Instinctively, I'd agree with this kind of stuff but after reading through I want to say, "Where's the evidence?" If you're claiming this stuff, tell me how it's worked for you and others in terms of reaching success, and don't cop out and say it's "perfectly logical" - there's nothing logical about being human.
I used to play around with these kinds of hacks all the time. They didn't get me all that much ahead though.
It wasn't until I learned to push myself to give my day job a top notch performance and eke out four more hours of coding at night, that things really started to take off.
It is similar to losing weight for me, in that all the mind tricks and fancy diets didn't do a thing until I learned to accept the hunger that comes with actually losing weight.
Can't speak for the parent but I think I understand where he's coming from. For me, it was reading the section on procrastination (which requires reading the preceding sections on dysfunctional thought patterns) in David Burns' "Feeling Good" that did the job.
Once you see all the possible reasons people procrastinate listed in front of you, and a plan of action for each scenario, it's pretty difficult to procrastinate because every time you find yourself in a potential procrastination scenario your brain goes "oh hang on, I know what I'm doing, it's X from Feeling Good". At that point you can execute the anti-procrastination plan, or, as in my present case, I don't even bother any more because I've done it enough to know I'll invariably end up getting to work and so I just go right ahead and do it.
The key thing here is you need to (a) be committed to change and (b) you need to study the book and do the exercises. Refreshing my procrastination pattern matching memory from time to time by rereading the section is critical. Many people aren't ready to stop procrastinating because they're not ready to take action. But just like debugging code, you just have to follow the chain of dependencies until you deal with successive root causes. Prochaska's "Changing for Good" put me on the path of awareness in this regard. Once you know what your brain is doing it's pretty difficult not to make progress.
But is that correlation vs causation? As someone who dedicates some time each day to what I want to succeed in, am I just aping some of the habits of the successful without really doing what matters?
And rightfully so. You know, I'd love to point to some monumental success but honestly it hasn't happened yet. So let me prove it for you in the near future - hope you'll follow Mindfolder's progress ;)
