Wow, this is exactly the comment I needed right now! I've long connected the source of procrastination with some kind of avoidance/learned helplessness behavior

Wow, this is exactly the comment I needed right now! I've long connected the source of procrastination with some kind of avoidance/learned helplessness behavior, but haven't been able to make much progress towards actually doing anything about it. "Just start doing it, even if it's only a tiny bit or done poorly" doesn't work when the stimulus of "start it" is exactly what is causing feelings of distress. I really like the idea of "practicing in order to devote less consciousness to it". I think this works well for a lot of low-thought tasks that aren't very mentally stimulating. Not sure about those where it requires conscious effort (paying taxes) but it's certainly a new avenue I haven't tried before.