[JDGM]

First off: don't feel too bad. The behaviour you describe is super-common and I think probably the norm, rather than the exception. Most people don't have to battle with it though, because they have regular jobs with commitment-reinforcing routines and regulations.

What you need is to somehow get that same level of external "force" on you in this new running-your-own-business environment, where otherwise it is so easy just to slack off.

Let's try a framing technique.

When you think about stopping work to play a game, I want you to very clearly visualise coming to your client empty handed and them firing you. I want you to visualise having no money and not being able to afford all those things you like spending it on. I want you to visualise - again, super clearly - losing the respect of your peers, your family, even strangers you have met on the internet, all because you couldn't just get on with it and do the work and make your business succeed. And why couldn't you? Because you couldn't resist playing a stupid game designed to make someone else money at the expense of your productivity.

Got that horrible and depressing scenario clearly, vividly, and richly painted in your mind?

Now, just as vividly, picture yourself sitting up straight with amazing posture, coding like a damn JEDI, master of your domain, submitter of outstanding work, ahead of deadlines, everyone loves you, this is what you're good at and by god you're owning at it. You're virtuous and awesome, an actual fucking adult, a creator, producer, and earner of real stuff with real value.

You get the idea. Your imagination is a powerful tool which can do a complete hatchet job on the person you deep down don't want to be but seems appealing in the short term, and it can be PR god to the version you aspire to be but somehow don't have the bravery and force of will to become. When you do that, and get these images in your head with enough detail that they seem real, it bleeds into reality and pushes you to becoming one over the other.

Other than that, I got nothing.

[jacobolus]

Be warned though, this kind of intense visualization of bad consequences (or positive rewards) can also back-fire: if you start associating thoughts about your work with potential negative consequences it could drive you to shut down / try to distract yourself harder, and if you start daydreaming about positive consequences it could satisfy your reward circuitry and reduce your motivation.

In other words, you have to know yourself and your own triggers and defense mechanisms: what works for one person might be the worst possible thing for another.

[abalone]

Yep.. I find that an addiction analogy is useful. If you told a heroin addict to visualize how crappy their future will be if they keep using, how effective do you think that would be? It's not a rational process. Reminding one of how awful a person they are might simply trigger a stronger urge to fix.

Being mindful of future happiness definitely keeps me on track. But I think the core problem is that one's "body" has learned strategies for temporarily ameliorating stresses that are nearly impossible to talk down. One must simply deny the body the fix in the hopes it will reduce its chemical urge.

[cjbprime]

This is written really well, kudos.