1. When I see myself wanting to procrastinate, I ask myself 'If I follow this feeling, will it increase my power (i.e. capacity/agency/utility) or decrease it?'. Then I have a dialogue with myself: Nope, let's refocus, maybe try reading things out loud or draw a diagram or some other perspective change OR Yeah, I should stop for now, do something else, as long as that increases my power.
2. I observed that usually procrastination really is tied to novelty, quite similar with how it's presented in the article so I did this thing: instead of going on YouTube or games I started typing exercises online. After some time, I realised that I could get better at typing and get some extra-novelty by typing an existing book! So I have a Tampermonkey script that, whenever I try to go on a random typing website, redirects me to a website where I can type books (I could push it as a gist if anyone's interested). It stores in Local Storage what page I reached and from where I left them of. I got to read On the Origin of Species this way and now I type around 100 WPM from 80 WPM.
Budhist monks would simply do a mandala for the sake of it. Then they destroy it afterward, the whole purpose is to get some reps training focus.
I previously attributed that to having lots of variety and freedom, but the consequence of those factors was indeed novelty.
I want to mention Neil Fiore's excellent book The Now Habit, which is a practical manual on overcoming procrastination. The core thesis is training yourself out of the Victim Mindset, with language like "I have to", and into the Producer Mindset, with language like "I choose to."
What's interesting to me is that this isn't an arbitrary choice. "I have to" is actually a delusion.
Think of the most extreme scenario. Someone has a gun and is "forcing" you to blow up a school. Do you "have to" do it? Or would it be better to say no?
If that freedom holds even in the most extreme scenario... doesn't it always hold?
Sometimes your options are truly terrible, but you always have a choice.
That might sound too philosophical, but I think that's an important distinction to learn to recognize in everyday life.
Because the failure to recognize it is what supports this delusion of "I have to", which seems to be the main cause of procrastination: the resentment and pushing against perceived loss of autonomy.
So my meaning here is that it isn't just more useful to think this way, as some psychological trick, but that it is actually more true as well.
That said, I'm not sure about the novelty thing. I'd rate the greatest long term project in my life as being staying fit, athletic, and healthy as I near 50, in spite of some horrible injuries and setbacks, and remaining thus far in a reasonably happy marriage. In both of those pursuits, novelty is almost the anthesis to success. People program hop and never improve, and substitute one-night stands and serial cheating for any form of lifelong relationship. To me, it is just habit-formation and basic discipline, trying to always remind myself what truly matters. Heck, it's probably even fear as much as anything else. I know I'm going to be hurting terribly in my 60s and 70s if I'm alone and unhealthy, regardless of what else I may have achieved, and if I wait until then to try and cram lifetime pursuits into a single decade, it'll be a lot harder than simply starting in my 20s, doing a little bit every week, and sticking with it in spite of how much of a grind it might be at times, because I know how much it will mean to future me and I have to make the choice that future me matters just as much as present me.
In contrast, I'm not convinced that consistently uploading a lot of videos to YouTube is all that important, but of course this guy is free to have his own priorities.
I use that one and have found it provides a massive benefit to mental health, at least for my personality type which tends to be consumed with work.
In the "Unschedule", a.k.a. Guilt-Free Play Time, you deliberately set away time for enjoyable activities. You put them in your calendar. (And then you actually do them!)
This removes a major cause of resentment, "life's all work and no play" which drives that psychological resistance to work.
While I'm at it, I'll mention one more :) The Work of Worrying... for a situation you're avoiding, intentionally go through the worst case scenario, and then realize, actually, I'll still be okay. Even if that terrible situation happens... I'll survive, I'll move on, I'll be okay.
A positive diagnosis is life changing.