Surprisingly by moving away from the screen and keyboard, taking a pencil and paper and sketching a rough design and scribbling down notes on the key issues. T

Surprisingly by moving away from the screen and keyboard, taking a pencil and paper and sketching a rough design and scribbling down notes on the key issues. Then once I have my head sorted, I return to the computer and start coding, using the sketched design to guide my work. Of course, with this approach the resulting code often ends up looking quite different to my sketched design. The design changes, etc being commented as I go along. I expect that many readers are shaking their heads. But for me, I don't necessarily see the big picture for a new program in my mind's eye, so this process works for me and I'm more productive compared to when I go straight to the keyboard and screen.