Delay is what we do every day:

1. “I need to pass the coursework tomorrow, which I have not started yet, but in order to concentrate, I now need to rest and drink coffee”
2. “I want to start running in the morning, but first I need to pass the session and find a good job that will provide me stability and confidence”
3. “Before you start working, I need to answer 11 emails and talk with friends on ICQ about a summer trip to Spain so as not to be distracted during the day”

Dan Ariely in one of the speeches ( Dan Ariely on Overcoming Procrastination ) describes procrastination as “Choosing momentary joys to the detriment of long-term success”:

- I have to pass this course work to avoid adverse effects in the future. But now I want to watch a video on YouTube ...

However, it is easy to find many opposite examples in which we, on the contrary, prefer long-term success to the detriment of momentary joys:

1. “In the next two years, I will work 10 hours a day to save money for a 3-month trip to the sacred places of Thailand”
2. “At this job I will stay another 10 years, I will enter the top management and I will be able to ride a bike in Southeast Asia for six months without thinking about money”
3. “I want to retire young people, so I want to start my own business and work 14 hours a day for the first few years”

And, reducing the scale to the framework of one day, we get:
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- No, I can't come for your birthday / go to the beach / have dinner with my family / drive to Egypt for the May holidays, because we are completing a big project, plus I also took home work ...

In another speech, Dan Ariely gave fantastic examples of irrational behavior ( Dan Ariely asks, ) where the driving factor is unwillingness to make difficult decisions. It seems to me that this one is especially much closer to the true reason for delay, rather than the inability to sacrifice momentary pleasure for long-term success.

So, my hypothesis is this: man is not driven by joy and pleasure, but by being in a comfort zone and avoiding difficult decisions. Choosing between two options, a person chooses not something that will bring more pleasure, but something that does not force him to make difficult decisions or experience discomfort.

Let us examine 6 situations using the new hypothesis:

1. “I need to pass the coursework tomorrow, which I have not started yet, but in order to concentrate, I now need to rest and drink coffee”
   
   (Coursework puts a lot of questions: “What to write?”, “Where to get information?”, “Should I start from the table of contents, or do it later?”, “What should I write in the introduction?”, “Or maybe write an introduction later?” In order to postpone the inevitability, we invent the need for coffee.)
   
   
2. “I want to start running in the morning, but first I need to pass the session and find a good job that will provide me stability and confidence”
   
   (Trying to justify yourself: running before work, getting up 2 hours earlier, going 2 hours earlier and not staying up late is much harder than continuing to go to bed late and, without getting enough sleep, go to college / to work)
   
   
3. “Before you start working, I need to answer 12 emails and talk with friends on ICQ about a summer trip to Spain so as not to be distracted during the day”
   
   (In the work we are waiting for difficult questions, and, not wanting to take on them, we do any other "work" that seems "mandatory")
   
   
4. “In the next two years, I will work 10 hours a day to save money for a 3-month trip to the sacred places of Thailand”
   
   (It’s easy to continue working and taking a new job from the boss, it does not go beyond the comfort zone. It’s difficult to be in a foreign country without knowing the language and culture, look for places to sleep every day, eat exotic food and answer the question: “What am I here I would do it now, like everyone else, and ate hamburgers at McDonalds instead of these fried insects. ”The mythical journey is just an excuse for daily work, inertia, and boring life.)
5. “At this job I will stay another 10 years, I will enter the top management and I will be able to ride a bike in Southeast Asia for six months without thinking about money.”
   
   (Similar situation)
   
   
6. “I want to retire young people, so I want to start my own business and work 14 hours a day for the first few years”
   
   (If you want to earn a million dollars and then travel the world, guess what the chip is? Almost any trip can be done for less than $ 3000, many cost less than 3000 rubles , and some do not cost anything )
   
   
7. Another example: “I have long wanted to go snowboarding / jumping with a parachute / rafting down the river in a kayak, but my hands will not reach.” We refuse pleasure for the sake of tranquility, inaction and comfort (and we can even invent a good reason: to replace the blown light bulbs in the kitchen and fix the leaking faucet in the bathroom).

The bottom line

Procrastination, delaying or postponing matters for tomorrow is the choice of one case instead of another. This is a choice of easy and comfortable actions instead of hard (get up and run) or uncomfortable (uncomfortable conversation with the boss). Do not leave yourself this choice.

Once again: procrastination is a choice. The way to deal with delay is not to leave yourself a choice.

Despite the traditional joke: “Tomorrow I will stop postponing things for tomorrow,” I propose to do just that: a plan for tomorrow is written today. A plan that will not leave a choice. For example, "from 12 to 18 I will work on the site":

Here are some key points:

1. 12:00 - a clear time to start work. 12:00 is a hard deadline, which says that we need to finish all the other things by 12:00, whatever the cost, and start work at 12:00 exactly.
   
   
2. During this period, I deal only with the site. Mail, ICQ, YouTube-a, friends, interesting books and articles that help our education, at this time does not exist. The concentration of attention increases every time I stop trying to get distracted by extraneous things.
   
   
3. It is always necessary to divide planning and work in time. (It is rational to think about what we will do tomorrow much easier than about what we have to do right now: it’s very easy to make a coursework tomorrow, but now you want to drink coffee at the same time, chat in ICQ, read book, sleep and watch videos on YouTube instead of coursework.)

PS

Combating delay is not the same thing as increasing productivity. For me, the struggle with delay is control over one’s own life and a way to live life consciously. A way to get the desired pleasure from life, and not to abandon it, leaving yourself in the comfort zone.