Sometimes when coding I find it useful to make a conscious choice to go back to "inferior" technology.
For example, if I'm undertaking a huge refactor which will require a lot of reworking of tests, I'll usually drop down to Emacs (or keep using an IDE, but turn auto-compilation off) just to avoid the extreme amount of mental noise coming from all those compilation errors just sitting there and increasing over time. Sometimes it's better to just willfully ignore all that irrelevant detail for an hour or two, get into the flow and power through while you have the inspiration. Those test errors (compilation or otherwise) can always be fixed later.
For example, if I'm undertaking a huge refactor which will require a lot of reworking of tests, I'll usually drop down to Emacs (or keep using an IDE, but turn auto-compilation off) just to avoid the extreme amount of mental noise coming from all those compilation errors just sitting there and increasing over time. Sometimes it's better to just willfully ignore all that irrelevant detail for an hour or two, get into the flow and power through while you have the inspiration. Those test errors (compilation or otherwise) can always be fixed later.