unicornucopious

Getting things done is difficult for me. I flag e-mails, I keep a todo list, but there are so many distractions:

1. Google Reader / Reddit
2. A cool new program/technology to play with
3. Tweaking my automation/productivity tools
4. The next blog post
5. Family, real life stuff

There are solutions to the first few items. echo 127.0.0.1 google.com >> /etc/hosts, for example. Or limiting feed reading to once a day (I still haven't figured out how to do this).

Really, this is only half the problem. What to do when motivation wanes? How can I renew the fire for my software projects? Where did it go in the first place?

Here are the biggest buzz-killers:

• The project pace is slow.
• I haven't determined the very next step.
• Lack of total certainty about the problem domain.

The last one is inevitable. If the problem was simple, someone would have done it already. There's nothing to be done for this except dig in and be willing to refine results. The FUD makes it difficult to work on the nuts and bolts, though - why should I add this extra abstracting type to the code, if there are larger unsolved problems looming?

Determination of the next step is crucial, but usually easy.

Pace is difficult for me. If I only have an hour here and there to work on the project, I can't be surprised if the code base has barely progressed in the last week. Does anyone have a suggestion for how to keep a project moving along, while still doing quality work, dotting the i's, crossing the t's?