A trick to reaching flow: Leave your work broken • Hacker News Board

Re: A trick to reaching flow: Leave your work broken

#11

Post by franky47 » Wed, Apr 05, 2023, 5:24 PM UTC

A side effect of this technique is that the "obvious next step" to fix the broken code left over lives rent-free in my mind until I can come back to it.

For some people, leaving things in a broken state when the solution is known is an itch begging to be scratched.

Re: A trick to reaching flow: Leave your work broken

#12

Post by manmal » Wed, Apr 05, 2023, 5:24 PM UTC

Instead of “// TODO” I just add “TODO” or “asdf”, suffixed with a short description of the next thing I’d like to tackle. That gives a compiler error so I can find the relevant line very quickly next time I work on that project.

Re: A trick to reaching flow: Leave your work broken

#13

Post by inetsee » Wed, Apr 05, 2023, 5:25 PM UTC

andorov wrote: post #9

Hemmingway would leave off writing for the day in the middle of a sentence for the same reason.

I remember reading this quite a while ago. My elaboration of this technique is to write the last sentence in my head, but only put the first part down on (paper) the end of the file. If I'm lucky, when I come back to it, I can read the first part of the last sentence, and memory will tell me how the sentence ends, I can just keep going.

Re: A trick to reaching flow: Leave your work broken

#14

Post by jeremyjh » Wed, Apr 05, 2023, 5:36 PM UTC

If nothing else I leave a test with a description and an `assert false` statement to fail it. Preferable is a test that actually fails for the right reason.

Re: A trick to reaching flow: Leave your work broken

#15

Post by Dave_TRS » Wed, Apr 05, 2023, 5:48 PM UTC

RockyMcNuts wrote: post #3

Never stop until you know what you are going to pick up with next. https://www.fastcompany.com/3021905/hemingways-secret-to-mai...

"The best way is always to stop when you are going good and when you know what will happen next. If you do that every day when you are writing a novel you will never be stuck. That is the most valuable thing I can tell you so try to remember it." - Ernest Hemingway, advice to a young writer in 1935 article in Esquire

Re: A trick to reaching flow: Leave your work broken

#16

Post by generic92034 » Wed, Apr 05, 2023, 5:56 PM UTC

Cardinal7167 wrote: post #5

RockyMcNuts wrote: post #3

Never stop until you know what you are going to pick up with next. https://www.fastcompany.com/3021905/hemingways-secret-to-mai...

This is the way. I stop working with tests passing but write a context comment on whats to be done next. It’s like flushing my working memory.

On the other hand it can be helpful, in my experience, to stop right in the middle of a very hard problem, where you are still searching for a good solution. Come the next morning I often know at least a possible solution, without having worked on it consciously.

Re: A trick to reaching flow: Leave your work broken

#17

Post by sacrosanct » Wed, Apr 05, 2023, 6:04 PM UTC

My trick is to get outside my comfort zone when coding, but only just enough that's it's tolerable and not overwhelming. Most of the time, even as a seasoned coder, I should feel inadequate, yet still up to the task at hand. That's what flow is for me: pushing myself, but not too far that I end up falling off the proverbial cliff.

Re: A trick to reaching flow: Leave your work broken

#18

Post by Cthulhu_ » Wed, Apr 05, 2023, 6:04 PM UTC

curo wrote: post #2

Similar to this "leave things broken", I like to start the day with some lightweight refactoring. This allows me to pay down technical debt while I warm up my brain to the code.

But be critical; I'm currently trying to discourage my colleagues from over-engineering fairly simple things (static / simple list items in a React app). Refactoring is fine, as long as it's not refactoring for shifting code's sake.

Re: A trick to reaching flow: Leave your work broken

#19

Post by srcreigh » Wed, Apr 05, 2023, 6:04 PM UTC

generic92034 wrote: post #16

Cardinal7167 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the way. I stop working with tests passing but write a context comment on whats to be done next. It’s like flushing my working memory.

On the other hand it can be helpful, in my experience, to stop right in the middle of a very hard problem, where you are still searching for a good solution. Come the next morning I often know at least a possible solution, without having worked on it consciously.

In uni there were a few times where I'd spend 12 hours solving assignment problems. At EOD I still had maybe half unsolved, although I'd tried to solve them all. Next morning in the 30 minutes I had before class, I quickly solve all the problems before handing it in.

Oh, another time for algorithms assignment, I am up until 5am or so. Still had 2/5 problems left unsolved (but again I had tried to solve them). I go for coffee at the student center, oops it's not 24/7. I take a light nap in the student center waiting for the coffee place to open up. Full on REM dream problem solving occurs. A couple hours later I awake knowing full well how to solve the 2 remaining problems. I grab my coffee and leave to write up the solutions.

Sleep really helps.

Re: A trick to reaching flow: Leave your work broken

#20

Post by 23B1 » Wed, Apr 05, 2023, 6:08 PM UTC

Yep, I use this in writing. Leave that juicy scene until tomorrow, so I jump out of bed instead of slithering to the coffee machine while building a list of excuses in my head.