>Well .. reports aren't a problem for me < g > ... but a tip I learned a long time ago is never stop (i.e. go home for the day) at a point where the next thing is really tough. If you do, you tend to put off going back to it because you know it's going to be tough. Instead .. just keep barreling on thru and get your feet wet with the tough stuff before stopping for the day!!

I usually try to do something easier first, before storming the tough one. That's a technique I've adopted after discovering that my mind keeps working on it in the background, so I give it some time. It usually works - once it sorts the pegs and matches them to holes, and I return to the tough problem, it doesn't seem to be so tough anymore.

And, frankly, tough ones are more fun :).

A sidenote on reports: I've once heard that economists are better programmers than mathematicians. It really ticked me off (as a mathematician), but then I started thinking about the possible reasoning behind that idea. Here goes: what sort of work would you give to each of them? Of course, you'd give the reports to economists and tough problems to mathematicians. They'd spew a score of usable reports every week, and the math guy would fight the tough one all week. So they'd score 20:1... only it depends how you count.

OTOH, there's the old rule that the value of enterprise software is proportional to the area of forests it destroys - the more reports, the more results it yields. Reports are the product.