No amount of control of my environment will put me in the zone when I'm working on boring code. Crud framework? I'll be reading HN while going through the motions. Code review? Time for some stimulating music (though not too stimulating, I do need to pay attention to the code review).

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.

During my about 11 years of experience as a web dev, I rarely got to do any repetitive and boring tasks. When I got them, I made them interesting by thinking of ways to automate as much as possible of the implementation process.

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.

Psychological flow (the zone) does require a slight challenge. A task that requires you to focus but which is within your capability.

I'm used to start working at 5am or early... Just to be on the zone without distractions (email, phone... )

>No amount of control of my environment will put me in the zone when I'm working on boring code.

adderall

As an ADD person who has to take it regularly, I can say that it can just easily focus you on replying to anything of interest on Hacker News... so no, doesn't work this way.

Yeah I've lived it. You have to get to work right away so when it kicks in otherwise you'll generally keep doing whatever you were doing when it did. It can turn you into a god of productivity if you use it right or a degenerate jacking off for 12 hours straight.

Adderall just allows someone with ADD to get their thoughts from their head to the screen without the house of cards collapsing somewhere in between.

I imagine far more people just get high.

Time to sit down for 11 hours and learn 5/6, weeks of diffeq for an exam. Eyes burning. Member disappearing into my body. Digestive system not functioning.

But then it's done. And then you forget all the mass information you absorbed and shat out onto a page.

Everyone is different. :)

As another anecdata, the only way I've landed there more intentionally is with the two beer buzz. Working late on a project that is behind and you grab two slices and a six pack. Two beers in (and one every hour) and all of a sudden you just start tearing through code. I've had this happen to me countless times. I think it is because a lot of engineers have a brain that is spinning 1000% all the time and a couple of beers slows it down just enough for it to focus on what you are working on. All the other distractions fall away.

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.

>choosing your line and focusing on executing it, everything else in life falls away.

For me, this is skiing. Complete focus and attention on the task at hand. Winter, come soon.

Oh yeah! Cycling fast gets me there too. It's weird, just put your brain in a position of risk and your get pretty quickly to focus zen. I wish I had a a simple formula like this to get in the zone more often when programming.

Amen. When skiing, and I don't have to worry about the kids or newbies tagging along, I can't not be in the zone.

Sounds like the Ballmer Peak: https://xkcd.com/323/

Beat me to it. ^^

It takes some effort but you can trigger the zone. I put on my favorite programming song (looped). Turn on “Freedom” to block the web. Exit every unnecessary app. Then finally do meditative breathing. Usually within 10 minutes I’ll be in the zone. The only caveat is that it is much harder for me to get into this state if I’m debugging.

I've found I sometimes just need to do something to get there.

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.

That's one of the reasons I avoid debugging. I much prefer real-time visceral ingestion of system's IOs than undead autopsy.

Controlling the environment makes me more productive than I'm normally, but definitely doesn't automatically put me "in the zone".

What puts me in the zone is the problem I am working on. Just thinking about it for a couple of minutes and I'm in.

Same here. I can almost say it becomes somewhat of a problem to keep a normal day schedule. It takes 2 minutes and I'm gone for at least 12 hours.

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

Then there's pills to help getting you there.

Right. I only drink coffee anymore for these occasions, put in repetitive music and certain short phased annoying urgent Non coding chores must be done and out of the way, so they don't pollute my mental horizon. It works. Most of the time.