[joshkaufman]

I second using the Pomodoro technique - without it, writing my book would've taken 3+ years instead of one.

The key is to change the structure of your environment to support the Pomodoro as much as possible. Turn off everything not directly related to what you're doing - phone, internet, etc.

I used Freedom (http://macfreedom.com/) to completely disable my internet access for 6 hours at a time when I scheduled a day to write. If I didn't disable the internet, I'd waste hours doing "research" when the going got tough. Without any net access, I was able to persist through the hard parts and write a huge amount in a day.