Have moments where you feel like you just keep playing the same thing?  Here are some tips to help you to break the monotony:

•  Break your typical scale patterns.  Many of us can get stuck in certain scale patterns that seem to lead us to dead ends.  Change them.  Try changing your scale patterns. 
  

• 1 note per string scale
• 2 notes per strin
• 3 notes per string
• 4 notes per sting

• Change your chords.  Do you always play the same barre chords or open chords?  Add more colorful notes.  Instead of a C Major open chord try using a C Maj9 chord or any other embellished major chord.  Don't use that same old chord any more if you don't have to. 
  
• When soloing try one note per string, or skip strings.  Take yourself out of your normal soloing habits into something that you really have to work at.  Make yourself think.  A habit is something that you don't have to think about.  You have to think to move ahead. 
  
• When you pick your guitar up for the first time tommorow don't play the same chord or lick that you always play.  Many guitarists pick up their guitar and unknowingly strum an E Major open chord.  This is the perfect opportunity to get into a new sound by strumming a new chord that you are trying to put into your playing.  Make the first chord you play tommorow the new chord that you learn today. 
  
• Don't practice what you already know.  If you truly feel you are in a rut then why would you continue to play what is already habit?  The point is push forward into new sounds.  Find those new sounds and make them the first things you play when you pick up your guitar.
• Next time you are in a rut read this again.  20 years from now read this again.  All of your new sounds will eventually become your habits and you will want to move forward again.  Eventually you will begin to sense when you need to try new things sooner and your playing will begin to evolve daily.

     There are too many different things we could try to list here.  Remember that if you are in a rut all you have to do is look at your guitar differently and many new things will appear.  There is no all knowing guitarist who has tried and mastered every trick with his or her guitar.  There is only trying to move forward when things become familiar.