In a way, the procrastination problem suggests its own solution, says Steel. If you're the kind of person who waits for the deadline, be sure to set some for every day so that you face a series of deadlines that culminate in the final act. If that means you have to set deadlines for every 20 minutes in order to keep focused, then do it.

Back to the food analogy: Diversions are like sweets - if one is within arm's length, you grab it. So get rid of the diversions at hand. One quick way to bump up productivity by 10 or 15 percent, says Steel, is to get rid of that ding on your e-mail.

"If you don't have to answer e-mail messages as soon as they come in, turn off the icon. You can check the icon whenever it's convenient." And get rid of any notion you have that multitasking is the way to go. Steel can cite figures that estimate the cost of multitasking at hundreds of billions of dollars a year in hours that are lost spent jumping from one task to the next.

"We focus on things that are close, so we often let opportunities go by to get small pleasures right now. I can't imagine how many billions of dollars Minesweeper has cost," says Steel.
For acute procrastinators, the only way to control the cravings for a new computer game is to uninstall the game at the end of every session and then reinstall it when they want to play it again. It's the same approach with TV - fighting chronic procrastination may require that you take the batteries out of the remote each time you finish watching. The idea is to put a step between yourself and the comfortable time waster rather than let yourself slide into it like it's a vat of warm oil, only to clamber out hours later with nothing to show for the time.