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Comment by balabaster | Hacker News Reader

Yes, it's not the coding marathons themselves, it's being in a moment of intense focus and flow where your fingers really seem to be coding on their own. Time becomes meaningless, ceases to exist even because you're lost in your own world and everything just makes perfect sense.

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What I'm saying though is that we perceive "coding marathons" as good because we can only do them when we are in a good state. Say you have five coding sessions and in four of them you run into some problem, you get disturbed (or demotivated) or something else that halts your progress. While in the fifth none of that happens, so you end up having a long period of "flow". Then one might conclude that it's the coding marathon or the flow itself that is good when in reality it's the really the other factors that correlate with having a long session that really matters. And if you practice you can make more headway each day, even achieving flow in shorter sessions, than you ever could only being motivated to do coding marathons sometimes.

of course, there are moments of interrupted zen as you describe. But I was mostly not considering interruptions, distractions and diversions. I was mostly considering that if I were left to my own devices entirely undisturbed... you can have a half hour, hour, 2 hour or however long you're in your state of zen coding marathons... perhaps I don't consider them coding marathons as such, perhaps I consider them more like a state of meditation. Though, I could see how other people would describe them as marathons.

I think what you are trying to say is consistency is better than inconsistency given the same amount of work. The consistent worker will be able to get items done in 5 days, but the inconsistent one will take 3 of those days, do the work, then twiddle thumbs at work for the next two days to regroup. Both are "ready" back on the start of day 1, but which one is more efficient?

One could argue that the person can make a better use of the two extra days spent working but not productive on items related to specific work items. So it may not increase productivity to the employer but it increases productivity to the employee.

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