I do a similar hack: when I feel especially "procrastinaty" and can't seem to get into doing the thing I'm supposed to I break things that I have on my plate down to lists with sublists that often have sublists (that often have sublists, recurse).

It's not always useful, but it does eventually consume enough resources to starve the anxiety thread and some of these lists end up as the (pre)analysis for the tasks I'm supposed to be working on.

Sometimes I don't get a good list for the task I'm currently expected to solve but I make progress on some other thing that piqued my interest. This helps me justify spending the time on just making lists because not all of it is useless and lessens the anxiety about not getting anything done.

When I do get a good enough list for the thing I'm supposed to be doing I usually feel less anxiety about doing it because I know exactly what I'm supposed to be doing.