I found it useful to start a private project, find something fancy and interesting to get lost in and spark the creative juices. In other words work less, play more.

I have this obsession that life should be about play. Make productive outputs playful. I think biology made us aim for this. Individually we optimize for lower energy use and in group it's the same we like when things flow, when everybody is in tune. In those cases it's like playing.. and usually it represents peak performance at the system level.

Actually I've been doing a bit of exactly that... 1. I've been writing a Forth interpreter on the side for fun. 2. I'm learning how to distill liquor. :)