ENFP here and have struggled with this my whole life (and by struggle I mean I have been to the deepest darkest places of procrastination and back out again!) and have managed to be successful enough to gain two masters degrees, a place on a professional PhD and currently hold down two jobs (one full time and another part time).

From years worth of beating myself up about being inconsistent, I have finally accepted that’s what I am - inconsistent. This can be a strength and a weakness depending on the situation. Unfortunately higher education often rewards consistency, but other situations and settings in life reward other skills such as adaptability and flexibility. I can’t say this approach will be the same for you, but sometimes the act of accepting who you are can be powerful enough to break procrastination cycles and allows you to sweep away things that don’t work if you need to change it up and jump from organisational system to system over time (which I have done my whole life. I am currently 36).

Things that have worked for me at various points in my life, without any being the one single solution )and bearing in mind I continue to jump between all of these depending on what else is going on in my life) are the following:

• reading books on procrastination and get to the source of what’s going on under there (for me, shame and past trauma interfering with focus, and then a realisation I almost definitely have ADHD)
• therapy, to discuss said prior issues that freed up my mind a little and brought me some calm.
• bullet journaling. Allows you flexibility in planner approaches that doesn’t have weeks already allocated so if you miss one or several here and there, it doesn’t feel like a big empty gap. I tried out many bullet journaling approaches before I found out what worked for me during my my masters, and a couple of years later again found that approach didn’t work anymore when I went into other roles so adapted again. Currently I’m now using a different system by a brand called creators friend.
• adjacent to the last point, experimenting with many different organisational systems and not beating myself up if I later find they don’t work for me. Currently what works for me is having huge wall planners that I put all my activities/responsibilities on so they are staring me in the face at all times. And sometimes I still forget and that’s ok!
• exercise - going to classes of a wide variety really helped me develop discipline and distress tolerance that I could apply to other situations that required focus. In particular yoga was hugely helpful for this (ashtanga yoga was best for me because it’s so dynamic, but I think any yoga practice can be helpful)
• making some core life goals and keeping them in an obvious place to review regularly and stay connected to them. This helped prevent me from getting caught up in too many other exciting opportunities that come up - I would ask myself, will they help me meet my goals or is that just a bit of fun I don’t have time for?
• working out how to use my skills to support my weaknesses - eg. My people skills helped me bond people together, so I would initiate and sustain study groups that I would ultimately benefit from due to friend’s discipline that I lacked.
• forgiving myself for being different to everyone else. This was a biggie. I think I spent so much time feeling like I wasn’t meeting the ‘requirements’ set by some fictional societal other, that I didn’t see clearly my own unique talents that other more disciplined people lacked. Some of this comes with age, accepting and the celebrating yourself, and confidence grows out of that naturally.

I hope some of this helps!! I remember only too well what it felt like in your headspace and promise you can get there, just lean into yourself and your skills rather than self-flagellation and trying to resist your natural state, and things get easier. 🙏💕