What are you strategies for staying focused beyond the usual suspects of browser-blocking plugins, Pomodoro, etc?
You'll come back to your desk feeling refreshed and ready to focus.
This practice becomes even better when just prior to returning to your desk you devise a plan of action for when you sit down. That way you won't be tempted to sit back down at your desk and check email or see what's new on YC.
Accountability. This can mean sharing with a colleague what you intend to complete at the start of your day, and then sharing what you actually completed at the close of the day. It can also mean finding a location where you feel the risk of your distractions being observed when you begin to indulge them (e.g. sit next to the CEO of your company; manage your work on a large, external monitor that's within your team's line of sight).
Sleep. The poorer my sleep habits, the easier it becomes to focus on and become excited by the wrong things. What's tricky is that you may actually feel more energized or alert when sleep-deprived, but this is perhaps due to the extra releases of dopamine that help fuel you through the day, a mechanism that was once useful in hunter-gatherer days when survival depended on persisting through fatigue to complete a successful hunt.
Nutrition. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner. I require all three if I wish to maintain consistent performance.
I have a medical condition. So looking to my physical health has long played an important role in being able to focus. When I can't focus, it often means I am dehydrated, hungry, running a fever or something like that. I strongly suspect that when other people complain they just can't concentrate, it suggests they have some kind of minor health issue, such as an unrecognized allergy or poor sleep quality for some reason.
When I was in really poor health and had a corporate job, I took a break every hour on the hour to have a snack, a drink and a bathroom break and try to get myself pulled together enough to focus. I need less of that these days, but I still have days when an afternoon break and snack and drink and some caffeine can help get me going again when I am flagging.
Start working on something small at first. Tweak a color or whatever to get started.
- install browser plugins that block certain sites for some time. e.g. leechblock on Firefox can block certain sites for X minutes every X minutes, similar to the tomato method
- discipline
Maybe I feel I have exhausted the internet - social networks don't hold my attention any longer, digg/reddit sites just annoy me now because the user bases seem so immature.