Reading, Riting, 'Rithmetic

Bother, now I actually have readers.  Readers means people to be entertained.  That means responsibility.  Also, some of you know when seminar is and are going to notice if I keep skipping Mondays.  Bugger.  At least I can justify the lateness of this post with essay writing period.  Speaking of which, guess what my next post is.

Moving on.

I've always been kind of a difficult person to motivate.  I either want to do something, or I don't.  Sometimes, I can look at a big enough picture to see how, despite a task's disagreeableness, its consequences are desirable enough to surmount that (or vice versa, even though I want to do something, its consequences are sufficiently undesirable to dissuade me).

In past, the approaching deadline of such a task as has a deadline has been sufficient to jolt me into a state of productivity, simply because failing to complete a task is itself something worth avoiding.  The burst of productivity may or may not be sufficient to get the task completely done, but it would come all the same, so even a task that wasn't done on time would be done late, and even a task that wasn't done well would be, quite simply, done.

This has been less and less the case this year.  I have some suspicions as to what may have been the catalyst for this change, but none of them really excuse the lack of my simple ability to perform when required.  (This is mostly an academic problem, but not entirely.)  Given that that catalyst is an immovable, is there anything to be done besides sucking it up and just doing better?  This is a question I ask in a manner both specific to my situation at present and in general -- when the cause of a bad habit remains, how does one break it?  That whole Nike thing, "Just do it"...is that really always applicable to overcoming our faults?