A Tom Petty song said the waiting is the hardest part, but I’m going to posit here that getting started is the hardest part.
If you’d like to trick your brain into being productive, here’s one way.
You have your work set before you (determined ahead of time—another trick), and you tell yourself that you’re going to write (for example) for just two minutes. You’re just getting started, that’s all. Then, you do exactly that. You start writing. You do nothing else. You ignore all distractions. Just bang out some words and fill a screen or a sheet of paper. Nothing in the world exists except the command, “WRITE.” For those two minutes, it is your need, your desire, yea, even your absolute compulsion. Do it.
If you only write for two minutes, that’s more than you would have accomplished if you hadn’t started writing that day. But most days, you’ll get much more productivity out of your brain than that. Most of the time, you’ll get going and keep going long past that two-minute mark. When that happens, just roll with it, baby.
If you want to be really sneaky, tell yourself that you’re only going to work for a couple of minutes, but don’t set that timer. That way, it never rings; it won’t startle you out of your groove, and who knows how long you might write or what you might create. Blessings!