I personally draw inspiration from John Carmack. I've understood his approach to be basically just stare at your problem and ignore everything else until you make a little bit of progress. The answer is there.

Sounds like a bit of a chicken-and-egg problem. My main issue is to even get myself to sit and stare at the work to be done. It has been really frustrating seeing the lengths I go to, consciously or unconsciously, to procrastinate.

Not to say he's unproductive, because he's a beast, but I don't think he's a good example. Carmack got to work on really cool things which he loved (games) most of which were in his own company so he also had a stake on that.

Afterwards he had money to work on other stuff he was passionate about (rockets, VR, etc.) in his own terms.

It's much harder to draw motivation to meaningless work.

That is by far the best approach… if you can do it. If your mind already works that way, you might not appreciate how much of a superpower you have.

This is the Procrastination version of Feynman's problem solving technique.

Write down the problem. Think really hard. Write down the solution.

The issue is if even thinking about staring at the problem is already giving you PTSD. If I’m at a point where staring at the problem is fine, there isn’t much of an issue to begin with.

Carmack also has an insane net worth and has the freedom to pick and choose the problems he stares at, and set the time tables for a solution. I wouldn't suggest this method if you're some random mid-level programmer.

That's interesting, I'll have to look into that and give it a try. Seems like a good way to build back up your attention span as well.

I think this only works if you have difficult and interesting problems to work on.

Is there a quote or source for this? I want to use it in a talk.