It's not about self-awareness, is the thing. If you notice you're doing something after you've already started doing it, then you already did it compulsively, without thinking. The goal is to start doing it on purpose so that the compulsion doesn't even have to happen at all. By doing this, you teach your brain that you don't need the compulsion anymore.
I read a paper recently that proposed that procrastination involves a slow increase in anxiety as a deadline approaches and a stimulus that is conditioned by the removal of that anxiety. That is, chronic procrastinators receive a greater reward when they wait until the deadline. This is supported by animal studies.
It is possible that there is a similar mechanism here. The choice to delay gratification is akin to procrastination; the urge itself becomes a conditioned stimulus reinforced by the strong reward of delaying gratification until the scheduled time.
> That is, chronic procrastinators receive a greater reward when they wait until the deadline.
Yeah, absolutely. I have severe ADHD and this is my experience. I usually can't do something until it's completely necessary, and doing it at the last second is the most exciting/rewarding.
In school I used to finish all my homework before I even went home, because forcing myself to do that was more exciting/rewarding than doing it any other way. But this same mechanism is responsible for a bunch of my procrastination, too :)
I also tend to hate my chores a lot, absolutely despise doing them, but I think that's on purpose to try to make the act of completing them more rewarding. Completing something I don't care about is meh, getting rid of something I absolutely hate is good.
Not aware of any research on it, no. Monks do it, but I don't know if they do it in the exact same way I describe. I searched through my history to see if I could find the article where I heard this, but I can't find it.
