Live data from Hacker News

A trick to reaching flow: Leave your work broken

census.dev

191–196 of 196 posts

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

#191

I thought the consensus was that "flow" isn't actually all that great. If you're writing code while juggling multiple difficult concepts in your mind at once, your code will be difficult to follow. While in flow, you tend not to take the holistic, bird's eye view and so work harder, not smarter.

I haven’t considered this but it makes perfect sense. If time is critical or if you are understaffed, it becomes required, however. I’ve prided myself on my ability to get so much done in a solid 8 hour flow state in the past, when it was necessary, but now that I have a baby and work at a larger company, perhaps I can take some solace in the concept you shared.

I was decently productive while a "flow" practitioner but I am definitely more productive than that after abandoning it as a concept. It's much easier to pick up where I left off because code is structured that way.

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

#192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I am saying is that this conception of work is absurd. The truth is you are hired to build stuff, not for being at an office during X time. I like fishes, that's cute.

I’m hired to spend the time I’ve been paid for building stuff. If I only dedicate 2.5 hours every day to my work, I’m not meeting that obligation. If I start accounting for my showers and commute as working hours, I’m being dishonest with both myself and my employer.

Working 2.5 hours per day is enough for me some days to meet expectations. If the person you work for is happy about your output, then should you care ?

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

#193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m hired to spend the time I’ve been paid for building stuff. If I only dedicate 2.5 hours every day to my work, I’m not meeting that obligation. If I start accounting for my showers and commute as working hours, I’m being dishonest with both myself and my employer.

Working 2.5 hours per day is enough for me some days to meet expectations. If the person you work for is happy about your output, then should you care ?

If you’re okay working to such low expectations, and do not fear being replaced by automation, then that’s your prerogative.

I would not feel secure in the stability of such an easy job, nor proud of my accomplishments. I also expect that we work in very different stratums in both skill and renumeration.

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

#194
post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That could backfire. Maybe they were in the middle of something hard that's difficult to pick up from. To use the metaphor, perhaps you would be forcing them to park uphill.

> Maybe they were in the middle of something hard that's difficult to pick up from. Certainly some of them said that, and I had to push for them to leave anyway. I also feel like that when I’m coding myself sometimes. But I think the of times when it’s actually true are vastly outnumbered by the times when it’s just an illusion, and it was obvious from the velocity and energy level that the policy worked.

I learned this one the hard way, and have found it again and again since: often when it's the end of the day and I'm stuck in the middle of something that seems really hard, the best thing I can do is walk away, and the next morning, it suddenly seems very easy. I call this state "being in the hole." It's a kind of can't-see-the-forest-for-the-trees thing. Always so satisfying to smash a thing in five minutes that I'd wasted an hour on the evening before.

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

#195

Maybe off topic, but it's weird to see a post about flow and distraction start with a completely unrelated splash image as many posts do these days. Are there studies linking this with better recall/comprehension or is it SEO related/purely aesthetic/trendy? It makes the posts signal 'I care about this' a bit more than your old school livejournal text only content, but I suspect in the vast majority of the cases it c…

The photo of a mountain biker is not unrelated, you just aren't aware of how it's related. Flow is a term used often in mountain biking, and in a similar way to programming and other pursuits. Garmin even have a metric for it: https://www.garmin.com/en-US/garmin-technology/cycling-scien...

I didn't know about flow being a term in biking, TIL thanks. However, my opinion on vaguely related splash images before blog posts being indicative of superficial content where SEO is sought after more than sharing original or useful info is unchanged. This is solely based on my own experience reading various blogs, hence my initial question regarding what is at the heart of this trend if not simply SEO.

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

#196
post #6

I've been using this "trick" for many years. An old mentor taught it to me, but he called it "park facing downhill". The idea is to leave the workday with the work in a state where there's an obvious and easy task to start the next day with, like parking your car facing downhill so that gravity will get you rolling before the engine is up to speed.

As an engineering director years ago I had the rule that engineers hours were 10am-6pm, and I'd walk around the office at 6pm and send people home. I'd get complaints that I was making people stop when they were in the middle of something, and I'd just say, you can carry on with it in the morning. It worked extremely well. Engineers just wanted to get on with their work as soon as they arrived in the morning. We'd ha…

maybe worked extremely well for the company, but not for the worker. I would rather solve the issue before going home (thus having a clear mind at ease) than carry the burden of the looming unresolved issue till the next day.
Post reply on HN