What everybody else said. Personally, I have a series of large Rubiks-style cubes, up to 7x7x7. Scrambling and solving these has become a kind of mental exerci

What everybody else said. Personally, I have a series of large Rubiks-style cubes, up to 7x7x7. Scrambling and solving these has become a kind of mental exercise for me that gets me off of the train of thought that I'm on, and it's useful for disrupting constant repetition. Another thing is rubber ducking ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubber_duck_debugging http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubber_duck_debugging ) which works really well for taking large rambling thoughts and condensing them into small, simple, focused ideas. Don't ramble at the duck. Try to explain to the duck in a way that you feel resembles real communication, instead of ranting. And yes, exercise.