What someone told me that was very helpful was to not become convinced that just because I had fallen into this pattern over and over I would continue to do so.

What someone told me that was very helpful was to not become convinced that just because I had fallen into this pattern over and over I would continue to do so. Recognizing the pattern is the first step to breaking it, but there's no magic bullet to break it. It's honestly sort of a leap of faith but the key is to just try again and try harder not to fall into the same pattern. Then when you fail try again. And again. And again. In my twenties I went through the pattern of starting a side project and abandoning it because of akrasia over and over. Now in my late twenties I find the pattern continues to happen but taking an honest account of the whole decade there has been marked improvement. In the last six months I've brought two projects to a degree of semi-completion that I wouldn't have thought possible six years ago. I don't want to be overly sunny: tons of people do go their whole lives repeating the negative patterns of akrasia and never get done what they want to get done. I feel for them it's an unfortunate combination of the tendencies manifesting stronger in them, giving up on trying to break the pattern, and inability to recognize the patterns. For you at least I have a lot of hope because in this comment you show you recognize the patterns.