We typically procrastinate because the thought of certain tasks make us feel uncomfortable. And over time we have learnt a very successful way of removing these feelings - avoidance.
Avoidance is addictive as it immediately removes the uncomfortable feelings that we experience. Unfortunately, like an addictive drug, we need to keep repeating the avoidance to get further relief from the feelings we are so wanting to not feel!
So procrastination feeds on itself!
As a starting point, when you experience an uncomfortable feeling associated with a task, rather than immediately avoiding it:
1. Focus on the thing that you had planned or needed to do
2. Visualise yourself doing it
3. After a minute rate your uncomfortability (maybe on a scale 0-10)
4. Return to visualising doing the task for another minute
5. Rate your uncomfortability
5. Repeat this for 5 minutes
What you will notice is a reduction in the intensity of the uncomfortability that you experience. If coupled with breathing exercises this is likely to allow you to dip your toe into the task and give it a go.
The main point of this exercise is to expose ourselves to those things that make us uncomfortable and by doing so, we learn to tolerate such uncomfortable feelings. Then when we are feeling more relaxed and less uncomfortable, we can increasingly control our behaviours, rather than reacting to our feelings.