I'm a horrendous world-class procrastinator and I've accepted I always will be to some extent. I've tried about a million different tricks, some help a little, most not at all. And there's no one thing alone that will do it.

But I am better and my biggest advice after all that

1. Persistence - keep trying different strategies and keep paying attention to your procrastination. This is going to be a lifelong problem, probably, with lots of causes that require lots of approaches - so keep going back to it.

2. Get any anxiety or depression treated. Seriously - it's the number one thing that has helped me. I'm still a procrastinator, but the difference between how much when I'm depressed and how much when I'm not is enormous. (Although working on procrastination willl help depression and anxiety too).

3. Distraction. This is counterintuitive, but there's something about distracting part of your brain that can make it easier to start things and persist on them - especially annoying, boring tasks. I've actually seen research on this. Listening to music, or a radio program while you do whatever you're trying to do can make it easier to get moving and keep moving.

4. Cues. Put cues for what you need to do everywhere. Tape lists of things you need to do next to your computer. Put signs on your mirror, rubber bands on your finger. Carry a notebook with a todo list. Set Outlook with lots of alarms for what needs to be done.

5. Make a big heave at the beginning. That's when you really need to make almost a physical effort to get yourself doing things - expect that to be hard and think of it as lifting weights or something. But once you're going on something usually it becomes self-perpetuating. It's much easier to keep doing something than to start doing something.

6. Routines. It's much easier to do something that you routinely do every day - day in day out - than it is to get yourself moving at random, unscheduled times when you can think of a thousand other things you'd rather be doing. Start by setting up a really easy routine you do once a day and try to build on it. Have once a day, once a week (say every Monday), and once a month routines (say pay the bills every 20th of the month or whatever).

7. Self-discipline is a skill, not innate. Think of it like building muscles. Start with easy things - like your posture, or something really simple, and practice it. The more you practice and find methods to discipline yourself the better at it you will become.