I personally think that, if you're lacking in motivation to do something but you realize it's something that needs to be done, you're lacking in self-discipline. Instead of waiting or hoping for motivation, you need to be disciplined and /do it/. Start with sleeping discipline: go to bed at 11 sharp, get up at 7 sharp, and stick with it. Excercise disipline: force yourself to go for a run every night, whether you feel up to it or not. That kinda thing.
With procrastination, the general advice is to force yourself to sit down and do something that needs to be done for five minutes. Surely you can do five minutes, right? Then reward with an instant-gratification thing. The general advice is to do 30 minutes, but I'd go down to just one minute or something if it's really bad.
Ask for help / monitoring, too. My brother had serious procrastination / concentration issues when he had to finish one of his last assignments. I was asked to help him out; I just asked him where he was, what needed to be doing, and er. Well, I just sat and read something while he worked.
So, self-discipline, and a friend to help you keep focused on the task at hand. Ask him to shock you if you reach out for distraction or something.
I have a more generic view. Lack of motivation can be caused by a number of factors, so the solution is different in each case. You are both right and wrong. In many cases, the "just start and then keep at it" method works. In many others it doesn't.
One clear example of the one-size-fits-all failing is explicit in your discipline of go to bed at 11 sharp get up at 7 sharp. It is known to only work for morning people. I tried exactly that, and for me it leads to slow unproductive mornings. Move the bedtime schedule to 3AM or 4AM and suddenly I get four or five great work hours in the night (way better than the equivalent hours in the morning).
It depends on how you're wired, and my point is that learning how each person is wired is a personal project, through trial and error. Erring is OK.
I personally think that, if you're lacking in motivation to do something but you realize it's something that needs to be done, you're lacking in self-discipline. Instead of waiting or hoping for motivation, you need to be disciplined and /do it/. Start with sleeping discipline: go to bed at 11 sharp, get up at 7 sharp, and stick with it. Excercise disipline: force yourself to go for a run every night, whether you feel up to it or not. That kinda thing.
With procrastination, the general advice is to force yourself to sit down and do something that needs to be done for five minutes. Surely you can do five minutes, right? Then reward with an instant-gratification thing. The general advice is to do 30 minutes, but I'd go down to just one minute or something if it's really bad.
Ask for help / monitoring, too. My brother had serious procrastination / concentration issues when he had to finish one of his last assignments. I was asked to help him out; I just asked him where he was, what needed to be doing, and er. Well, I just sat and read something while he worked.
So, self-discipline, and a friend to help you keep focused on the task at hand. Ask him to shock you if you reach out for distraction or something.