I do chores when I'm stuck. I strategically engage diffuse thinking to overcome my current obstacle. More often than not, I sit back down with a solution.
Give it a shot :)
Give it a shot :)
In my goal tracker, I set high levels goals to be productive, but then about 30 different possible tasks count as productive. I track them at a low level so I can keep a good track of my time, but they all count towards the high level daily/weekly goal of being productive. That way I make sure I'm just doing _something_ productive, if not the thing I planned to do, rather than screw around surfing Reddit or something.
Of course, this strategy works much better if you're a bootstrapped founder with 40 important tasks in front of you. It works less well if you have a daily standup with a project manager stressing the importance of only doing the JIRA ticket at the top of the backlog. So YMMV.
Usually accomplishing a small task builds enough motivation to accomplish another small task or a larger task. Getting started always seems to be the hardest part.
Breaks are wondrous in problem-solving.
When stuck (and when not), take breaks and do other stuff.
In ~95% of the cases, solutions come to you. In the rest 5%, you reach out to someone who can help.
Breaks are miracles in problem-solving.
And I mean not only in case of programming/math, but also social situations.