How do you motivate yourself to do un-motivating work?
mattjaynes: [Edit: Sorry - this probably won't apply to the OP's specific problem, but it will apply to others facing un-motivating work (assuming they have an hourly rate that will allow them to do this)]Answer: oDesk, eLance, etc...Seriously, my life and productivity have improved dramatically since I started outsourcing the grunt work I used to dread doing. For me it's well worth it to pay someone else 1/2 or 1/3 of what I make per hour to do something I would just stress out over and procrastinate.With my money I'm buying: 1) Time (a scarce resource) and 2) Will-power (an even scarcer resource).For instance, I have a side project that requires a lot of web scraping. I found a great scraper guy in southeast asia that is a much better scraper than me and is happy to work for 1/10th of what I make per hour. It's a great trade off.I can then use the time and will-power to do all sorts of more important things to me - exercise, intense learning, systems design, etc. Specifically, with my extra time lately, I've worked on marathon training, speed reading, learning short-hand, esoteric ruby concepts, practicing the ukulele, etc.If you are getting stuck on something you don't want to do - outsource it. Even if a poorly skilled outsourcer makes it through my hiring process (rare, but can happen) and they churn out some crap - it is oddly motivating for me to go and fix the issue and get it right. For some reason I get a mental block sometimes when starting a project from scratch - but if I hire someone else to take a stab at it and they fail horribly, I'm like "Wo, that sucked, you really should have done it this way...." My motivation is then unblocked since I'm 'fixing' something, not 'creating from scratch'.oDesk is basically a store where you can go and trade money for time and will-power. Seriously, how cool is that ;)