John Coder

How often are you “in the zone?” Is it a couple of times each day? Once a day? Once a week? Once a Month? Regardless of how often, I would be willing to bet that your best work is done while in the zone. Recognize this phenomenon and savor every juicy second.

Being in the zone means that time is irrelevant, and you are coding up a storm; absolute genius is flowing from your fingertips. All of your concerns take a back seat, and productivity rides shotgun.

[insert sound effect here]

Talk about instant buzz-kill! There are few things more sobering than an interruption while in the zone. It is a fragile state of Zen, and any interruption borders on personal offense.

Getting in the zone is like falling asleep. Some people are good at it while others have to work hard. It generally requires silence and an environment void of distractions. A leaky faucet stands between you and a good night’s sleep. You are a programmer, so naturally you have debugged the situation and come to the following conclusion: that faucet is going to die a horrible death. Thankfully, you have a meeting with the true head of the household (the wife), and decide that you should outsource the project to a specialist. A plumber fixes the leaky spout and you can once again examine the inside of your eyelids for holes.

Much like the faucet example, a developer must deal with distractions in the same way.

1. Diagnose the problem (Who wants what, and why?).

2. Solve it (Give them what they want so they will go away!).

3. Try to get back in the zone.

What’s more is the net effect of these interruptions.

“Consider that it takes 15 minutes for a developer to enter a state of flow. If you were to interrupt a developer to ask a question and it takes five minutes for them to answer, it will take a further 15 minutes for them to regain that state of flow, resulting in a 20 minute loss of productivity. Clearly, if a developer is prevented from flowing several times during the day their work rate declines substantially.” – Software Nation

Zone management seems impossible. To some degree, it is. Email is a raging river that will never end. Coworkers will always have questions. People around you will always chat and gossip. Silence is underrated. Even discomfort can jostle the flow.

Rest assured there is a point to this rant. Take control over what is yours, and protect your zone by any means necessary. If that means you need a $200 pair of comfortable headphones to drown out the world, so be it. If it means only allowing emails to break the floodgates once or twice an hour, go for it. Find what works for you and exploit it, because being in the zone is our number one secret to productivity.