During past few years, I have tried several times to increase physical activities such as walking and biking from home to office, but never be able to lose any weight. Only this time did I lose a significant amount of weight. Why do I succeed this time? This question puzzles me these days, as I am launching another self-directed behavioral change but with little success till now.

Apparently, the desire to change myself is always in my mind. It is the ultimate motivation that gets me started, pushes me through tough time, and leads me to the final success. However, this desire failed to motivate me achieving goals such as stopping procrastination or limiting internet usage. There are some fundamental differences between weight loss program and stopping procrastination.

The biggest difference between them is that weight loss is a physical modification, while stopping procrastination is a psychological issue. For physical modification, the result is obvious and measurable, while for most psychological changes, there is no concrete way to assess the progress. For example, each time I stand on the scale, I can see how much weight I have lost. I can feel my body become tight, and my belt become loose. On the other hand, during the treatment for stopping procrastination, I cannot see any thing tangible except that I am working on some projects that never end. I am easily lost in the illusion of failure.

Further, according to behavioral theories, reward is the most effective engine that sustains the behavioral modification. For weight loss program, every pound of weight loss is my reward. I don’t need any other rewards to motivate me moving forward. For stopping procrastination, there is no obvious reward. Finishing reading or writing one more page may seem to be a reward, but that is not as sensible as losing one pound of weight.

More important, in my weight loss program, I have set a specific goal that is achievable and designed a correct treatment regime that is doable. Although I revised the details constantly along the treatment process, the goal and regime were always clearly defined. I never doubted whether my treatment plan would work and whether my goal could be achieved. The confidence rises from my complete knowledge of weight management and thorough understandings of human physiology.

However, there is little consensus on how to stop procrastination. I don’t know exactly how procrastination happens, how to treat it, and whether it is possible to stop it. This vagueness adds difficulties for me to design a simple and effective way to treat procrastination.

Therefore, the secret of success lies in the details. Without specific goals and effective treatments, there is no hope of success.

Now rethinking about stopping procrastination, I can see why I have failed so many times no matter how innovative my methods were. Although I still believe that a small and simple treatment regime exists, I need to explicitly outline my goal and treatment plan. For example, I can set a positive goal such as carefully analyzing five articles and writing a short essay every day. It is achievable because this is what I usually do and should do. More time on these positive activities will certainly reduce the time on unproductive activities such as internet surfing. Let me try this for a few weeks.