Procrastination and self image

This is the self perpetuating cycle of procrastination and self image:

People who are perfectionists are often procrastinators. Procrastination is a way to deal with fear of failure. By this I mean, people who low self esteem and do not have an intrinsic sense of self worth use procrastination as a way to protect their self image. Procrastinators are first confronted by a challenging project, and since they have low self esteem they feel as if their worth as a person is entirely determined by their performance at a particular task. Therefore, if they fail at this task they will be a failure as a person. They are paralyzed by fear of failure, and they also use procrastination as a way of motivating themselves in an indirect way - in other words, if a person procrastinates a task long enough, sooner or later they are faced with a deadline they have to meet. So ther person completes the task because it has to be done by the deadline - but if they perform less than perfectly at the task they can tell themselves that since they completed the task under deadline, their less than perfect performance is not a true reflection of their abilities. In that way the person is able to preserve his sense of self worth, however shaky that may be.

You'd think that success at a given task will naturally reinforce a person's self image, but a person locked in this cycle never feels as if they've given their all and diminishes their chances of experiencing true success. A way to break this cycle is to change the patterns that prevent one from achieving a sense of intrinsic self worth.