In 1970, psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi named the state of mind known as flow. Sharing many similarities with hyperfocus, it is best described as a moment of clarity in which one is fully immersed in a state of intense focus.

If you've been coding for a while, you've probably experienced this. It requires a specific setup, but it always ends up in a tremendous amount of work being accomplished in little time.

I like cooking, so I though about introducing this topic as a recipe.

To cook a full batch of Flow, you'll need to following ingredients:

• A full night of sleep. Let the dev rest long enough to feel energized.
• Water. Truth be told, I'm not sure this one is absolutely necessary, but I like to start off the day with a large glass of water with a pinch of salt and a few drops of lemon juice. Mostly because tap water tastes like granite around here.
• A challenging task. It is nearly impossible to reach a state of flow when working on something easy/repetitive. If the task at hand requires you to replace a bunch of icons throughout a large scale web application, you don't need a state of flow you need an intern a large amount of coffee.
• A clear goal. I like to work with user stories, to know exactly what's expected. Pen and paper are enough, just write down what you need to accomplish, and cross it off as you progress.
• The knowledge. Ideally, you should already be experienced enough to know how to build whatever you're working on. That means no chatGPT, no stackOverflow, just pure coding.
• Needless to say, ditch all external distractions. Phone must be in airplane mode, notifications are turned off, VSCode is in zen mode.

The goal is to setup an environment that'll naturally bring you into this state of flow. You cannot force it, you need to let it slip in.