Procrastination | You Are Not So Smart
This article is a bit on the long side, but the bottom line is worth it: Your effort is better spent outsmarting future-you than making empty promises through plugging dates into a calendar.
For an even longer, but much better written article, check out the New Yorker review of a new book, The Thief of Time: Philosophical Essays on Procrastination.
You must be adept at thinking about thinking to defeat yourself at procrastination. You must realize there is the you who sits there now reading this, and there is a you sometime in the future who will be influenced by a different set of ideas and desires, a you in a different setting where an alternate palette of brain functions will be available for painting reality. The trick is to accept the now you will not be the person facing those choices, it will be the future you—a person who can’t be trusted. Future-you will give in, and then you’ll go back to being now-you and feel weak and ashamed. Now-you must trick future-you into doing what is right for both parties.