Here's a realization that scared me to death that I don't procrastinate any more: The whole life only exists in the current moment. The reason being that the past doesn't exist any more, and the future has yet to come into existence. Hence all my life exists only in the current moment.
This leads to the conclusion that if I procrastinate for even a bit moment, I'm wasting away all my life. This is the most scary conclusion I've ever had and it works wonders to drag me back to work.
I've spent some time trying to impress this thought into my mind – likewise Steve Jobs' daily reminder that you are going to die – but I just can't make myself care. The issue for me is that wasting away is really quite nice in the present moment. I really do enjoy procrastinating. Sure, I don't enjoy tit as much as doing things that I love when I'm not worrying about something else subconsciously, but it's so much easier to just drown it out. Why not?
After some thought and experimentation, I came to the conclusion that I need external motivation to kick me out of this cycle. Internal motivation doesn't work for me. The things that works better than anything else is setting up my tasks so that other people are dependent on me finishing them.
If you just think you will probably die tomorrow it won't really work because secretly you don't believe that. It didn't work for me until I was talking to myself the moment is _all_ my life. If it's not all your life you'll feel fine wasting it because you always have more.
As for external motivations, I guess everyone is different. I sweat on external pressures and I avoid doing them at the last moment then I procrastinate because I feel worse and worse missing the deadline. I guess everyone works differently :)
You don't need to work every minute. All you need to do is to not waste it away. So go skiing for a full day is still considered making good use of the current moment than reading reddit. For me, I think not wasting my life away means I'm either contributing to the society by working or I'm making my self a better person by working out, skiing, reading books etc.
I think you have to be fully engaged in any activity you are making. If you want to relax, relax in a full paced way. Not worrying about the work you have to make.
If you must work, work in a fast-paced way, and make the job done.
The worst kind of works is the one multi-tasked. You dont get in a 'flow' state that is necessary for the most jobs people here in hacker news makes.
I can see that being good practical advice for getting things done, but I'm less sure it's good (or at least universal) life advice, especially to follow all the time. My model for a good day spent is a lot of intermingled puttering around, reading, thinking, relaxing, working, to make unexpected connections between things, find new angles on problems, and generally understand how everything fits together better. Like the way a Douglas Hofstadter book "flows". I really, really dislike the "work-hard / play-hard" lifestyle; just doesn't work for me at all.
Yup, living only in the current moment without worrying about the past or upcoming moments solves this too. Easier to get into work flow, and much more fun when skiing!
This leads to the conclusion that if I procrastinate for even a bit moment, I'm wasting away all my life. This is the most scary conclusion I've ever had and it works wonders to drag me back to work.