Given that, I found a very simple method to do away with being unproductive while still getting a decent dose of procrastinating. Simply, I started to enrich any activity that tops the to-do list with an element I enjoy about pondering/procrastinating. For me it works repeatedly. I'll give you three examples.
1) On doing the tax-filing. Instead of plunging right into, I thought of people I'd like to contact anyway and make a cross-section of who just recently did that or sports an expertise in that. In my case it was my brother (we usually don't connect too often). Besides enjoying talking about side-topics, I learnt tax rules new to me. Namely, some step-functions where different social security fees apply. Very worthwhile!
2) Physical workout. I'd have a better body and probably mind as well, if I could stick to a rigorous schedule. Now, I like to engulf myself in curiosities from time to time as well. Easy fix: moving the workout session to Venice Beach. Jogging there, some calisthenics plus absorbing new (mostly human) attractions in one sweep!
3) Getting "work" done. I needed to implement this iteration of an ML algorithm. There was no particular deadline. However, knowing that starting soon would yield a better outcome irrespective of any other factor, I decided to procrastinate by researching on sources I would like to read anyhow. That became hackernews quite recently. So instead of randomly reading posts (like this one, lol), I put in keywords of ML into the search box and sort by date. Et' voila.
Conclusion: find out what is it that fancies you about your urge to procrastinate at this exact moment and then draw a link to what you should do. It works.
Oh and here is example 4) I should now follow-up with a dozen of new acquaintances and prepare to meet them for dinner tonight. But I'm on HN right now. So I decided to take the insight from this discussion and use it as a topic for tonight's dinner. Be gentle, be curious and be interesting to people that matter!