Ask Entrepreneurs: Productivity tips for a chronic procrastinator?

I'm a chronic procrastinator, and I want to change. I have hundreds of ideas jotted down on a notepad I keep on my table, but I never get around to implementing those. There just seems to be this inertia that stops me from ever starting to work on my tasks. "I'll do it next month, I have exams right now", "Now? I can't work in this state of mind!", "Let me just finish reading my RSS feeds. I got to keep myself updated" are some of the excuses I give myself.

Of course, once I do start working on something, I get in the zone and completely lose track of time. Once in the zone, I'll work at a task until I've completed it. Overcoming the "inertia" is the difficult part.

This is what I've done to combat my situation: I've started keeping a TODO list. I've also cleared my desk of unneeded items and removed useless feeds from my RSS reader. I'm getting into the habit of putting my MacBook to sleep when I'm not working. That way, I can't wander off to Digg or the WTF subreddit. I feel I'm about 2x more productive now, but I'm still far from the stage where I can spend more than 50% of my computer time doing productive tasks.

Tips? Links? Blogs? Also, I love anecdotes :)

Block all those sites at your router. My firmware (tomato) lets me block some sites all the time (digg) and some for certain times of day (hn).

Convince yourself that every line of code you write is worth $10k.

Finally, make this your mantra: http://seoblackhat.com/2007/01/29/do-it-fucking-now/

I hope you would find the following links useful at least in some ways.

PG's Brilliant Essay: http://www.paulgraham.com/procrastination.html

How to Procrastinate Like Leonardo da Vinci: http://chronicle.com/temp/reprint.php?id=zs61txc4kwr4kd1q1rj...

Procrastinating Again? How to Kick the Habit: http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=procrastinating-again

Letter to a Young Procrastinator: http://www.slate.com/id/2190918/pagenum/all/

Also, a quick search of HN using Google, should provide a lot of food for thought and anecdotes. There have been a number of discussions on this topic here.

http://www.google.com/search?q=site:news.ycombinator.com+pro...

I have the same problems. There are two tricks that i find quite helpful:

1. Find a team partner - and you will be cornered to start "get things done". Otherwise, you can't keep show up everyday without any progress

2. Have a weekly team target - we have it as weekly iterations. Always release something out every week.

Well, the good news are, you realize your problems and looking for solutions.

Bill Gates seems to have the same problem with procrastination, early on in his career: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ic1Ro4LkKw

Suck it up. Stop reading blogs, stop reading HN, stop making excuses. Start working. There are no tips that will break you out of it - just self discipline.

I was you once. GTD by David Allen helped. Going to the gym daily with my brother (who is a gym rat) helped, but I finally realized that I had everything in the world that people are dieing to get and I was squandering that gift by wasting my time.

Procrastinating is not an illness, it is a decision. You have chosen to be lazy, only you can change that.

Everything else is just smoke and mirrors.