Can’t speak for GP, but can speak to my own experiences with this. My friends euphemistically called me a productive procrastinator.
Via therapy I’ve come to realise that the procrastination is ultimately driven by underlying anxiety. That anxiety comes from growing up in an environment where my ADHD frequently resulted in me being punished for not working the same way other children did, not completing tasks as expected, and generally struggling with school work despite being “intelligent”. In short being in an environment that simply didn’t accept it was possible to be “intelligent” and struggle with school life at the same time, and thus punished me for being “lazy”.
The procrastination becomes a coping mechanism to put off the expected punishment from attempting to do a task, and failing/struggling with it. Along with deep associations with those tasks being given by authority figures and having arbitrary deadlines.
The mature coping mechanism has been to confront the anxiety head on, which is much easier said than done, and working on the underlying causes of the anxiety via therapy, mindfulness, and other pretty standard mental health techniques. It’s hard work, and I fail often, but I’ve been failing less and less as time goes on.
The side effect of dealing with the anxiety directly is less procrastination. Not because I’m better at not procrastinating, but simply because I’m getting better at coping and dealing with the anxiety that triggers procrastination.
A coping strategy is something you turn to to "cope" with a problem when the underlying cause of your problem is beyond your direct control.
If you are in a position to address the underlying cause directly, I've found it to be a better option than "coping". Therapy was a big part of identifying the problems. Ultimately, as a sibling commenter mentioned, task avoidance is often a sign of (usually very well disguised from oneself) underlying anxiety. I was always extremely confident & presented as "capable" but ultimately that was a shallow facade that became impossible to maintain over a long period.
I haven't stopped procrastinating but I do it far less & have a pretty good success rate with overcoming it when I apply myself. I'm not using any "tools" to do that beyond (hard fought) self-awareness.
My problem is that I know the underlying cause is anxiety, and I still can't bring myself to do anything about it. Like, I have to book a flight for travel in a month. I don't much like traveling so I don't do much of it, and I'm traveling by myself. That anxiety, coupled with my anxiety from flying, have had me planning to book this flight for over two months unsuccessfully. There's a good chance I'll just make up some excuse to not go, even though I really, really want to. The anxiety is literally crippling.
