I’ve been struggling with the same problem and found a solution that works for me. I was procrastinating up to 8 hours per day, on average.
The core idea is to make a contract with oneself to not exceed a daily budget of procrastination and implement it. Say, 4 hours per day, on average. Everything else follows from it.
There are few critical components to make this work:
1. You need to admit you have a problem that needs fixing. If you procrastinate so much, quite possibly you are depressed. Like, for realz. That's OK.
2. Self-understanding that this is a matter of survival. Either you will make this work, or your life will be truly miserable, up to and including destroying your career, relationships and health.
3. Comprehensive time tracking. If you were watching a YouTube video while eating and spent extra 5 minutes to finish off the video after you were done with your meal, you need to track these 5 minutes. If you pick up your phone in bed just to quickly scroll through pages for 3 minutes, you need to track it. I use Excel for that - very fast & easy if you know the right keyboard shortcuts.
4. You need to do the tracking _yourself_. This is to (a) increase awareness you procrastinated and (b) introduce friction to doing it.
5. Social accountability. I have a weekly session with a coach where I report if I stayed within the quota, or not. But anybody you don't want to disappoint will do.
6. You are good as long as you stay within the budget. If you spend the time you reclaimed by laying on the couch and looking at the ceiling for 3 hours - that's a huge win. More on that below.
7. As always, you cannot neglect your fundamentals: sleep, exercise, proper diet, socializing. But now you will have time to deal with it.
Once you implement this process, few observation immediately come to mind:
1. You have so much more time and mental energy. Wow.
2. If you fail to track these short 3-5 minute burst of procrastination, they quickly add up to half an hour, an hour, two hours. Hence, you really cannot slip on that. If you slip, you also won’t be able to trust yourself, which is critical.
3. You become bored with that extra time, meaning you finally have time to think and talk to yourself. I cannot overstate how important that is. You can use this time to direct your thoughts / visualize better outcomes and hence motivate yourself to do the right thing (aka Cognitive Behavioral Therapy).
4. Once you keep doing it successfully for some time, you can now trust yourself that you are in control. This is huge, because your emotions now will be on your side.
5. You become less afraid of doing productive things, because you actually have time to do them, instead of thinking "what's the point, I have 1 hour in the day left after wasting all of it, I am tired, and I will give into my procrastination cravings anyway".
6. You will sleep way more because now you cannot procrastinate in bed. This will repay your sleep debt and restore your energy levels, making everything else much easier to tackle.
Overall, this strategy works for me very well because (a) I admitted to myself I have a problem that is very serious. This means I need to seek help and develop a process to solve it. And (b) I don’t mind doing comprehensive time tracking of my procrastination time, which is a critical part of the entire process.
The core idea is to make a contract with oneself to not exceed a daily budget of procrastination and implement it. Say, 4 hours per day, on average. Everything else follows from it.
There are few critical components to make this work:
1. You need to admit you have a problem that needs fixing. If you procrastinate so much, quite possibly you are depressed. Like, for realz. That's OK.
2. Self-understanding that this is a matter of survival. Either you will make this work, or your life will be truly miserable, up to and including destroying your career, relationships and health.
3. Comprehensive time tracking. If you were watching a YouTube video while eating and spent extra 5 minutes to finish off the video after you were done with your meal, you need to track these 5 minutes. If you pick up your phone in bed just to quickly scroll through pages for 3 minutes, you need to track it. I use Excel for that - very fast & easy if you know the right keyboard shortcuts.
4. You need to do the tracking _yourself_. This is to (a) increase awareness you procrastinated and (b) introduce friction to doing it.
5. Social accountability. I have a weekly session with a coach where I report if I stayed within the quota, or not. But anybody you don't want to disappoint will do.
6. You are good as long as you stay within the budget. If you spend the time you reclaimed by laying on the couch and looking at the ceiling for 3 hours - that's a huge win. More on that below.
7. As always, you cannot neglect your fundamentals: sleep, exercise, proper diet, socializing. But now you will have time to deal with it.
Once you implement this process, few observation immediately come to mind:
1. You have so much more time and mental energy. Wow.
2. If you fail to track these short 3-5 minute burst of procrastination, they quickly add up to half an hour, an hour, two hours. Hence, you really cannot slip on that. If you slip, you also won’t be able to trust yourself, which is critical.
3. You become bored with that extra time, meaning you finally have time to think and talk to yourself. I cannot overstate how important that is. You can use this time to direct your thoughts / visualize better outcomes and hence motivate yourself to do the right thing (aka Cognitive Behavioral Therapy).
4. Once you keep doing it successfully for some time, you can now trust yourself that you are in control. This is huge, because your emotions now will be on your side.
5. You become less afraid of doing productive things, because you actually have time to do them, instead of thinking "what's the point, I have 1 hour in the day left after wasting all of it, I am tired, and I will give into my procrastination cravings anyway".
6. You will sleep way more because now you cannot procrastinate in bed. This will repay your sleep debt and restore your energy levels, making everything else much easier to tackle.
Overall, this strategy works for me very well because (a) I admitted to myself I have a problem that is very serious. This means I need to seek help and develop a process to solve it. And (b) I don’t mind doing comprehensive time tracking of my procrastination time, which is a critical part of the entire process.
Further reading:
"Digital Minimalism" by Cal Newport
"Feeling Good" by David D. Burns