If a friend were to suggest that they paid you to come in a couple of afternoons a week to keep their books for them, or clean their house, or do their filing, and you had the time to spare, would you find it difficult to do?
You probably feel that you have better things to do with your time, but I am sure that if you did decide to help them you would have no difficulty doing the job.
So how come your own accounts are in disorder, your house is in chaos, your filing is behindhand? (They’re not? — Ok, I believe you!)
Why not employ someone else to come in and sort these things out for you? or better still why not employ YOURSELF to do it? You would be able to do the job perfectly easily if you were doing it for someone else, so why is it so difficult when it comes to doing it for yourself?
So for instance you might employ yourself as your own bookkeeper for a couple of afternoons a week. Agree your times of work with yourself. And go to work on your accounts exactly as if you were going to work for someone else. So if you were being paid to do a couple of afternoons a week for someone else, you would keep those time slots blocked out in your diary and wouldn’t allow anything else to interfere with them (or you would if you wanted to keep your job!). So do the same for yourself. And you wouldn’t be tempted to do anything else while you were working either. Do the same for yourself.
You can reinforce the illusion by working in a different place from where you usually work when you are being “yourself”. Or dress differently. Whatever will give you the necessary distance from the task. When I act as my own accountant I often take all the books down to the local public library, where I am completely isolated from my normal distractions.
You can give yourself a grand title like “Director of Finances”. And you can extend this principle to being your own “Director of Marketing”, “Director of Operations” — whatever you like.