The Zone

No, I’m not talking about Oprah’s diet. I’m talking about that almost mystical synergy of mind, keyboard, and project that occurs every so often and things just “click”. When you start into a process that absorbs you so completely that you don’t sense the passage of time, the need to go home, or that nagging sensation from your bladder after the six-pack of Mtn. Dew. Everything just clicks into place and outside distractions fade into a haze of background noise as you move with purpose, unerringly towards the goal.

This happens. Programmers, artists, authors, heck ~ even project managers can get into the zone. It’s a great place to be. You’re super productive, focused, and enjoying every minute of it.

Unfortunately, I spend much more time out of the zone that in it. Part if it is environmental - take a gander at Peopleware for an excellent examples of objective, concrete ways to get your workers in the zone and keep ‘em there as long as possible.

I read something interesting in the Joel On Software forums a while back with regard to the zone. A developer was lamenting the inability to do much:

“…I can’t get into “the zone”, I can’t even remember where “the zone” is! Such is life when stuck working on a train wreck of a government J2EE project”.

There was much sympathy and tounge clucking. Yeah, it sucks. Yea, been there myself. Uh-huh me-too.

Then someone said something that brought me up short. I’ll paste it in below (because I’m too lazy to paraphrase. =^) ) ::
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I agree with most of the writers that it is natural and perhaps a byproduct of our industry.

When they were interviewing the author of Lance Armstrong’s biography, they asked him, what made Lance unique? Why could he win time and again when others never even made the first win? He believes it came from Lance’s cancer treatment. Lance broke every problem into small pieces. He then attacked a small piece and gained success from doing it. Success breeds more success and like a runner’s high you just want it to continue.

I find myself “outside the zone” when I start looking at the big picture too much and not focusing on the details. This project is 400 hours of work ahead of me. The servers are not here, the IDEs BSOD and the software we ordered three months ago has finally arrived but was not what we ordered.

Pieces are the key. What can I accomplish in the next 4 hours, 8 hours, 24 hours? What has to happen first. I am, to my wife’s dismay, a list person. Give me a list and I can burn through it in no time. Maybe it is the PM in me or the developer looking for order in chaos.

You are not part of a trainwreck. You are working to complete the next task. If the train flys off the tracks it is someone else’s issue (unless you are the owner). If you can see what needs to get done as compoenents you may even be able to offer a solution that will keep the train running. And let me tell you, companies pay _big_ for those that can.
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Yup, things bite sometimes. But don’t forget - you ain’t responsible for the whole enchalada. (unless you’re the PM =^) ) Given that 31% of all IT projects will be cancelled before completion and 52% will have average cost/time/budget overruns of 189%, you can’t use project success as your personal success metric. (well, you can but you’ll be depressed as heck if you do…) So where does that leave me, li’ll optimization analyst in the behemoth of a Fortune (something small) IT department? What’s my role? I can’t reform the entire department in my image (then again, I’m not sure I’d want to even if I could…!) I can, however, plant daisies in my part of the world. Do the best I can. Make incremental improvements wherever possible.

Remember ~ progress NOT perfection!

Ok, we now return you to your regularly scheduled IT programming.