Researcher's block

I am facing "researcher's block" these days, a phrase borrowed from the more popular "writer's block". But, the definition seems to fit.

"Writer's block is a condition, associated with writing as a profession, in which an author loses the ability to produce new work. The condition varies widely in intensity. It can be trivial, a temporary difficulty in dealing with the task in hand. At the other extreme, some "blocked" writers have been unable to work for years on end, and some have even abandoned their careers..."
source: Wikipedia

Ok, the last line seems a little bit too much, I am surely (hopefully) not there yet ... But, the temporary difficulty part is surely true. I think most of my fellow researchers will agree that we face this condition from time to time. Some symptoms are: feeling sleepy when trying to work, taking frequent coffee breaks, suddenly becoming active on otherwise inactive facebook page, orkut, blogger (!!) etc. As opposed to the contagious diseases, this condition could actually be aggravated by not having many people around with similar conditions.

So, I was wondering if my fellow researchers have figured out any ways to deal with this disease. Here are some of the measures I try to take, they are successful sometimes, on other occassions they might just provide a temporary pain relief while the disease takes its due course of time to completely leave you.

a) Try to read some new stuff. May be even on a different topic than what you are currently working on. Some times it can give you a new research idea. Or, atleast this way when you are back into the business, you can look back at the bed ridden times and feel satisfied to have made some use of it. It also makes it easy to pass those days.

b) Try to find other researchers and discuss problems with them. Join some reading group. DO NOT MISS YOUR RESEARCH GROUP MEETINGS.

c) Try to shoot some emails to your adviser (if you are a student) about initial ideas even if you think they are not of any use. This is especially necessary if you are in a pull based system like me where your adviser meets you individually only when you have something to discuss.

d) The hardest part in the day during the researcher's block is getting up, or starting the days work. Since nothing is going on, there is no motivation. I sometimes find myself laying in the bed in the morning with eyes open and thinking what can I work on today. So, a good strategy I figured is to end the days work by printing out something interesting that you can read next day to start the days work.


These are some of my medicines for researcher's block. I cannot say that they are very good ones, but they do help me a little. If you have any better ones, I will be very interested in knowing them.
Hoping to hear from my readers.