Trail running and code writing share a concept of the flow state. Many other crafts share this concept, but I both run and code so I’ll keep the focus here for today. The flow state is a level of immersion in the craft that blocks out the rest of the world, leaving the crafter focused on the craft. It’s dramatized in ads for new running shoes and movies like The Social Network, where montages show programmers glued to their screens and their keys, resulting in prodigious work output.
I love reaching this feeling when I run on trails. I’ll come back from a 2-hour run to the confusion of my partner who asks weren’t you bored? She’s referring to the fact that I’m usually bouncing around our apartment looking for mental stimulation, so 2 hours without music or a running partner seems to her like it must feel like an eternity to me.
The truth is, it’s hard to run on trails without breaking an ankle. The safe practice of trail running requires the brain to be working just enough that it can’t really concentrate on anything else. I end these runs feeling refreshed, like I just meditated for a while. In fact, I feel better than if I had just meditated, because I find it really hard to flick my thoughts away when I’m sitting still.
The flow state is a state where I don’t need to think, I can be content just doing. I strove for this feeling coding, too—I even follow a newsletter devoted to this feeling. I felt like I achieved it frequently; like Jesse Eisenberg in The Social Network, my fingers were sprinting from key to key and I’d look up after what felt like 10 minutes to find it had been an hour.
But then I read The Clean Coder by Robert C. Martin. I won’t do a book review here because the internet’s littered with them, but what he had to say about this prized flow state realy changed my thinking:
Here’s a little hint from someone whose been there and back: Avoid the Zone. This state of consciousness is not really hyper-productive and is certainly not infallible. It’s really just a mild meditative state in which certain rational faculties are diminished in favor of a sense of speed.
Here, Martin adds something to my connection to trail running! It’s a sense of speed, not even necessarily actual speed, and it’s facilitated by a mild meditative state. For me, this flow is okay in running because I do it recreationally and not to hit specific goals or run specific routes.
Code written in the Zone may come out faster, but you’ll be going back to visit it more.
I felt the tunnel vision this week as I sprinted to finish up a project on time. It’s a precarious feeling because you know that the normal tests haven’t been written and re-written.
Martin does offer an antidote to this state, which I have tried. The Pomodoro Technnique is another internet subculture that you can explore yourself but, essentially, the idea is that you work 25 minutes, then take 5 off, and repeat all day. You must take the 5 minutes, even if you’re in the middle of something. This is the key to the technique: it splits up feelings of work, both good and bad, in order to set a more sustainable cadence. I’ve found that, counterintuitively, the 5 minutes makes the 25 more productive. I’m less apt to check my phone because I know respite is coming.
Plus, in an age of hyperactivity, carving deep grooves in time for one activity ends up feeling empowering in a new way. It’s different from the feeling of speed, more like a feeling of control.
My recommendation: give it a try; if you’re on macOS, tomatobar is an awesomely simple interface. I write my tasks in Google calendar (they always take 30 minute blocks) and then sync the timer to the tasks.