Efficiency Is the Enemy
One of the uncomfortable conversations we&#x27;re going to have to have soon is about how &#x27;Flow State&#x27; is efficient but ineffective.<p>One of the characteristics of Flow State is a diminished sense of considering the consequences of an action. Exactly the &quot;so busy figuring out if they could do it that they didn&#x27;t stop to think if they <i>should</i> do it&quot;.<p>In particular I&#x27;ve noticed that people get extremely defensive about code they wrote in Flow State. My working theory is that we think somewhere on a spectrum from, &quot;how could anything that made me feel that good really be bad?&quot; to &quot;I got three days of work done in one day you are crapping all over it instead of congratulating me? Fuck you!&quot;<p>I know that the efficacy of my code tends to be higher when I &#x27;come up for air&#x27;, reason out what to do next, and if I find that Flow Me is disagreeing with Planning Me, I stop and regroup. This is essentially the same skill I use to, among other things, keep from overspending at a store - setting ground rules and stopping when I&#x27;m tempted to violate them.<p>Pomodoro might be a little to structured for many of us, but as a starting point it might be a reasonable antidote.<p>I think in general that programmers have an easier time entering Flow State, but if you&#x27;re going to willingly exit it, you had better have some confidence you can find it again, so you need to have better than 50:50 odds of being able to enter it at will instead of just going with it when it happens. This seems to be a rarer skill.