Explaining Flow to non-geeks
kid666.com
kid666.com
In fact, flow happens in loads of places, and isn't unique to geeks or programming.
To the author: get a life, and learn other stuff. Flow is common, even if not always understood or appreciated.
One thing I have recently noticed is how disrespectful people are to kids in flow. I'll see a little kid really engrossed in an activity, completely in the zone, and the parent will go "Okay time to go!" and yank them right out. And then people complain about short concentration spans...
The author says:
"I realised the main problem was that she just didn’t understand why the little distractions matter."
He realized. He didn't ask her. She didn't say, "I just don't get this flow thing." And he admits he was being a jerk. Maybe the main problem wasn't that she didn't understand flow. Maybe the real problem is that he was being a jerk.
I'm not saying it's one or the other. I'm saying we don't know. Even though we don't know, the author wants to assume that non-geeks just don't understand flow unless it's explain to them, even though it's a common phenomenon in all fields as the author alludes to by giving not one, but two analogies.
I was grumpy and I snapped at her, that's uncool.
The point of the post was that I wanted her to understand why it's important to let someone to achieve deep concentration when they are programming.
When people don't commonly do activities that require that deep concentration they don't understand why small distractions are a problem. The point is not the understanding of the concept of flow, per se, but connecting it to a geek's ability to output.