I've had luck recently with the Pomodoro technique. Actually, switching to Vitamin R2 on Mac which lets you adjust Pomodoro lengths - sometimes if doing 1/2 hour feels daunting I'll start with 10 minutes, or even start by allocating myself 1/2 hour to do something trivial - feels great when you can mark it as done in a fraction of the time.
Ditto, when I can maintain the attention span, pomodoro works wonders for me. Thanks for the tip on Vitamin R2, I hadn't heard of it. For me, I actually would prefer longer Pomodoros, sometimes the distraction cost of starting another timer when I'm mid task feels too high.
