Design a wrench before the table

The desk has to be clear. Stuff on the desk pulls the mind straight to the stuff, and then no work gets made. Photos of a spotless office in Malibu go viral on Instagram every few months, and a common reaction is that it can't be a real office because there is no mess. Clearing everything away works like Marie Kondo for the mind.

Even then the real work does not start until every obvious thing to procrastinate on has run out. There is a table that needs putting together, and it can't be started. So there is a wrench to build, because the table needs a wrench, and the table can wait. The table is really needed, but first comes designing a wrench from scratch.

Many of the tools programmers build are functions of procrastination, Ruby on Rails among them.