Have you ever been successful in changing your personality?

+1 here too. Living abroad and especially learning another language changed me, and a positive way. Not exactly practical for everyone, but if more people did this the world would be a more understanding place.

Did it make me procrastinate less? I'll tell you the day after tomorrow =\ (not really).

What did get me out of the procrastination habit though, was the Getting Things Done book, I'm not ashamed to say. I'm not an adherent of everything in that book, but I followed the basic system it outlines until it became second nature.

The system allowed me to clear my plate enough for me to realize that the cause of my procrastination was a sort of paralyzing fear of all the 'stuff' I needed and wanted to do. The amorphous blob of stuff was completely overwhelming. It can be a very scary thing. And that fear gets converted into inaction. But when you have a reliable framework like GTD to break the stuff down into concrete action steps, that fear is evaporates, and you can actually DO.

I'm an armchair psychologist over here, but this was the case for me. YMMV.

Also, to echo the point of the post above, my girlfriend at the time (now wife) also was totally not supportive of the GTD thing...but later became very impressed with the transformation. Just because people aren't supportive of you changing, doesn't mean they don't love you, and that they won't come around. I catch myself behaving this way towards other people all the time.

There's a lot of excellent forward looking advice here - I particularly agree with those suggesting you set some bigger goals to motivate yourself, and commit for the 4 weeks / 30 days it takes to build a habit.

I have also found benefit working on my past with a personal coach (therapist, shrink, good friend - whatever works for you). A lot of my procrastination came from feeling guilty relaxing and doing casual things just for me - if I did that task right now I'd be able to relax, but because I felt guilty about that outcome I would drag out the task in front of me.

There were some other root causes I needed to work through, but in the last 3 months I've seen a massive turnaround in my personal energy and productivity. Results may vary, but I was ready to change and found dealing with past stuff helped me stick to the future goals and planning.

You can change this trait! I promise you, you're not stuck with it.

I'm about your age and I was a huge procrastinator and underachiever until only 2-3 years ago. Since then, mostly through "grit", I was able to acquire a job as a senior software engineer, despite having no degree, and not even owning a computer until I was 23.

I suspect you are like me in that you are much more interested in novelty and idea generation than in execution. I always had good ideas and did well on aptitude tests, but was seriously short on follow-through. I overcame my procrastination mainly following two principles:

1. Focus on one main project/goal at a time. Period. I know it sucks, but it's simply too easy to get distracted if you don't handcuff yourself. Every project has interesting parts and boring parts. If you have multiple projects, you end up thinking about the interesting part about some other project as soon as you get to a boring part of the first.

Figure that you'll do everything you want to do serially instead of in parallel. This makes it all the clearer how little time there is in life to do everything you want to do, and the realization is painful, but that's too bad. You aren't actually getting more done just because you've got multiple projects going on at the same time. In fact, for some (most?) of us, you're getting less done.

When you don't try to do anything seriously, it seems like you can do everything. It will be demoralizing to see how slow progress is when you're focusing on only one project. It's still worth it in the end, and you'll finally get a better understanding of the actual scope of your capabilities. This will allow you to make better decisions about time expenditure going forward.

Make the one thing you focus on have a definite end point. A goal. It can't be "get better at the piano". It has to be, "give a live performance".

Maybe some people can have multiple concurrent goals/projects. You can't. The sooner you face up to this, the better off you'll be. You'll feel like you're cutting off the boundless possibilities open to you. You ARE. That's life.

2. Do the boring parts. If you can learn to take pride in doing the boring parts, you will be formidable. A lot of idea people/dreamers never figure this out. Ideas are so damned fun to think about.

Count your blessings. In my opinion, it's easier to learn to do the boring parts than it is to become creative.

The advantage of focusing on one goal/project is that there's nowhere to hide when you get to the boring parts. If you want to finish, you have to do them. Your mind can't casually escape into thinking about the interesting part of another problem because there is no other problem. This is huge because the problem of avoiding boring parts is abstract, often gradual. It sneaks up on you. You've got to constantly be on guard for avoiding the boring parts of the project.

These days, I always know what my project is, and I can state it succinctly in one sentence. I keep it in my mind at all times so I know exactly where I'm going. In addition to the original inspiration, I take pride in powering through the dull intermediate steps of a project that most everyone else fall down on.

When you have those moments where you do actually get things done, are you still focusing on the mundane tasks? That might be why the inspiration isn't lasting. Set aside a small amount of time each day to work on some creative task. Don't obsess too much over picking something really impressive or useful; start small. Stick with it, and eventually you'll find yourself more energized toward everything else.

"We should be taught not to wait for inspiration to start a thing. Action always generates inspiration. Inspiration seldom generates action." -Frank Tibolt

yes, I have been in the US for the last year and a half, right now in fact I even have about 6 weeks all to myself since my wife is back in India - so it gives me a lot of time to work on stuff if I can get to keep myself focused!Thanks guys lots of amazing amazing advice!

I have lived in US for a year before too, atleast in my company the work culture is much better here where people come in on time and leave on time and focus while working - so I kinda am more productive here than back home and this also gives me more free time