Coworking sessions are great ime. People come in with some project they want to work on for the next 2 hours and every 30 or 45 minutes the host checks in on everyone and everyone says what they did or didn’t accomplish, everyone does a little yay to every accomplishment even small ones each check in so it’s all dopamine. I’ve seen this model successful in multiple definitions of craft (writing, coding, painting etc)

I'm working on a book and I drafted a number of friends as "alpha readers" to whom I send every chapter when it's done. While I'm not on a strict deadline, the desire to demonstrate to them that I'm "still making progress" has been massively helpful.

I've been writing a book and I do something similar. After every writing session I show my partner what I've written. It gives me instant positive feedback and keeps me from spending too much time rereading/editing old chapters or whatever. I've been able to relax on that a little bit as the project goes on, sometimes I have to spend every other session planning or doing research, but at first it really helped me to get the habit going.

I'm writing fiction so this tip isn't as useful to me, but for non-fiction you could try writing a series of blog posts, and then later stitching those together into your book. The posts (hopefully) give you some quick social likes to give you that dopamine hit.

Use a laptop, leave the charger at home. Get your work done before the battery dies. Depending on the computer this could be stress inducing or no big deal.

When I was taking my employment break, I got some good work done in the park like this. No coworkers meant I didn't really need to be online most of the time either.

There's gyms that charge you more the less you show up.

This wouldn't really be the same, but use a habit tracking app based on streaks (aka not breaking the chain) to make consistent progress on two learning projects on my own time (mathematics and programming).

The goal is small for each (just one module of a textbook per day for mathematics, and a third to half of a chapter of a programming book per day), but it's doable in spare time, and I keep reminding myself that I can only make progress on these projects if I at least hit that goal each day.

There are a few low-cost services that have been mentioned on here before that provide the accountability thing, eg Focusmate, Boss As A Service, etc

There's a startup that did this, they posted on here about it, but I can't seem to remember how to find them.

Found this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20220288 but they don't seem to have survived.

Beeminder? I've seen them mentioned here a time or two, and iirc they use a not wholly dissimilar "do the thing or lose some money" model.

I have good experience with FocusMate. It allows you to schedule specifc time and a specific duration. My form of procastination is to never start, but i show up to appointments, so just starting my day with this, gets the ball rolling.

Stikk is a company that specializes in this, and they say their numbers indicate it works.