The Spiritual Coder

Jonathan Fields has a nice writeup on how to get in “the zone” (or “the flow”), which is the key to getting great things done. He paraphrases Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s essential elements. Check this one out:

Lack of a sense of self-consciousness – you become so engaged in the nature of the work that are no longer aware of yourself, but, rather feel a sense of total absorption in the task. It’s like that old sports adage, “be the ball.”

I experience this when I dive deep into coding a Rails app. I’m thinking about data structures, app flow, reusable code that doesn’t repeat itself, the user experience, and I get excited about combining everything in the right way. It’s those moments in retrospect that make me feel powerful to change my life, to make large things happen, to create beautiful things. I think this is a kind of spirituality because it lifts you above the mundane and gives you perspective, if only for a small percentage of your day. I wish I could learn to live in the zone more.