When people find themselves procrastinating, they often respond to this situation by an “I have to work” strategy. But most of the time, this answer makes the problem gets even worse. Why? When you tell yourself that you’ll have to work hard all day long because you haven’t done anything the days before, that's a little like you'd say to yourself “Tomorrow, I’m gonna climb the Mount Everest!” while the highest top you reached recently is the second floor of your apartment building. The contrast between what you want to do and what you are used to do is such that you might get immediately discouraged, leading you to… procrastinate! Indeed, as soon as you'll start to work, the distance to the finish line will put you off and the little voice in your head will tell you how “you really suck”, pushing you forward to an incredibly instructive video about the "8 scientifically proven reasons why having a cat is good for you". After that, as soon as you'll realize the amount of time you just lost, you'll immediately order yourself this very powerful injunction : “I HAVE TO WORK!”
It seems like you entered a vicious circle in which you have a total loss of control over your time: rest seeps into work, and work (or the guilt of not working) seeps into rest. In the end, neither work nor rest ends up to being effective.
An “I have to work” strategy can be effective, but if you tested it inefficient many times, you'd better move to a different one…
What about an “I have to rest” strategy, then ? Not intuitive? That's right! But doesn't that make it even more interesting? Instead of starting your day by telling yourself “I have to work”, you’ll tell yourself “I have to rest” and then just set a few well defined periods of time dedicated to a limited well defined work. Because the goal you set becomes reachable, you’ll find yourself reaching it! And the little voice in your head will start deliver messages you haven’t heard for a long time : “I’M SO GOOD!”. But what will the voice say when you'll get back to rest between the devoted work periods? Well, the voice will keep telling you how good it is to be so good. Why? Because those resting times are not only DESERVED but also PLANNED which is something brand new. You just reversed the vicious circle into a virtuous circle. Congrats !
The following days, if necessary, you'll be allowed to enlarge the periods of time devoted to work. But not too much! Be careful!
Seems crazy? Just try….