Words on a page

This tip at Lifehack.org advises you to start a writing task at the end. It sounds strange, but in some cases this tip is invaluable. You take out a piece of paper or fire up a word processor, then write something like this

By the end of this piece, the following will have happened: ____ , ____, _____.

Then, you just fill in the blanks and work from there to build the framework of an argument, plot, or article.

While the author of the tip uses it mainly for writing fiction, you can easily adapt it to other kinds of writing.