I was thinking about this article and feel it &#x27;clicked&#x27; for me. Especially since HN had another article about procrastination recently [1]. I know abalone is saying it&#x27;s all about emotional management but...I feel the writer of the article was confused since they quote &#x27;you don&#x27;t tell a depressed person to be less apathetic&#x27; yet the author seems like they are encouraging emotional management.<p>My big takeaway from this article and the last [1] is that two major ideas are being seen in the research:<p>1. Forgive yourself.
2. Be kind to your future self.<p>#1 can be done with some mental tricks, if someone is having difficulty. Namely, thinking about &#x27;what if my friend did x [something i just did], what would be my response to them&#x27;. This answer is generally positive and procrastinators tend to be hard on themselves, so...looking at how we would treat others would be a mental hack, for us to treat ourselves better.<p>#2 is where I feel something just &#x27;clicked&#x27; for me just now. In some ways, it&#x27;s developing on the idea of &#x27;a procrastinator would be nice to someone else, so be nice to yourself&#x27;. Since this &#x27;someone else&#x27; is your future you.<p>Self control, emotional regulation, yadda yadda. I think all of those can help but don&#x27;t help everyone. They didn&#x27;t help me.<p>These two beliefs and mental hacks have given me insight to my behavior. I hope the next time this issue comes up on HN, that we can have more research into the procrastinator&#x27;s disassociation between time and self. Because to me, that&#x27;s the problem, not self-control nor emotional regulation.<p>[1] - <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=11541675" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=11541675</a>