light fibrous breakfast. limit caffeine (e.g. one cup until after 12p) one or two zone-outable songs on loop. social accountability ("yes I'm on X right now, let me check in with you in 1.5 hrs"). order your list in a sensible way and do it one by one. good night. go get 'em tomorrow

block distracting sites in the hosts file or otherwise on the network.

Fruit juice, banana and yoghurt for breakfast, and a strong cup of coffee always get me started first thing in the day.

Well if you're me, you OD on caffeine and function on stress adrenalin all day and come home for beer.

Massively protein-y breakfast (for me, 3 hardboiled eggs dipped in honey mustard dressing and smooshed in shredded mozzarella cheese) with a cup of super creamered coffee.

Waking up just before my alarm and doing some stretching in bed. Make an agenda of things to accomplish (that is reasonable), but also have a few gravy items.

For me, doing the biggest/most annoying/most anxiety-producing things first works best (I know others find it works better to save them for last so that they can build up momentum). Definitely skipping email/internet/tv/radio until I'm done with everything. Showering and putting on clothing before working, when working at home (well, and when working not-at-home, too, but you know what I mean). Setting a definite time to *stop* working, so that the work-that-expands-to-fill-the-time has less time in which to expand.

Early at the gym and my favorite protein breakfast (eggs in a hat). Upbeat music. Making a goddamn list of all the work and non-work things I need/want to do today, and keeping it in front of me so I can check it off as I go.

Thanks, everyone! Have made a reasonably early & efficient start... Here's a brain dump of what I have to do.
Reply to those emails
Make those changes to that job
Send that difficult tricky awkward email in which I ditch a long-standing responsibility.
Invoices

Then go do nice things. I'll check back later.

AARGH - add to list - "do 1.5 hour job that arrived in inbox this morning, that I agreed to last week, but that I'd forgotten about". I think I'll invoke Stewriffic's method.

UPDATE: Nearly 1pm here now. Breakfast was muesli, yogurt and coffee. Surprise job done. Changes to other job nearly done. Some emails sent but not the tricky one. Going well!

Background music: Steve Reich, Different Trains.

UPDATE: Tricky email sent, not feeling the relief yet, but hope to feel it when I get a reply. I've ditched a tiny volunteer post which I wasn't doing properly anyway, and which would be much better done by someone else. It's been causing me huge anxiety and guilt, completely pointlessly.

Have also made changes to that job, and invoicing can legitimately wait, so it's SHOPPING TIME! Thanks for listening, folks.

Hooray!