Speaking as the guy who avoided doing taxes since 2012 and has only just completed the final four years - even though completing them earlier would have meant significant government assistance $, which I've now missed through my tardiness, my question is—just how mentally ill, on a scale of 1 to 10, with 1 being "kind of" and 10 being "Ontario Hospital for the Insane", am I?

You don't really have to answer that. But in my case, it seems that no amount of positive reward could induce me to complete and no punishment, like missing out on about $8,000, was effective. Then I read something that made me consider that I might be seriously ADHD, so that my avoidance is of anything that is mundane or "boring". My avoidance felt utterly impenetrable, like a brick wall that I couldn't pass through, until finally something gave way and I did.

One application of conditioning that intrigued me was the application of methods used to train animals to humans. The idea went that, to train e.g. an elephant to stand on one leg on a box, you had to break down the whole sequence and then lavish praise and reinforce any small step towards each part of the sequence; negative reinforcement was off the table.

Similarly, if one wanted to encourage one's teenage son to put his dirty clothes in the hamper and not on the floor, you would lavish praise when he used the hamper, and ignore any other action. I would have tried this except I have no kids and I live alone.

I thought that Skinner and behaviorism were no longer held in high regard since the development of cognitive behavior therapy? Though from an evidence standpoint, focusing on the stimulus-response conditioning seems to make perfect sense. Psychology is a fascinating science.