My mother loves to tell the story that when I was three, I went up to her an said "I'm bored." She replied,

"I never want to hear that you're bored."

She says I went to the window and thought about that for a moment, then I started doing something. I was never bored again.

Too simple, right? However the point was not merely "don't impose your lack of engagement on others", which would dissuade you from asking a good question. Mom's point was that I should engage myself. I've refined the steps over the decades:

1) When you can't get to the solution and you start hatin' on yourself, stop right away. Even when you have a deadline (and there is always another deadline), you can actually destroy what you've already created by grinding when you have lost focus. You're also wasting time anyway -- getting the blood flowing will help.

2) Have other things to work on, and do not even let yourself go back to the original task for a while. Get distracted with some other positive (non-sedentary) task, even if it's simply doing the dishes for ten minutes.

3) Set a timer, or at least set a stop time. This will make the temporary distraction not become the next drudge. Letting a machine tell you when time is up will get you not to look at the clock. Your mind doesn't have that to consider, so other things get done. (It's like when I first got a cell phone and stopped memorizing phone numbers. I can no longer remember phone numbers as easily, but I gained a simple process to get those numbers immediately.)

4) Let your background processes solve things. You can actually get answers by letting the "back of your mind" (next to the pr0n) deal with what your active mind is not getting through.

5) Suddenly you'll get a hunch about your original problem. Even if the logic isn't fleshed out, you will want to get back to your original task. However...

6) Build up that tension and don't jump back just yet. Make yourself even more eager to "get back to work". You'll be surprised how nicely those next couple minutes of brewing while finishing your side project will give you two more hours of productivity.

This post was my process to get re-engaged with my customer reproductions at work. I ran out of ideas for a way to test a possible defect, but I didn't want to let myself surf aimlessly. So I went through the interesting posts on Hubski, replied, and am geared up to tackle scripting problems again.