Cal Newport (@Study Hacks) offers a succinct and inspiring reflection on deep procrastination, a concept direly familiar to myself and many of my friends. While most articles I’ve read about procrastination focus on means of damage control and getting back on the horse, his awareness of the root cause for much deep procrastination leads to sage advice. When reflecting on your own procrastination (and it’s not like we don’t all watch ourselves with disapproving stares as we continue to click refresh on Facebook), remember that your motivations in life are transitioning from doing things because other people know better to accomplishing feats because they’re necessary for you to fulfill your own ambitions. Doing so requires, “an acceptance that doing things well is hard, and always will be, and that you need to spend more time than you thought was necessary deciding which such hard things gain rights to your attention.”

Comments from his post offer a number of other points, including the importance of self-forgiveness for having shirked off one’s opportunities. They’re worth looking over.

When I have a few (intentionally) spare moments, I plan to make a wallpaper for my laptop that borrows his closing message:  ”None of this is easy. All of it is exciting.”