In an effort to reclaim the self-discipline I’m sure I must once have had, I have been doing that thing where you set your timer and just work at your assigned task until the timer rings.
And this is what I have learned:
the secret to making the trick with the timer work is not so much setting the timer for periods of work, but re-setting it for breaks.
adelaide from adelaide 
This is a lesson I have failed to learn. Hence I sit at the computer “on a break” while my half made quilt languishes in the studio…
Oh, so *that’s* what I need to do! I’ve just been relying on Milly the dog to nudge me in the leg when she needs to go outside for a whizz….
That and having a time of the morning by which you first set the timer. Otherwise you (well, me) can faff around going to the loo and making cups of tea making sure everything is ready before you start.
In a particularly unenthused stage of my degree my bestie and I used to make writing dates. One of us would visit the other and although we were both ok about procrastinating on our own work we wanted the other to do well, so we enforced a strict system of “no it’s not your turn to make tea, stay there and write”. It worked.
You’ve seen the opening of the film Adaptation haven’t you? Where Nicholas Cage sits at his computer to write and what we get is his internal monologue?
The first time I saw it I almost peed my pants and AB was all, ‘that’s what you do isn’t it. That.is.you’ and my jig was totally up.
Or is it gig?