That's the problem. I had some suffering from procrastination. Suffering does not exactly helps against it. A self reinforcing feedback loop so to say.

The Now Habit has solid advice. But it takes a lot of effort to implement that advice.

Get yourself together first. Sleep! A minimal Schedule! Rituals! Build a structure for yourself. If you fail here assess yourself and build up a structure for your in small steps from there. This works for me. If it does not work re-examine the situation, adapt. You need a minimal structure before you can even start to working on yourself.

Learn about stress and how it affects your mind and your body.

The basic idea is to switch your mind into a more mindful state so you can act conscious. You don't need meditation for that. That is in my experience too complicated if you have bigger issues. But these mindful moments. Work towards them. Their effects multiply.

Nothing will work without effort. That's a sad truth but a little momentum (even if it is external) can go a long way.

No need to be perfect. No need to aspire some vague world class. Just do the next logical thing that needs to be done. If this thing is to big, divide and conquer. Iterate.

Ah well... honestly would be nice if my words would help. Without being able to act upon it's all just talking and no walking.

Thanks nisa, I actually own the Now Habit, but haven't read it... I bet this is common :P

Since getting a Jawbone UP, I'm pretty rigorous about my sleep as I was able to get real data showing when/how sleep affects me and I have been able to optimize the right amount of sleep and when the best windows for waking up are, it's been a great help in building a better structure for my day-to-day.

I'm really self aware, I can tell when I am stressed (though this took work to develop, I wonder if that's generally true, I didn't know what stress was, or rather, I couldn't identify it in myself until I was about 27).

Everything does fall apart when there are strong external stressors that cannot be remedied with even your own hard work, but that's a separate issue I think.

> Everything does fall apart when there are strong external stressors that cannot be remedied with even your own hard work, but that's a separate issue I think.

For me that's exactly it. I have yet to find something that works. I don't know. Not giving a fuck does not work for me.

I see your point, however I don't think the advice is necessarily bad. For example, I put the world's easiest stuff on my todo list first -- something like "start the dev server" or "fix that typo". It's so easy that I can convince myself to do it, yet it gets me into "work mode".

Yeah you're right, but I think this doesn't work quite as well for the larger projects which are the crux of most procrastination issues.

Well, that's the trick. (Serial procrastinator here. Hello!) You can't think of a large project as a large project. Otherwise you'll never get it done. It's impossible by definition, because a larger project is a composite of a number of smaller tasks. So sometimes you end up having to trick yourself with "fix a typo" or "change this class name" or w/e. It has to be small and stupid enough that the activation cost is as low as possible.

Easier said than done, of course. Did I mention I'm procrastinating?

Of of the things I "trick" myself with is "you don't have to start working on it now, just look at the task list and split a couple of them into smaller sub tasks".

If I'm in a mood for putting things off, this provides an "excuse" that at the same time eventually results in a list that's fine-grained enough to convince myself to "just knock off a couple". Once I've then started, it's a lot easier. Sometimes it can lead to ludicrously detailed lists...

Good point :)

In particular for large projects it works very. I decide to work on it for only 15 minutes, doing something simple like making a folder with a text document with a list of things that needs to be done for the project. After that I take a decent break feeling good about myself before I start with the next 15 minutes.

Anxiety, which is at the core of procrastination according to the article, is not like depression. Making small progressive advances builds confidence and eventually leads to recovery. The most effective treatments for anxiety (CBT, exposure therapy etc.) are based on learning to work through the discomfort.

Yep, I used a bad metaphor when referring to depression, you are right.

>Also, personally, I've never had the "suffering" from failing when I put things off, so it's hard to believe that this method would work for me :(

That's the worst. A lot of people with ADHD (myself included) find that the stress response of an impending deadline is an extremely effective medication. It's a horrible way to live, but it reinforces itself by getting results.

That said, "just get started" is the closest thing to useful advice this article offers. Thinking about how good you'll feel when you finish a task barely qualifies as a "strategy", thinking about how bad you'll feel if you don't finish the task is exactly the kind of automatic response that causes procrastination, and "easy things first" is the kind of behavior that quickly leads to a todo-list you can't even bare to look at.

I've had luck recently with the Pomodoro technique. Actually, switching to Vitamin R2 on Mac which lets you adjust Pomodoro lengths - sometimes if doing 1/2 hour feels daunting I'll start with 10 minutes, or even start by allocating myself 1/2 hour to do something trivial - feels great when you can mark it as done in a fraction of the time.

Ditto, when I can maintain the attention span, pomodoro works wonders for me. Thanks for the tip on Vitamin R2, I hadn't heard of it. For me, I actually would prefer longer Pomodoros, sometimes the distraction cost of starting another timer when I'm mid task feels too high.