When i got into this cycle i was in a desperate place.
I got out of my first startup because "Chinese importers" had driven prices down so much that I couldn't turn a decent profit.
A few weeks later, i got in touch with my manufacturer about a new product for the iPhone 5 and as they were in the process of manufacturing my new product, i listed it on amazon for pre-orders.
I was selling about 10 pieces an hour and had a few thousand pounds in my account after about 5-days, enough to cover my manufacturing costs.
Then amazon reached out that my account had been blocked because it was somehow related to another account they have previously blocked and i cant continue to sell with them or open another account.
They froze my funds and cancelled my account, so i had to refund all those pre-orders and at the time amazon was 99.9 percent of my sales(big mistake)
After that disappointment, i was a bit depressed and decided to leave that business and come into web startups.
I started learning how to code and while i do enjoy coding, its not something i really want to do as much as something i felt (at least at that time) that i had to do. I think it was this mental block + the mild(not clinical)depression that caused me to continue to procrastinate this way.
I was like this for i think about 6 months.. it was bad.
Along with a complete lifestyle optimization (i went in hard on reorganizing my life to be efficient), the big change came when i started working on another promising project - i now had something to look forward to and a hope to hold on-to and i think that's what really made the difference and got me "productive" again.
I can send you details about my lifestyle optimization if you are interested.