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Comment by avilay | Hacker News Reader

Not being able to enter flow state is a very interesting observation. I've felt it too to the extent that I went down a whole new rabbit hole of what it means to be in flow state. Let me know if anybody here wants to know more, happy to post some links.

To answer your question - I discuss the approach with Claude Code (e.g., should I implement my own ACT model in JAX or PyTorch, Python or Rust or Julia, etc.). Then write the initial part of the code myself. Opening up a blank vscode is a simple joy of life I refuse to give up :-) I'll ask Claude for advice if I get stuck, it will helpfully offer to write that code for me, I obstinately decline. Eventually, I'll get bored of some minutiae or other, at which point I'll ask Claude to complete just that part of it.

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Ok here are the flow related links. This was about 1.5 years ago when I was trying to figure out burnout and it turned out flow (or lack thereof) was closely related.

  * https://youtu.be/VbUFMYs0kXQ?si=xiNw4ZFlla8k-p7w  The person who gives this talk (Rian Doris) has a good newsletter that I still read. I just checked their website and it has gone in full commercial mode, so YMMV.

  * https://www.ted.com/talks/elizabeth_gilbert_your_elusive_creative_genius

  * https://www.amazon.com/dp/0465074871

  * https://www.betterup.com/blog/meaning-of-personal-values

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mihaly_Csikszentmihalyi is considered the originator of the flow concept: "a highly focused mental state conducive to creativity", it's applied to other fields such as music. Definitely worth going down the rabbit hole.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_(psychology)

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S002839322...

I'd be interested in the rabbit hole of flow state. Also with regards to the dopamine rewards of solving a bug as motivation.

Sometimes using a LLM can assist these and sometimes it can feel like cheating myself out of a good thing and I'm not entirely sure where the borders are. It could also be related to a sense of ownership or pride in ones work and seeing the value in doing quality work.

Debugging can be super fun as we eliminate possibilities and it feels like we are converging to a solution. There have been instances where Claude (Opus family) was not able to effectively debug and I had to step in and do it. But debugging an over-engineered library for example, can become very wearisome. This is when I am really thankful for having Claude Code, it is able to figure out the bug and its fix/workaround pretty fast. I can then get back to doing my main task instead of spending an indefinite amount of time stepping through sloppily written code.

>I've felt it too to the extent that I went down a whole new rabbit hole of what it means to be in flow state. Let me know if anybody here wants to know more, happy to post some links.

I'm not a programmer, but I very much enter a flow state working on tickets, or playing a video game on higher difficulties when everything "clicks"

I miss feeling like I was "in the zone", but I haven't been able to achieve it in years.

Between having kids and a work situation a few years back, it is like my brain expects to be interrupted at any moment, so won't get there.

Teaching your kids to have a calendar and focus blocks (once they're old enough) is as good a habit to teach them as it is for you.

Agree! Negotiating focus blocks both at home *and* work can be super helpful. Of course, this is not always possible. Without knowing anything about your situation, it might be useful to rule out burnout as a possible reason for loss of flow.

Ride a bike.

For sure, any task or activity that is hard enough and just outside our reach, can get us into flow state. The trick is in ensuring that it is the right kind of hard, it is not too hard, and we time box the activity/task. If you think of how to beat the boss fight in a video game even when you are not playing it, it is the "right kind of hard". For me, beating the boss fights in Elden Ring were too hard, never got into flow state in that game :-)

I'd love to have some links please :)

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