I've noticed a lot of times what appears to be procrastination is actually uncertainty as to how to proceed. The mind recoils from it's own inadequacy and just labels the whole thing "bad". An advantage of breaking it down as you say is that it pushes the uncertainty a step further away. You may not know what's required to do your taxes, but you know what's required to search your email. Many times, the way to perform the next step is produced by performing the current one (e.g. your accountant tells you what documents are needed) so the overall task is not nearly as painful as you anticipated.