Researched and read-out from SubReddit /productivity, with permission from u/Awesome_Pal

Procrastination is Caused by Emotion, Nothing Else. Here's How to Deal.
Procrastination isn't caused by poor time management, so there's no time management system in the world that will help you fix it. Procrastination is not a moral failing, nor a lack of discipline. Trying to appeal to your willpower and push through won't work. Procrastination isn't laziness. Developing a better work ethic or better habits is not the key to success if you're a chronic procrastinator. 

I'm sure many of you (including me) have tried all the systems and tips out there to fix your problem, and none of them have worked. Maybe your "new journey" lasted all of a day or two as you tried to implement your new strategy, and then you went back to your old, procrastinating self. Feelings of guilt, shame, depression, defeat, anxiety all well up again, discouraging you from even trying. You avoid your responsibilities because they seem too hard, too painful to face. "Why can't you just do things like normal people?" you tell yourself.
The reason you can't is because you're overlooking the actual cause of procrastination - emotional dysregulation. If you have ADHD, a mood disorder, or are sensitive to emotion, you're going to have a hard time regulating your emotions, particularly when it comes to tasks or responsibilities that require some effort. You tend to get over-emotional about normal tasks, convincing yourself that they're harder than they are. Negative emotion about something leads to negative thoughts, which leads to procrastination. You've felt and then talked your way out of doing something. To eradicate the negative emotions, you turn to more pleasurable activities to counter them and bring you back to a more comfortable place emotionally.

the key to beating procrastination is learning how to regulate those negative emotions. So how do you do that?

You remove the thought that whatever you need to do as difficult. It's not. Reading a chapter of a book isn't hard. You open the book, start reading, maybe underline some passages or take notes if it's academic in nature, and then close the book when you're done. Your mind has unreasonably built up that activity as a threat or something that will cause suffering to you. But reading a book is a very benign activity. Your mind is lying to you. How many times have you found something to be way easier once you've started than you had built up in your head? Even if it's what we'd label a "difficult" task - maybe the book has a lot of unfamiliar scientific terms you have to learn. So what? All you have to do is learn some new words. It's not that hard, yet our emotions make us believe a monster will be lurking in the shadows waiting to pounce if we start reading, or doing that math assignment, or start on that work project. It's irrational emotion controlling you.

Start telling yourself that the things you need to do are not hard; in fact they're very easy. This thing you need to do is not a big deal at all. Downplay the difficulty (because it's likely not as difficult as you imagine), and convince yourself that doing this thing will be a breeze. Don't allow the emotion of resistance to enter the picture. You need to reframe how you think about your tasks/activities in a positive way, tell yourself they're easy to do, and the negative emotion you usually have towards them will stay away. In other words - cut off your emotions about a task before they take hold. Regulate them. You're an adult, and you have the capacity to do this. 

So next time you're faced with doing something you usually procrastinate on, focus on tamping down your negative emotions, tell yourself the task is easy to do and no big deal, and you'll find that resistance vanish.

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