I get fed up listening to my own excuses too.
Great to see it! I force myself to draw when I feel like I'm being lazy or just procrastinating. I force myself to just scribble and draw random things that come to mind with little effort, it forces me to still draw but also mess around with shapes; it really helps to get you a bit warmed up when you're feeling a bit off too, since you may end up just pouring effort into a random thing that came to mind.
I'm doing a mantra to get things done even if I'm not intentionally trying to finish. Force myself to spend 5-15 minutes drawing per day. It doesn't matter what the end result looks like or if I continue yesterday's work, as long as I just keep repeating this system and focusing on that limited time. I think that has more value than hours spent doing something while distracted. Idk, works for me.
Yeah that really helps ensure you get some practice in. I really wasn't feeling it today but I picked up my pen and some paper and just started practicing really simple perspectives. Nothing detailed, just the shapes behind the body relative to perspective. Isn't requiring much brain power or attention, and I'm still noticing that I get it.
When I started to learn to draw I definitely dived into things and got ahead of myself, that absolutely resulted in me burning out fast because everything was just shit and I clearly had little idea of what I was doing. The moment I started to relax and do these types of exercises, I saw that I was improving and enjoying it more.
But I still have these days where procrastination tries to seep through and stop me. It's so hard to escape that sometimes, like you said too: you feed yourself those excuses and accept them. To see that you're doing that, and then breaking from it, is definitely a good thing.
What resources have you been using to learn? Figure Drawing Design and Invention by Michael Hampton has been one of the best I've found so far.