If possible remove unhelpful triggers from your environment.
And from your head. I believe that for many chronic procrastinators, the worst things are already inside their heads. Sure, the things from outside helped to create and reinforce the internal habits, but the machine is already working inside the head, reinforcing itself, and will likely continue to do so even when the external triggers are removed.
Which is not an argument against removing them. Just a reminder that the work is not over then. Otherwise, all we would need to get rid of procrastination would be to rent some trigger-free workplace.
EDIT: I don’t have a full solution, but I guess this is approximately the right direction: Explore your own thoughts, beliefs and behaviors, go into specific details, think causally about reinforcement, and notice which things create “ugh fields” around your work. Those you have to eliminate. (The problem is, sometimes you have a meta-”ugh field” around doing this. For example, a fear of losing identity, or refusing to do anything that doesn’t pattern-match some superficial idea of rationality. Then you have some meta-work to do.) Don’t use the far mode, always go near. For example many people believe that you can fix people using punishments. That’s very high-status belief, but it doesn’t work for intellectual endeavors. Punishing yourself for failing to work on X, or for working on X not well enough, or not fast enough… that’s building an “ugh field” around X and around anything that reminds you of X. In other words, this is one of those poisonous beliefs that you better get out of your head.
One example he gives is imagining a cockroach crawling on the chocolate mousse that a server at a restaurant offers.
Following some LW article which said that identity and pride could be successfully abused for this purpose, when I see a chocolate, I say to myself: “Yeah, it’s kinda good, but not good enough for me. I deserve the most healthy and tasty food.” (But of course this is better followed by buying something that fits the description. Luckily, there are a few vegetable-based options for me.)
And from your head. I believe that for many chronic procrastinators, the worst things are already inside their heads. Sure, the things from outside helped to create and reinforce the internal habits, but the machine is already working inside the head, reinforcing itself, and will likely continue to do so even when the external triggers are removed.
Which is not an argument against removing them. Just a reminder that the work is not over then. Otherwise, all we would need to get rid of procrastination would be to rent some trigger-free workplace.
EDIT: I don’t have a full solution, but I guess this is approximately the right direction: Explore your own thoughts, beliefs and behaviors, go into specific details, think causally about reinforcement, and notice which things create “ugh fields” around your work. Those you have to eliminate. (The problem is, sometimes you have a meta-”ugh field” around doing this. For example, a fear of losing identity, or refusing to do anything that doesn’t pattern-match some superficial idea of rationality. Then you have some meta-work to do.) Don’t use the far mode, always go near. For example many people believe that you can fix people using punishments. That’s very high-status belief, but it doesn’t work for intellectual endeavors. Punishing yourself for failing to work on X, or for working on X not well enough, or not fast enough… that’s building an “ugh field” around X and around anything that reminds you of X. In other words, this is one of those poisonous beliefs that you better get out of your head.
Following some LW article which said that identity and pride could be successfully abused for this purpose, when I see a chocolate, I say to myself: “Yeah, it’s kinda good, but not good enough for me. I deserve the most healthy and tasty food.” (But of course this is better followed by buying something that fits the description. Luckily, there are a few vegetable-based options for me.)