Maybe someday I'll be at the point where my fitness goals require regularly pushing through the pain, but right now I want to push through the resistance with m

Maybe someday I'll be at the point where my fitness goals require regularly pushing through the pain, but right now I want to push through the resistance with mental work. As evidenced by the fact that I do eventually do most everything I'm supposed to be working on, I don't think any of my work is too hard absolutely--it only feels too hard or too long or too boring for how I'm feeling at the moment. I'm a programmer doing almost all client work. Eventual goal is to build a different kind of business around building my own stuff. One probable analog is knowing the course. That should mean it's easier to work well on tasks that I can see the end of, but it should also mean that it's easier to do something very much like something I've done before. The first may be helpful, the second is obvious and not helpful. I have no direct competitors to keep in view or focus on beating. Maybe I can hack my brain to think about the work competitively somehow. If there's an analog to focusing on the running, I'm not sure how it would work.