The not-sure-what-to-do-so-I'm-not-going-to-do-anything. Your plate is so full of things to do, and none of them are obviously higher priority than others. You could do client work, or you could work on your startup, or you could work on open source. So rather than just picking one thing to doing it, you other things, while trying to figure out which of the real tasks should be done first.
I know I've had moments where I just say, "I don't even feel like figuring out what I want to do, so I'm just going to play video games and go to sleep."
Even worse is when motivational anhedonia develops into a full-blown existential crisis, where you fall into a Bartleby-esque† state of having no desire to do anything whatsoever. You know that you desire happiness in the abstract, but find yourself unsure how to achieve that desired state. You have no micro-desires, only this vague macro-desire, which can lead to an almost intolerable malaise. At that point you've basically crossed the line from "procrastination" to "mild clinical depression."
I'm not really sure why I typed all this out since I don't have much of a conclusion, but I'm going to leave it here in case someone finds this relevant to their own situation.
i've been trying to force myself to write tests when i'm in that state of mind.
things can always do with improved tests, and i find that starting with the tests is a really gentle way to ease myself into the mind-space of working on a specific bit of code.
Here's when setting a work-in-progress (WIP) limit is really useful. Don't allow you to have more than say 3 tasks on your plate. Can be painful at first — you can be stuck in all tasks, and not being able to do work at all — but helps so much getting shit done.
The not-sure-what-to-do-so-I'm-not-going-to-do-anything. Your plate is so full of things to do, and none of them are obviously higher priority than others. You could do client work, or you could work on your startup, or you could work on open source. So rather than just picking one thing to doing it, you other things, while trying to figure out which of the real tasks should be done first.
I know I've had moments where I just say, "I don't even feel like figuring out what I want to do, so I'm just going to play video games and go to sleep."
Those are the worst days...