Path of least resistance

It seems to me that the most fragile part of any work is just before you get started. Once you get into a groove it's easy to keep going, but before you start you have a lot of options and no particular investment in any of them. At that point it always seems like there are other, more tempting things to pursue.

In fact, I think one of the main differences between work and play is that play is easy to get into – you just start playing. Sometimes play can be just as hard as work, but games almost always have a really easy entry point: you just click "continue game". Every time you're done with one thing, the game presents you with a new thing immediately afterwards. I'd call this the quality of having low resistance.

But there's no reason your work can't have low resistance, at least some of the time. If you specifically aim to have a clear "next thing" at each point, especially when you're stepping away from a project, or know you'll be finishing your current task soon. The goal is to never be at a point where there's something easier to do than the work you want to be doing.

And it probably doesn't hurt to increase the resistance of things you want to do less either.