This post over at Zen habits has some great ideas on producing creative work. Item #5 is a great way to break through the “nothing is getting done” mode when all those distractions come to roost. At my old job, we called this the Three Arrow Drill because working on things in parallel never seems to finish anything but working on them one at a time does. The drawing below shows how it works:
We used to do this a lot when projects started to spin out of control. The focus and productivity it achieved was true amazing. The trick is that management (or you) need to buy into it.
