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Ask HN: How do you get and stay in the "zone"?

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Re: Ask HN: How do you get and stay in the "zone"?

#21

Post by phillmv »

Routines.

Flaubert once said, "Be regular and orderly in your life, so that you may be violent and original in your work."

Go to bed at roughly the same time. Get up at roughly the same time. Eat breakfast (prevents sugar crashes later in the day). Do some light exercise when you get out of bed (7 min workout, holla) and then meditate. Do actually intense exercise once or twice a week. Snack a few hours after your lunch.

Take care of your body and keep it prepared for the work you have ahead of you.

When you get to work, plan out the rest of your day. Write down what you intend to do (you get a lot better with being realistic with this list) and split it out. Don't open HN while you wait for your tests to run. Timebox everything else.

Also, take regular breaks. Get up, stretch, go for a walk, read for a bit.

Procrastination I find is closely linked to mood, so make sure you've taken care of that as well.

I do 80% of the above and I still have procrastination spirals but it's gotten a lot better.

Re: Ask HN: How do you get and stay in the "zone"?

#22

Post by SyneRyder »

pepon wrote: post #5

Instrumental "fast rhythm" music (i.e. Apocalyptica, Ludovico Einaudi...)

Instrumental upbeat music for me as well. It doesn't guarantee the zone, but it often helps. I've been tweaking my working playlist on Rdio, it's here if anyone's interested:

http://www.rdio.com/people/syneryder/playlists/598011/Music_...

Re: Ask HN: How do you get and stay in the "zone"?

#23

Post by jonnydark »

I tend to try and avoid "the zone" because I'll often find I'm holding too many ideas in my head rather than in the code and as such I'm not expressing myself well in code.

I used to come across code I'd written while in the zone later and have a hard time figuring out what I was doing/thinking. As such I end up with poor variable name choices and weird hard to follow algorithms that all made sense at the time but are a maintenance issue after the fact.

When you're programming in the zone, you're programming at your peak cleverness. I'm reminded of the Brian Kernighan quote - "Debugging is twice as hard as writing the code in the first place. Therefore, if you write the code as cleverly as possible, you are, by definition, not smart enough to debug it."

Re: Ask HN: How do you get and stay in the "zone"?

#24

Post by getpost »

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi is the guy to read on flow. Try his book, "Finding Flow: The Psychology of Engagement with Everyday Life"

Not exactly on your point, but here he is on video http://www.ted.com/talks/mihaly_csikszentmihalyi_on_flow/

For a different approach, try this article, 'Your Never-ending (and Needless) Pursuit of “the Zone”' 1) You are living in the feeling of your thinking—whose quality is constantly in flux. 2) negative thoughts (actually, all thoughts) are random, neutral, and powerless 3) simply stay in the game.

edit: Never ending pursuit link link added http://garretkramer.com/your-never-ending-and-needless-pursu...

edit2: The video does offer one response to your question, especially when he discusses the chart that appears at 15:28. Adjust arousal and control to home in on the flow state.

Re: Ask HN: How do you get and stay in the "zone"?

#26

Post by ranebo »

Different things work for different people but I'll throw my techniques into the ring. I have worked from home for the last 10 years so some of these won't be suitable for a corporate environment.

- Start immediately, as soon as you get to your work environment. For me that means no breakfast, no coffee etc... until one function/problem/failing unit test/something is done. Since I'm at home when I wake up I get dressed then go straight to the computer and open my editor and start working. This gets me in the mood straight from the beginning of the day.

- I find getting into the Zone is often really about finding the next task to complete. Leaving work on your local machine with a failing unit test or compiler error helps is a good way to give you defined task to complete next time.

- If the environment is noisy and headphones are necessary, music without lyrics. I tend to like trance or orchestral movie and game soundtracks.

- If it's not part of what you want to accomplish don't check your email until after you are already running out of steam. Reading and answering emails is easy enough work but usually completely kills any flow I have or at least fills my head with information not helpful to the task at hand. Same goes for any instant messaging etc...

- In much the same vein disable the internet for a while, I've never been more productive than when I was on an overseas day flight.

- People are distractions too, late nights (when I was in my early 20s) and early mornings (nowadays) are productivity's friends.

- Don't visit sites like HN until after work is finished. Hard to do but is knowing that "Company X releases/is bought by Y" ASAP going to help you work in any way?

- Finally (Work from home/self owned businesses only) if you're not feeling it, call it a day and do something else/go out have fun. If you're anything like me, by giving yourself a break you'll make up for it in productivity later.

Re: Ask HN: How do you get and stay in the "zone"?

#27

Post by Gravityloss »

phillmv wrote: post #21

Routines. Flaubert once said, "Be regular and orderly in your life, so that you may be violent and original in your work." Go to bed at roughly the same time. Get up at roughly the same time. Eat breakfast (prevents sugar crashes later in the day). Do some light exercise when you get out of bed (7 min workout, holla) and then meditate. Do actually intense exercise once or twice a week. Snack a few hours after your lu…

What do you do while your tests run? :)
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