Hmm.... You're not writing long articles on PM just to avoid work, are you? ;-)

I think your issue is shared by many. In my own case, what helps is knowing what my "avoidance behaviors" are. For example, I make short to-do lists (8-10 items) to organize my work. A sure sign of procrastination is that the bottom few lines -- which tend to be less important but easy to do -- get crossed out first. When I see that, I realize I have to muster the energy to go after the top lines. It doesn't always work, but it usually helps.

So I'd say the first step is to become aware of what you do to get an "instant gratification" charge. The second step is to figure out how to change those behaviors. Again in my own case, I think it's fine to sometimes indulge, so I set aside one morning a week (more or less ;-) for fun, small items. It's a lot easier to gather the energy to go after the dreary stuff when I know I'm going to have some fun later¹.The trick is to strike a balance that works for you.

Yeah, all of these require some level of determination and will power (or "won't" power). But you already knew that. ;-)

¹Hmm... Delayed instant gratification? Is this an oxymoron?

Personally, I just try to take it one step at a time. Fill in the package name and "use strict;". Run it. It works, yay! Feel the instant gratification of writing a sccussful program, even if it doesn't do much. Add a couple of lines that call netstat but don't do anything really useful. Run it. It works, yay! Keep going this way for a while and you'll find you wrote your program.

Grab a can of your favourite beverage and get really into your time wasting activity. I've noticed that a lot of people who have done as much study as you must have often have trouble with the idea of 'wasting' an evening. In reality, you aren't wasting it at all. You'll feel better for it, and the next day you'll feel more like 'working' because you'll still have happy memories from your last recreation break (well, it works for me).

As for the goals and gratification, I agree that breaking them down into sub components helps a lot. I can't even stand writing a function without seeing it work, let alone a whole module. I wouldn't worry too much about the instant gratification thing. You have to get your (psychological) 'payoff' somehow, otherwise why would you be doing it at all?

____________________
Jeremy
I didn't believe in evil until I dated it.

Secondary to the point: if you're on Unix, the program lsof will do this for you. Despite its name, it also lists open ports and what processes are holding them open (lsof -i). It's not perl, but it should definitely be in your toolbox. I've found it indispensible.

Chris
M-x auto-bs-mode

I can't offer solutions just a few little things to help improve.

• Scribble some quick brainstorming thoughts on paper. This always gives the feeling of organizing things (though it need not really do that). Somewhen a line you wrote will strike you as something that can quickly be implemented - then you found your start.
• Have your editor setup to automatically insert some code fragments for you. This has the effect that you'll never have to start from scratch again. Yes, this is kind of self-betrayal, but it works (for me)
• Try to find small sub-problems of the framework that can be tested immediately and give some results. This is a technique that I use successfully at the moment in a project that will take a few months at least to get a working version running (coded in Ruby - fun!)

Regards...	Stefan
you begin bashing the string with a +42 regexp of confusion

The -p switch works for my version (1.42) of netstat.
List tcp ports and program info: netstat -tp
Still, lsof is a much more complete solution.