I continued to use a practice of mindful meditation I have been working on to clear my thoughts and energise myself each time before working on the sprint. I also experimented with the Pomodoro technique and can see great promise in this, particularly when it comes to budgeting my time for future tasks. Also I found a psychological reward in seeing an increase in productivity within the timed units.
I have found mindfulness is very effective for me and can be a helpful trigger for achieving a state of flow. I'll continue to work with the pomodoro technique as well as strictly timeboxing my tasks since falling down a rabbit hole of research is a particular weakness I see that I need to address.