@ PieterH

"Lots of time, mostly at home, no long term plans. And yet it has been hard. It's taken me a month to start on this article. In limbo, it is so much easier to just switch off, become passive. It doesn't matter anyhow, does it."

I know the feeling from a brain injury that cost most of my memory, learning, and analytical capabilities. I've been wanting to do some deep analysis and coding for high-assurance systems but chunks of knowledge, motivation, or mental capacity for some analysis just aren't there. Easier to take a mental break, too, than tackle the stuff. I've gotten quite a bit done over the years with specific strategies, though, that might help you. Not sure if it will or won't as your situation is clearly a bit different but does have similarities. Worth a try.

To start with, keep it simple and incremental. Even my thoughts & non-coding projects I do almost Niklaus Wirth style where each piece, from how I describe it to how it do it, is individually pretty simple. Also helps to reuse ideas & work as much as possible in new thoughts to reduce brain drain. Doing it incrementally is most important, though. This applies to both code, writing, and planning. (Sound like programming/engineering yet?) You can tackle almost nothing or a lot but you at least see pieces of it forming that both motivate and act as leverage for next pieces. Also, opposite of decomposition in software, gradually refactor the simple ideas or jobs into more complex ones maintaining simple interfaces or ways of putting them together. Idea being that complex stuff is hard to make with brain trying to turn off whereas small changes merging simple pieces is easier (not easy).

I do an example with book you want to work on. Writing a book is a lot of work that your brain won't let you do it seems. So, screw writing a book. Instead, keep two files or sets of them: one an outline-in-progress to structure your ideas; one a list of them in terms of techniques, explanations, code examples, and so on. Just keep adding stuff... little by little or a lot if a burst of mental energy... to the category on the right gradually refactoring the left (directory) with labels or pointers to stuff on right (content). For specific stuff, start simple while refactoring into complex. You might describe a problematic situation with an English description or solution with little text... just enough to remember what you were thinking. Another day add some specifics and/or code to it. Another day a little more or a footnote. Eventually, you end up with what can be turned straightforward into a book (SUCCESS) or a collection of useful information (LESS SUCCESS) others can build on. This approach has no failure mode since some wisdom is better than none. Peer review helps, though, to catch little inaccuracies bound to sneak in. That's normal, though.

So, outline, simplify, maximal reuse in ideas/code/explanations/structuring, refactor to add complexity later if too much now, and just accept work might be more wiki than book at least for now. These are how a semi-brain-dead individual like myself musters on despite it not wanting to cooperate something like 50-80% of the time. Hopefully, yours has more steam than that and similarly good results. :)