The computer is so grand and marvelous, and yet so incredibly dangerous.
It's too easy to get caught in click-click-click-click.
I'm not even talking the normal OCD loop of Facebook-Twitter/YC-News-Twitter-etc. I'm talking seemingly productive things you can grind away on ad infinitum, without ever making the really big expansive pushes or structural improvements.
It's hard to recognize when stuck in that cycle -- grinding away -- or perhaps, when we notice it, it comes on as a fleeting warning signal inside us, that we so often ignore.
I'm trying to recognize it, get up, and go do something physical for a few minutes -- throw a few boxing jabs in the mirror, stretch, pace around for a bit -- before sitting down with a pen and paper to figure out what to do before getting back to the computer.
It doesn't always work. It's imperfect. But it's worth trying to recognize and do. I'd say every time I get out of the click-click-click-click mode into being being reflective, it takes about 5-10 minutes to get out of that mode... and that those 5-10 minutes are worth about 90-180 minutes saved of useless grinding.
Hard to do. Worth striving for.