> But I can remember accessing a state resembling flow only a few times; the vast majority of the hours I spend writing are closer to a grind than a trance. Wit

> But I can remember accessing a state resembling flow only a few times; the vast majority of the hours I spend writing are closer to a grind than a trance. With any project, there are so many variables I can’t predict. Will my sources respond? Does the information I seek exist? Will someone send me a text starting ‘OMG’ to take me away from my focus? This resonates a lot. I never understood why people in software talk about flow so much. For me completing a challenging task always means oscillating between several pieces of documentation and jumping between various places in the code to understand the interconnections and where the task naturally belongs. There is hardly any flow there, and a lot of decision making. Then when I want what I'm going to write, it's almost mechanical, I can complete it with various degree of focus, but even when I'm focused, it's definitely closer to "mindfulness" than to "flow" because it lacks challenge - all the challenge was about deciding what and how has to be done.