The practical use of placebos is an interesting subject in itself; although research suggests the effect is not very strong (see e.g. Is the Placebo Powerless? , as cited in the wikipedia entry.
Anyway, I'm getting off-topic :)
The original poster of the article seems to be interested in comparing various techniques - and to do a good comparison, one should really try to avoid placebo noise from the comparison.
I want to test different techniques for decreasing personal procrastination. What would be an easy way to measure procrastination so that I can do the comparison?
I would also like to hear suggestions for measuring the inverse i.e. how can I measure getting-things-done-ness.