This is one of those random subjects that, as so often happens, collides with other topics that end up being something worth mentioning.

Lately I’ve had discussions with others and have listened (usually via Twitter or forums) about the drudgery of working when one simply doesn’t feel like it. I can point to myself as the first person to grump about this, believe me!

However, as entrepreneurs we have a special challenge in where our threshold rests in getting things done: if we don’t work – we don’t make money. Unlike a standard-issue job (even on commission) we don’t get a paycheck merely by showing up and surviving until 5pm. Most of us, even those of us who’ve built up to some level of remote control, still have elements of our business that require us doing something or else it doesn’t get done… and money doesn’t get made.

There’s something that I’ve been doing a LOT of lately because it helped get me through my first year of working from home with a new, untested business: mixing things I love to do or rarely have a chance to do with doing the work I must do that I hate to do.

Here’s the best example of something I began back in 2001 when I was developing a new business, as a new stay-at-home father, out of a back bedroom with a laptop perched on a printer stand:

I’d listen to those audio tapes (remember cassettes?) of classic radio programs while coding my website and adding content.

I’m not a coder and, in spite of a fairly broad background in web design, I hate it and it’s always a chore. However, to keep my sanity while I typed away with a baby a mere five feet away, both of us stuck in an apartment while mommy was at work and it was working up a full-blown Midwest blizzard outside I’d listen to old radio programs like “The Shadow Knows” or even the new “Rejection Slip Theater.” It was great! It was a little “me” time that I could just zone off into and endure the hours of coding, writing, designing, and learning mixed in-between bouts of fussy baby, diaper changes, naps, feedings, and general love and attention to my first daughter. Sleep deprivation aside, it was invigorating in a weird way.

To this day, when I really start to get bogged down in the tedium of writing or coding, radio, good old fashioned terrestrial radio programs get me through. As a matter of fact I even found (many years ago in the 90′s) that some of my fondest memories were of listening to Art Bell on Coast to Coast AM talk about bigfoot, aliens, and ghosts into the wee hours of the morning while I pulled long shifts as a firefighter.

To this day I can’t listen to my favorite Danish heavy metal band “Pretty Maids” without feeling like I’m back working as the foreman of an overnight cleaning crew for a major grocery store – I hear the music and feel compelled to start cleaning and scrubbing all the floors in the house!

I find that if I do something I enjoy enough that’s still compatible with work – the work is bearable and the “habit” carries over into a way I can kickstart myself into doing work in return! I can make myself get with it by treating myself to whatever it is I enjoy while I do it.

Tonight, I’m going to indulge in an odd, but useful ritual that developed (again, quite by accident): I’m going to listen to either TWiT (This Week in Tech – a geek podcast) or an episode of DiggNation while I clean the kitchen. I just stick the MacBook Pro on the kitchen table, turn up the sound, and amazingly I feel compelled to get to cleaning dishes, counters, and the floor! Seriously – I actually get into the mood to do that very work because I’ve developed an association of enjoyment with the task like a good Russian dog and now it’s actually part of what gets me going. As a matter of fact, I can even “reward” myself by saving that special time where I listen to music, radio, podcasts for the stretches when I’ve got work to do because it becomes a treat and the work itself… it becomes secondary – just a time-killer while I enjoy what I’m really doing.

I rarely watch television. I’ve watched, perhaps, a total of 2 hours of television in the last week and some of that was with my children. I rarely sit around doing nothing because I’ve always got work to do, a wife and children I spend time with, exercise to do, or something vaguely productive.

This is one of the ways I stay enthusiastic about doing things that normally would bore me to tears. So, if you’re needing to find creative ways (and us entrepreneurs can be creative folks) I suggest picking something special you enjoy… music, radio, TV in the background, a phone call with a friend, or something you can replicate day after day to go hand-in-hand with the work you need to accomplish day after day. Develop a relationship between that joy and that job and I think you’ll find that it won’t take long before the two go together and you can hammer yourself out of a work rut and become enthusiastic again.

I see there’s a new episode of DiggNation out. You know what that means, don’t you? …dishes, counter top, sweep and mop the floor and probably even clean the fridge! Whee!