Procrastination is so much more than a case of laziness or any of the other underlying causes you hear about.
Putting off doing something is about protecting yourself. Protecting yourself from the possible discovery that you are a failure, that you're not good at something that might very well be very important to you.
Clean your room, organize your sock drawer, and alphabetize your music collection. Do anything that takes time and holds little meaning rather than focusing on a task that has become more than just a task for you, something that could redefine who you are.
I used to consider myself a creative thinker, gifted with good ideas for stories and adequate writing ability. Once I overcame procrastination and committed myself to doing this task I made the unfortunate discovery that I was barely competent.
It would have been so much easier for a person with a disposition such as the one I have (globally negative) to put off starting on the path to writing or half heartedly producing work in glorified spurts of creativity instead of facing up to this fact. To face up to the fact that the very thing I love to do more than anything else in the world, the very thing that gives my life so much of its meaning, is something that I'm not good at. Something that I'll probably never be good at, even with decades spent in front of a keyboard.
I know this now, but rather than accept exactly what this means for my life I choose to procrastinate on the next logical step and continue punishing myself in a craft that eludes me in both creativity and technique.
