I dont - I need to be pushed. My wife is really supportive and great for that. For health, just visiting a doctor is enough to scare me straight

Stop self-talking, that's the basis of so much anxiety and all dread, which is always worse than just doing the thing, more suffering by trying to avoid the original suffering. Stupid brain.

Let your body get up and go do the thing without your mind fucking it up. It's called "behavioral activation" and it even works.

Dumb as hell but I tell myself "nothin' to it but to do it", and then I do the thing. Like ripping it off like a bandaid.

Most of the time the activity doesn't actually take much time. The older I get, the faster time seems to pass and I have awareness of this fast-time-passing. So instead of avoiding the thing for hours, I just do it instead and am actually fully done with the activity in usually less than an hour. After that you can pat yourself on the back saying that you're an adult and you took care of an adult responsibility, but truly you are self-aware enough to know you were one tiny breath away from skipping it to do something time-wasting or irresponsible instead. For one more day you get to live the illusion you're and adult and you can take care of your adult responsibilities.

If you do this more often than not, you actually are an adult and actually do take care of your adult responsibilities on regular basis.

For my part, I did the good things for a year and felt really really good. Then I stopped doing them during COVID and felt really really bad.

It's much easier now to do the good thing because I know what's at the end of the tunnel.

I will often incentivize myself. Give myself a little treat afterward.

Sometimes it’s the other way around. Sometimes I’ll let myself have a treat in exchange for doing something I don’t really wanna do, like a chore I’ve been putting off.

Be kind to your future self. You know them better than anyone, and you know they work hard enough already. Do them a favor every once in a while and see how good it feels to help them out.

You mean like cutting down on pancake consumption?

I don't. I tell my wife that I'll do X by this day. Once there's a deadline involved, even if it's the last minute, I will do it to avoid disappointing my wife.

Once you figure it out, report back

I tell myself that nothing will get done or be achieved if I don't start

I don't necessarily recommend you use my method. I use a lot of negative self talk until I'm doing the thing (working out, work on rough days, farm chores on tough days, meal prepping healthy stuff etcetera). It's probably not the most healthy but it usually works. It also creeps in any time I make a mistake, which is likely not great..

I pay into the Finch App and I gamify my habits. They claim to respect privacy via their paid customers like me but either way, it helped me gamify good habits.