Battling procrastination

This should work for almost everyone:

• Go outside and do some exercise
• Think of someone you want to do better than

Things that might work:

• Visualise yourself completing the task

Things applicable to essay/report writers:

• Create a document skeleton
• If this doesn't get you going, revise it - as you go write in whatever content comes to mind. I call this the iterative approach.
  
• Get your template/general look all sorted out - you'll appreciate it later when the fruits of your procrastination come to bear

Preventative methods:

• Start early because:
• a small addition to your knowledge at time X1 becomes magnified at time X1 + a, where a is a couple of weeks. I think this is due to the human subconscious mind processing new information over time.
• This is the key: find a way to leverage/motivate the change in yourself. Main attributes to consider: pain or pleasure in the extreme. This is very hard to do later on, so again: START EARLY.
  

Things to remember:

• Stick to your beliefs and standards
  
• The beliefs must match the standards. If you have high standards but believe you are lazy and will do things at the last minute, then you may as well lower your standards right now.
• The pain of not doing what you feel you must, SHOULD be more than the pain you go through while procrastinating. Often this is not true because it is easy to cop out by doing things at the last minute and then forgetting the whole sordid episode occurred once the deadline has passed. This is common, but is a terrible state of affairs.
• You only have a finite time to complete the task. Do not overestimate your effort/time ratio. By now you should know what you're capable of. The first change to make is your motivation, NOT your work rate, because how could you possibly do this without first increasing your motivation.
  

Bad things (to avoid):

• Self-sabotaging thoughts