“Telling yourself to put in more effort won't defeat procrastination: that hectoring inner voice thinks it's fighting laziness when in fact it's getting in the way, substituting bad feeling for useful endeavour – against which, to make things worse, our hedonistic sides rebel. “Telling yourself 'you have to' will provoke an inner conflict that divides your energies, blocks motivation, and will make [tasks] more difficult,” argues Neil Fiore in his new book The Now Habit At Work. Instead, firmly schedule plenty of free-time activities you truly enjoy: weaken the Puritan link between “working hard” and “making life awful”, and the work part gets easier, too. The Puritans, Pallotta concedes, “had a strong work ethic. [But] they also burned witches at the stake... We need new role models.” - × × ×