Feeding Celery to the Procrastination Monster

I have no intention of turning into 43 Folders-style productivity guru like Merlin Mann (He is amazing. Bookmark that site NOW.). Instead, I just want to post a few words about procrastination, and how I'm trying to beat the monster.

I've been a procrastination expert for years. If this were chess, I'd be an elite grandmaster and IBM would spend millions trying to build a computer that could out-procrastinate me. My trick is simple: if you don't feel like doing something, don't do it. Surf the Internet for a few more hours. God knows I haven't seen enough amateur videos of cats chasing laser pointers around and teenage skaters smashing their gonads into concrete embankments. This is the equivalent of taking your procrastination monster and cramming its face full of Doritos and double-stuff Oreos. It accomplishes nothing, and that makes the procrastination monster feel good.

But today, I have this thing I need to do, and I just don't want to do it. So what do I do? I'm feeding the procrastination monster. Instead of giving it junk food like "This is the exact moment I must reindex my MP3 collection...again," I'm trying to get my procrastination monster to eat healthy. I'm paying bills, I'm putting things I bought yesterday in the places where they belong: allergy pills to the medicine box, corkscrew to the kitchen drawer. I'm doing just about anything I can think of, shy of hunting just one more "You know you're from Oklahoma when..." lists online, to put this task off.

The procrastination monster is getting some celery today. The question is, how much will I be able to feed him?