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Re:Dear procrastinator by kevinstubbs on Monday August 15, 2011 @06:02PM (#2888919)
Many times, my cause for procrastinating is usually due to a sense of fear. That if I start, I will not know what to do, or that the direction I must take on a task is too unclear for me to feel comfortable starting... Many times, the quickest way to fix this is just to write a todo list and do a few items. Every few hours I'll just compile a new list and keep going off that.
Re:Dear procrastinator by silverbax88 on Monday August 15, 2011 @09:45PM (#2889454)
One of the best anti-procrastination hacks I ever heard was right here on HN: When you absolutely cannot get motivated to finish something, make a detailed list of exactly the steps needed to finish the task/project. Once the list is complete you will automatically begin working on the first step.

Not my idea but it works for me 100% of the time.

Re:Dear procrastinator by sdoctor on Tuesday August 16, 2011 @02:58AM (#2890182)
how often do you procrastinate on making the list? by the time you've started making the list, you weren't going to procrastinate any longer anyway.
Re:Dear procrastinator by silverbax88 on Tuesday August 16, 2011 @01:13PM (#2891985)
it turns out, never. Making a list is one of the things we, or at least I, do as 'busy work' to avoid real work. In this case, it turns out that once we have a detailed step-by-step course to resolution, hard tasks suddenly seem quite easy.
Re:Dear procrastinator by jodrellblank on Tuesday August 16, 2011 @08:32AM (#2890880)
That if I start, I will not know what to do, or that the direction I must take on a task is too unclear for me to feel comfortable starting...

That doesn't sound like a well examined state; go looking for why you fear "not knowing what to do", there's bound to be one or many things hiding behind that description.