Maybe defeats the object of 'self-imposed' but tell someone else what your deadline is. Make yourself accountable. Have a cost of failing to meet it even if it's the guilt of telling someone else you failed.
Keep a SIMPLE running list of tasks in a plain 'ol text file and sort them by priority. If you find yourself "spacing out", grep the list for the easiest thing you could possibly do and do it immediately. This often get your engine running.
Assign specific times for surfing and goofing off. Give yourself one hour in the morning to check email/news/blogs/etc... and don't surf again until lunch. Another hour or so, max, and then back to work. It's amazing what you can accomplish when you aren't reading about other people's great accomplishments.
Reconsider blogging. Yes, I know, this is heresy. However, I found that it was really hurting my productivity, and my desire to create a great blog post was sucking time away from creating a great app.
Challenge yourself. If you are feeling frustrated, pick the thing you've been avoiding like the plague and attack it. Tell yourself that you aren't stopping until it's dead or at least extremely subdued. You'll feel so good at the end that everything else will seem easy.
"Reconsider blogging. Yes, I know, this is heresy. However, I found that it was really hurting my productivity, and my desire to create a great blog post was sucking time away from creating a great app."
Using your own advice,("Assign specific times for surfing and goofing off. Give yourself one hour in the morning to check email/news/blogs/etc... and don't surf again until lunch. Another hour or so, max, and then back to work.") one could just allot a couple of hours a week to blogging and thus avoid it becoming a productivity sink ;-)
Agreed. You just have to set priorities and know yourself. My "goof-off" time is mostly used for research on various topics and that takes priority over blogging for me.
Try telling people about them; it will motivate you. Also, when you write down things to do, try to write down the smallest possible parts of the item as a task and don't include things like "think about," "decide," etc.
i.e.:
bad: 1. create concept for new message queuing 2. implemeting queuing
better: 1. design message header 2. write message header parser 3. write a message pump 4. etc
