The ice bath after a hard race is miserable for ten minutes. Some recovery just has to be sat through.

Some of the work of getting better has no clever version. There is nothing to improve about sitting in cold water, no way to make it pleasant or shorter. You stay in it, and then it is over, and the staying was the whole method. A surprising amount of recovery is like that, including the kind that has nothing to do with muscles.

Pick the unpleasant thing you keep circling and set a timer for it this week. Ten minutes of cold, or ten minutes of the assignment you keep sliding past. Decide before you start that you are not going to negotiate with yourself once the clock is running.