Forcing yourself to program

OK, so I'm self employed, which is to say, I live with my parents and have no formal income.

I'm working on an app that I think is really interesting, etc. But I find that whenever I come up to some annoying part, I work on it for like 10 minutes and then browse the internet for an hour.

SOme days I can work for 5+ hours without breaks, just because whatever section is interesting. But most days I end up going to sleep pissed off because I only did like an hours worth of work and wasted the rest of the time on the ienternet.

So give me tips, how do you get yourself through that incomprehensible yet somehow boring and repetitive code? I figure some of it is just because I dont have any sort of plan or anything for what i'm going to do (the app is pretty original) or when I'm going to do it, has that helped you? I've got no CS background or anything and i've always thought flowcharts were bullshit, but obviously some people like them.

I was working on it for like 6 months before i realized it was shit and started over, which was good for about a month but now i'm running out of steam. Yesterday I spent reading manga and today I tried to come up with a new meme for /b.

Sorry if this is bosnian, i wrote like 20 lines of code today. Fuck.

I'm a professional coder (and quite experienced, I can say), yet I still have lots of time filled with problems like yours (>>1's). I used to work happily 8-16 hours/day for 3 years. But now some days I don't work at all (ouch, my job). It's not the code that makes me lose interest ... it's the lack of external motivation. My boss has health problems and he can "force" me to work only once a few weeks. I know and do the workarounds to this, but manga/anime takes out some of my time and energy, I guess ^^.

Internet browsing ... try cutting off _any_ inet usage for 4-5 days. There's a high chance that this can kick-start you up on a series of productive weeks.

Try remembering the mood/state you were in when you worked 5+ hours/day.

If you have little iron in your blood, don't eat much at once - instead, increase the number of meals from 3 to 5+/day. The less blood in your stomach, the more you have for your brain. Getting lots of food-energy at dinner, can give you extra energy for the next day.

But the most important thing is reasoning/motivation. Is it better to become an awesome (and kinda rich) coder or someone that has read all manga that is out there? You think out of better motivation for yourself.

You'll know when it's time to relax (it's after milestones, usually).

btw, flowcharting... it's something of the last century. Clear code, style, and enough comments to remember your ideas - boost your coding speed and reliability. (try to always code as if somebody else will be continuing your project).

Duh, there's also so much to write, but hey I have to work now :)