It is inevitable that you will find yourself stuck in a rut. How can you go about getting yourself unstuck? Whether you are a designer, developer or manager, you find yourself doing the same things over and over again or worse, you find yourself staring at a blank screen and unable to get started. I will give you 5 ideas that I use to get myself inspired and motivated.

Look outside your industry.

It is too easy to find yourself with your RSS feeds, Favorites, Friends full of items that are basically a reflection of you day job. Force yourself to look beyond the borders of your own specialty. For example, I like to look at Trends in Japan. It is not even close to what I do on a daily basis, but it does make me look at things from a different perspective culturally as well as getting new ideas. You can also look outside your industry for inspiration such as The Dieline which provides vivid graphics of packaging from tea bags to wines. Companies spend a lot of time and resources on their packaging. You can take advantage of that research and see how they bring the design together via brand, typography, color, etc.

Read other people’s code.

I wish I could take credit for this, but this idea came from Scott Hanselman. He takes time to read other people’s publicly-available code. I think this is a great way to recharge your battery because you see how others have approached a problem differently than you may have. I would even recommend looking at code that is written in a different programming language. If you are a PHP developer, why not take a look at Ruby on Rails examples? This will also help alleviate the "One Perfect Way" problem that programmers find themselves in (this could be another post all its own!).

Check out Conferences.

I find that conferences can be inspiring. You not only learn new things, but you meet other people who are passionate about what they do and it is contagious. I recently attended a 2-day conference and took away many new ideas that I would probably not have thought of if I was just sitting in my office answering yet more e-mail. A conference typically allows you to get away and clear your brain of your task list and set it free. I know that in this time of economic challenges that you may not be able to attend some of the big conferences out there. I would suggest for you a local Barcamp. These are great opportunities to meet people in your local area. They tend to be free and their agenda tends to be created by the attendees themselves. Of course, I am a little biased for our own sister conference, MIX.

Work on a personal moonlight project.

As a manager, you would think I would be against personal moonlight projects. Not at all! In fact, I encourage them. A moonlight project tends to be a personal project that you are passionate about. It may even stretch your skills as you try out a new technology you are not familiar with. There is usually not a deadline and you have plenty of time to explore which is a luxury these days. The only suggestion I would make is that if you have a significant other in your life, you check with them first!

Spend more time in the shower.

Ask yourself, how many times have you been stuck on a problem and spent all night in your office and still couldn’t figure it out? The next morning you are in the shower and then all the sudden, BAM! You figure it out before you can wash the shampoo out of your hair. The reason is that there are fewer distractions, you are fresh from sleep and you are not stressed. It doesn’t have to happen in the shower, it could be the drive to work, a coffee shop or a bench outside your office.

What ways do you use to jumpstart your inspiration?

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