[gregn]

I struggle with getting started on a project. I tend to spend days, sometimes weeks, thinking about the problems I am going to have to face when I start coding, and researching them. Then it happens. I sink into some sort of trance from which I am unwilling to wake from. People ask me to social events, I decline. I can stay in this frame of mind for well over a month if the project is important to me. I had a professor who said that it takes three days to get into the coding state of mind but once you're there you are in a higher productive mode of thinking. The only problem with this, as everyone knows, is that it is very easy to get shaken out of the state. Then you must spend another three days to get back into it, which is why programmers are often reluctant to break their focus - it wastes time.

It has gotten easier to enter high focus mode with age and experience.

I second techno music. Aphex Twin. Prodigy and NiN have been boons for me in the past.

I am 40

[hoodoof]

I have this problem too - I definitely just need to get started writing code to break the trance. I force myself to start solving easy problems which naturally gets me into the flow.