Think of a non-critical task and plan to accomplish it within a certain time frame. The more irrelevant the task, the better. Removing intrinsic and powerful subconscious drives, like fear and desire, will ensure your endeavor is a pure act of will. 

Set out to find and buy a purple ceramic butter dish, for instance.

Focus on this intent and dedicate all your attention to it, and do not relent until the task is completed, which will translate as a purple butter dish sitting on your countertop. Don’t lose focus after the purchase. Follow up on the activity until you get the intended result.

Observe what happens. 

Notice how the mundane object suddenly becomes scarce, how thoughts pop into your head to tell you this is a pointless waste of your time, how sudden emergencies demand your attention, and how you recoil at purple butter dishes, which now seem tasteless. 

Keep pursuing your goal while you record all these ancillary impulses that try to bounce you off course.

This happens with every task and every project, and that’s how most of them fail before they get off the ground: resistance.

Learning to push against resistance to a meaningless pursuit trains you to overcome resistance to things that matter.