Have you ever experienced a time when you felt time flew by as you are coding? It felt like only a few minutes but a few hours have passed. That’s how it feels like to be in a state of flow. You might also notice that the results from flow state are often some of your best work.
In a way, the flow state is like a secret weapon for you as a developer because that’s where most of your work happens. Although flow state is responsible for a large amount of your output, it is also a small percentage of your overall day. So, it makes sense to figure out how you can make the most out of being in the flow state.
What Is Flow State
The psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi recognized and named the psychological concept of flow, which is a highly focused mental state. According to Dr. Csikszentmihalyi,
“In positive psychology, flow, also known as zone, is the mental state of operation in which a person performing an activity is fully immersed in a feeling of energized focus, full environment, and enjoyment in the process of the activity. In essence, flow is characterized by complete absorption in what one does.”
To find out more about flow and why it is important for software developers you can visit my post dedicated to the topic.
1. Save Deep Work for Flow State
To make the best use of flow state you should save work that is cognitively intensive for when you are in flow. I am not going to dive into deep work in this post, I have another post that goes more in-depth into the topic. For this post, all you need to know is that deep work is when you’re performing activities in a state of distraction-free concentration where you are pushing your cognitive capacities to their limit. If you are unsure of how to start implementing deep work into your day, I have a post for that too.
2. Understanding Your Energy Level Throughout the Day
To really take advantage of flow state you’ll need to understand your energy level throughout the day. What time of the day are you more energetic and or productive? Don’t know the answer? Go take notes about your output throughout the day and try to identify a time frame where output is high.
Once you know what time of the day you are most energetic and productive, get into flow during that time frame and tackle the deep work. Don’t waste that precious time to work on tedious mindless tasks.
3. Have a Balance Between Skill and Challenge
To achieve a state of flow, your tasks must have a good balance between your skills and the difficulty. When one significantly outweighs the other it will be nearly impossible to retain a state of flow. So, avoid tasks that are too easy for your skill level and train/educate yourself on the skills you need for tasks that are too difficult.
4. Say No to Interruptions
Interruptions can come in different ways from a coworker tapping your shoulder to a meeting. You must establish some rules to protect the time of day you are most productive. Ask for meetings to be rescheduled or even move all your meetings into a single day. Nothing puts your productivity to a halt more than knowing that a meeting is coming up so you’ll need to stop what you’re doing and get ready for it. If you’re interested in what other effects interruptions have on software developers you can check out my post about the topic.
5. Have Clear Goals and View of Progress
Like with most things you will need to have clear goals if you want to make sure you’re on the right track. When you’re moving aimlessly it’s hard to be sure you’re going in the right direction. So, you need to have a plan. In the context of flow state, it means you know what you want to achieve in the next few hours. You also have a checklist of smaller tasks that need to be done to achieve the goal.
The idea is to plan what needs to be done to achieve the goals outside of flow that way you can spend all the time in flow building out the solution.
I hope this post was helpful to you. If you found this post helpful, share it with others so they can benefit too.
What are your experiences with flow state? Have you found it easy to achieve flow state?
To get in touch, follow me on Twitter, leave a comment, or send me an email at steven@brightdevelopers.com.