Have you ever been successful in changing your personality?

Now here is the problem.From the time I can remember I have always been lazy and procastinate everything till the dead last moment(I have almost made procastination into an art form).Almost always I find some excuse or another to not do either the regular mundane day to day administrative type of work nor do I ever get to do the more "creative" type of work which I sincerely want to do.

Now a lot of people told me I am just a lazy jackass and should get off my ass and get something done.That does sound like a simple solution but every time I try by planning my day and focusing on my tasks it works out for a few days and if I am lucky even a week or so but inevitably I get back to my old ways.This leads to a lot of stress for me because I am never truly happy - its almost like one part of me wants to do something and another part of me does everything to prevent me from doing it and the vicious cycle never lets me have any kind of satisfaction with anything I do

Now I have started to believe that my laziness is a part of my personality and probably more hard wired in me than I think.

It would be truly truly helpful if anybody out here ever who suffered a similar problem and were able to get out of it can provide some advise or even if they were able to successfully change a personality trait for life.Thanks in advance

1. Set the bar low, and gradually raise it. Make your goal for tomorrow to work on a designated creative project for 30 minutes. If you can do it -- great. Set the same goal for the next day, or maybe a little more. Think of self-discipline training sort of like weight training. You can't suddenly, by dint of will, force yourself to bench press 600 pounds, let alone do a complete workout every day. Maybe your personal max right now is 30 minutes four times a week ... start with that and build from there.

2. [This is from the book Do It Tomorrow, which I recently read and enjoyed quite a bit.] Make your creative project your "current initiative," which means IT COMES FIRST. That might mean it's the first thing you do when you sit down at the computer after work (if you can't do it at work), or whatever ... but whatever you do, start working on it first, before getting bogged down in day-to-day stuff like answering email and reading HN :). As in (1), you don't need to set huge goals ...if you keep blasting away at something a little bit every morning, you'll start making some serious progress.

A person who is interested in quantum mechanics is obviously not the right type to perform tedious IT tasks amidst corporate dullness.

Save a little money, then travel a while and take a book an quantum mechanics with you. The rest will follow. My changes were never complete but they worked.

Maybe it's not you that needs to change but how you fit in with the dominant early-bird culture.

My own experience suggests changing personal behavior, much less personality traits, is an uphill struggle that requires substantial effort. Gaius is right on the 30 days to make a habit theory...

This advice is similar to Jerry Seinfeld's, which I also find to be excellent. http://lifehacker.com/software/motivation/jerry-seinfelds-pr...