I”ll be “stuck” at something and realize that I”m trying to listen to a YouTube video in the background while “working” on the task. When I shut off the video and push through, it usually works. Sometimes, I need to go and play the piano, take a walk or just sit with my eyes closed to disconnect.

A couple other ideas from MrBenBurns:

#1 Use sprints to generate bad ideas.

You could set a time limit of 20 minutes and see if you can come up with 20 videos ideas. Or, see how many blog post ideas you can generate in 5 minutes. Most of them probably won’t be good, but that doesn’t matter. Seth Godin talks about this often: The more bad ideas, the better. Good ideas don’t come from nowhere, they come from generating enough bad ones until we hit upon something different.

#2 Talk to someone who doesn’t do what you do.

I remember working on a tech project for a client and there was one piece I couldn’t figure out. I had looked at it from a couple different angles and it required skill I didn’t have. Then, I was explaining my problem to my brother-in-law and he asked me: “What don’t you try x?” x wouldn’t work, but if you changed it a little bit, you could use y to solve my problem. The approach he suggested would not likely occur to someone trying to solve the problem, which is why an outside perspective is very important.

Hope that helps.

Josh