1. Use Parkinson's Law to your advantage. Parkinson's Law states: Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.
There's a reason why you wait until the last five hours before you write that paper or begin researching for that project: It's because you're given that much time.

It's amazing how productive we get when we face an impending deadline.
An artificial way to beat procrastination is to give yourself a hard deadline.

2. Break down big tasks into minuscule tasks. This, I feel, is a much more effective strategy than giving myself an imaginary deadline or any other artificial motivation.
A big reason why we postpone is because when we think, "I need to write that research paper" or "I need to plan that trip," those tasks actually contain so many sub-tasks that it creates a mental overload, so we'd rather take the path of least resistance and wait until Parkinson's Law kicks in. The way to beat this is to break down the task into micro-steps.

If my task is to write a paper, here's what the sub-tasks might look like:

*. Come up with five ideas and write them down.

*. Narrow down the list to three ideas.

*. Conduct basic research (skim) for each idea, taking mental notes.

*. Pick the most interesting/appropriate idea.

*. Find three articles/papers/studies on the topic.

*. Read each article and take notes.

*. Review all the notes

*. Formulate a general thesis.

*. Create a simple outline of paper

*. Write one paragraph

*.Etc., etc.

If you take it one step at a time, it's not daunting at all. Come up with five ideas? Shoot, I could do that right now. It'd take me, what, one minute? Two minutes tops? Easy. Low barrier of entry. Maybe if I'm feeling good, I'll come up with seven ideas.
Finding three articles or studies? Google is my friend. As long as I don't have to find and read them all at the same time — easy peasy.

Write one paragraph? Shoot, a second grader can do that. I can do that.

If u want to tackle procrastination properly, break your tasks down into minuscule tasks that take very little effort to do. Instead of feeling obligated to dedicate 10 hours to a project all at once, why not take it on 2-3 minutes at a time? Anyone can do 2-3 minutes.

F.p material. . .nyc 1 @op