesn't have to be caffeine- or sugar-related.

You can read his whole piece with good and strong arguments here and I must also tip my hat to the 99U site which spotted this.

My only thing against it, really, is that I can see myself ballooning up under the amount of tea or chocolate biscuits I'd end up eating. Actually, that's one serious concern but my only other thing against this is that sometimes it's good to do lots of bad things. If I have a lot of calls to get out of the way, I will do them better and faster by just whacking through the lot one after another. If I stopped between them, for any reason, I would find it just a bit harder to pick up the phone again.

I have to fool myself into cold phone calls so perhaps that's just a weakness of mine. I'll think about this.