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Among the most productive workdays I've ever had, was while my bride-to-be was driving our car through rural newfoundland, while I wrote a C++ graphic editor on my Windows NT Compaq Presario 1800T. It was powered through an inverter by our car's cigarette lighter.

I couldn't get on the Internet then, you see.

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I've a similar thing. I get most of my good ideas (and those are not necessarily big ideas, but simple tweaks) while not having Internet access and therefore not the opportunity to be constantly distracted.

Examples: driving a car (without radio/podcasts), sitting in a chair lift (when skiing), kitesurfing.

I get my best ideas while wandering around alone at night.

I invented quite a novel, lossless bitmap compressor during a boring commute along highway 1 - again at night - between San Mateo and Santa Cruz. The format I invented in the office though. The compression was quite conceptual, the actual file was file of all manner of petty details.

I'm puzzling over documenting it online but strictly speaking it's not my intellectual property.

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