I used to do that technique for studying for the GRE. And it worked like a charm for sure (aside: Barron's GRE word list had the word <n-word>dly as meaning lazy in 2007 still. I was a kid in India but even to me it sounded wrong). Neil's full time work is to write. I'm sure this is what he does 9-5 or whenever he writes profesdionally. I doubt he just sits without doing nothing in the weekend when he could be playing with his kids. Thats the issue. If I was demotivated to do this in my day job that's one thing. Motivating yourself for extra work is where it's hard.