Overcoming coder's block (opens in new tab)

You know how a diabetic needs to keep a quick source of accessible sugar? I keep a quick source of accessible wins: my "to be implemented on a rainy day" A/B testing notebook. If I feel like programming and have programming scheduled but just can't get started for whatever reason, I pop one of those little candies of coding goodness to grease the wheels. At the very least they'll force me to get my IDE open, fire up a test suite, bang up some code, etc etc. After one is done I often feel that, since I'm already programming, I might as well go on to do whatever I really planned to do today.

There are days when I just can't program. We've all had that day, right? If I'm in mental shape to do other work, I do other work. If not, I shut down the machine and go out. (I can't wait until this doesn't require apologizing to my coworkers for taking the day off.)

Cory Doctorow has a saying for his writing students: "Surgeons don't get surgeon's block."

I think the point is that the idea of professional block is just a fancy name for procrastination. However, I don't think he did any actual research with surgeons, so I can't say whether they procrastinate or not.