As anecdata makes the data, here's mine - you have a lot of control of it.
If you can control your environment (audio, light, temperature, food, exercise, communication, interaction, ...), you can get in the zone too just by virtue of almost exclusively focusing on some type of work you get in the zone for in the first place.
Live by code, die by code.
But give me something interesting - a real challenge - and I'm able to get into the zone, the hours flying by like they were minutes. My brain has to be able to fully engage with the problem to hit that zone.
Of course, I'm a technical lead in my group, so the ability to control my environment is limited. So I get up absurdly early just to get work done before I have to be available to be interrupted.
Or negociated a higher pay, so it becomes non viable financially for the employer to use me as a resource to do the routine stuff. This doesn't apply to code reviews though.
adderall
But then it's done. And then you forget all the mass information you absorbed and shat out onto a page.
I feel exactly the same way when I'm white water kayaking. As you are reading the water and choosing your line and focusing on executing it, everything else in life falls away. You almost can't be distracted. The interesting thing is that at the end of a run, I never feel mentally exhausted despite all the intense focus, only physically drained. Of course, ymmv.
For me, this is skiing. Complete focus and attention on the task at hand. Winter, come soon.
I just had what I consider to be the single most productive day in the past few months, and I started it feeling like I wasn't going to get anything done. But I decided to golf a regex in our codebase and I had that feeling of motivation and jumped right into actual work.
But funnily enough I find debugging to be the most fun when I'm in the zone (assuming I know the codebase). Something about being able to get really deep into a problem and having all the tools and programs and hardware open and running and all setup correctly.
It happens about 3-4 out of 5 times just because I real like the software I'm building or because I get thrilled about how to make something 'boring' a masterpiece to look at or even because I know there is something I don't understand.
It's almost like a drug to keep coding en digging deeper every day. To a point where I even feel somekind of a huge pressure in the middle of night to 'profit' very hard of the last minutes i' m awake.
Doesn't feel healthy anymore haha. But I just love to much somehow
Really disagree here, I find it's the total opposite more like a serenity and calmness. I also can get into it easily enough if I sit down with a plan of action and am not just writing code blindly and getting frustrated. If I find I can't enter the 'zone', it's usually because of some distraction (meeting coming up, feeling ill, not happy with the work, noisy open office work environment etc).
> if you do it too often you'll quickly drain out and not enjoy it as you used to.
Somewhat agree, but I think you mean here that you spend too much time in front of the PC and not enough time tending to your other needs? In which case I definitely agree; I notice a marked increase in productivity if I make sure to exercise routinely in my week, go on social events etc
I also find the zone happens a lot less often doing web dev than it ever did when I did desktop development, the constant scope switches combined with a massive surface means I drop out a lot more often.
That hits close to home. Ive thought about this a bunch and it feels as though setting up the mental context of programming, the implicit model I have of how a programs operates and what is happening, is an expensive process. I do wonder what exactly is being depleted in this process - glucose? Neurotransmitters? And whether it'd be possible to supplement this such that I minimize the cost of such operations.
The negatives are obvious; less sociable, more easily irritated, wanting to be by yourself. After you've spent a day in the zone, you're not really "party material".
The positive (apart from being very productive) is that I use it to get my negative feelings out of the way - anything that is bothering in my life is somehow gone when I am in "the zone" - it is truly a zen feeling as the author explains.
It's also important to mention that you can't force yourself to be in the zone. It comes and goes, with very little control on your behalf. People that try to force themselves in the zone by working harder, are not truly in the zone. It happens seamlessly without you even knowing or wanting it.
For instance, I'm hardly in the zone. It happens probably once every two weeks, if not less - it also depends on what I'm working on; if it's something new and exciting I'm more predisposed to get in the zone.
Being in the zone is like getting an adrenaline rush - you can force yourself to do it more often (go skydiving for instance), but if you do it too often you'll quickly drain out and not enjoy it as you used to.