I usually in the morning will catch up on what is new in the industry by reading various blogs and of course slashdot. I'm a java guy so I'll check out sites like theserverside.com. Then usually I'll start in on whatever I'm suppose to do. Fortunately, for me, my company likes me doing R&D most of the time so that means I get to play with new technologies (EJB 3.0 for example.) this is a lot of fun but it can still get boring. About every hour or so I take a walk around the builing and chat up anyone who is willing to listen. Another thing I do is walk around the building outside which is great for contemplating ifs, whys, and buts. Another thing that helps me focus is to keep work very casual. I like to joke around with my fellow developers and more often then not you'll find us yelling back and forth across cube walls. This makes work fun, I don't think you could find this in contracting though. In my company our development is physically seperate from everything else so we can get away with just about anything.