"Sometimes it's because I'm scared I'll fail, whereas if I never start, I'll never risk that."
The idea from the article is that you are actually wrong about what you think your reasons for procrastinating are. They may feel intuitive to you, but they are inaccurate. The idea is that if you identify with your future self more often, you will align the interests. People who naturally do this procrastinate less.
Rather than thinking about fear of failure, imagine a future self that has done the thing. Even imagine a future self that has done the thing poorly and another that has done it well. Imagine a future self that just gets to talk about doing the thing poorly to someone interesting at a party. Imagine another future self that has been rewarded and recognized for having done the thing well or just got lucky. Identify with those future selves and let them compete with your current self. Each of the future selves results in doing the thing. They are way cooler than the current self who wants to not do the thing. Make it a competition between done-well and done-poorly to see who wins rather than letting done-not-at-all getting too much attention.
The idea from the article is that you are actually wrong about what you think your reasons for procrastinating are. They may feel intuitive to you, but they are inaccurate. The idea is that if you identify with your future self more often, you will align the interests. People who naturally do this procrastinate less.
Rather than thinking about fear of failure, imagine a future self that has done the thing. Even imagine a future self that has done the thing poorly and another that has done it well. Imagine a future self that just gets to talk about doing the thing poorly to someone interesting at a party. Imagine another future self that has been rewarded and recognized for having done the thing well or just got lucky. Identify with those future selves and let them compete with your current self. Each of the future selves results in doing the thing. They are way cooler than the current self who wants to not do the thing. Make it a competition between done-well and done-poorly to see who wins rather than letting done-not-at-all getting too much attention.