It’s a cinematic tale as old as time.
The heroes are on the cusp of catching the bad guy, but there’s a hitch that can only be solved by one person: the programmer.
The heroes call her in their moment of greatest need. She spins around in her office chair and faces a wall of screens. Her fingers fly across the keyboard and electric-green code appears on her display until, a-ha! She’s found the missing person or located a bad guy’s hideout.
Software engineer Adam Goldberg can relate. When he is in a flow state, it can look like he’s effortlessly hacking the mainframe.
“When I have a Spacemacs editor open with multiple windows of c++ code, I might just pass the eye test to someone who has never programmed before,” Goldberg said.
But he’s not accessing a trove of secret files or tracing a villain’s location with hacked cell phone tower data. He’s engineering the proprietary software behind Belvedere Trading’s work.
Goldberg’s flow state involves a roadmap of what he must complete, which keeps him focused on the task at hand. When he gets in the groove, he traverses on autopilot. He also has the essentials for any journey: coffee and a killer playlist. And when he hits a hurdle, he takes a stretch break around the Belvedere office.
Goldberg told Built In Chicago how he accesses a flow state and the advice he has for those whose flow isn’t Oscar-worthy — yet.
Belvedere Trading is a proprietary trading firm that specializes in equity index and commodity derivatives. Its tech has grown from the get-go: Belvedere first built an options model, adapted it to work on handheld computers, and then committed to building its software from the ground up. Now, its software is re-engineered, optimized and maintained.
How do you personally get into a flow state?
There are two key blockers that prevent me from regularly getting into my groove, and if I can eliminate them, I’m much more productive. One is context switching. Whether that other task is more important is irrelevant — I’ve just shifted my focus and am no longer invested in what I was working on. When I’m in a flow state, I have the energy to quickly look at something else without getting distracted, so I do. What’s the big deal about looking at something else for five minutes? Then, a chat pops up, then an email, and I’ve lost all my momentum. To get into the flow, Microsoft Teams notifications are silenced, and I have zero meetings on my calendar.
The second blocker is too many known unknowns when I know I don’t have the full picture. If my universe of known unknowns is too large, I can’t get into a groove. Clarifying every unknown may require too much context switching. It also means I can’t draw a clear roadmap to accomplish a task, and without a roadmap, it’s easy to put together a solution that needs to be refactored later when other dependencies are introduced.
What tips or advice do you have for others who might be struggling to get in the zone?
Don't force it. Sometimes we mistake productivity as binary. You’re either locked in or you’re getting nothing done. The harder I try to get in the zone, the more stress builds up that I’m not being productive.
It’s important to time-box what you’re working on. Set a deadline, whether that is 20 minutes or four hours. A deadline will keep you on track and let you reevaluate whether you’re making meaningful progress at the end. Time boxing doesn’t necessarily help you get in the zone, but it helps you assess how important a task truly is and allocate resources appropriately.
Lastly, try to set expectations with your team about your dedicated focus time to reduce context switching. It can be stressful to not respond to chats or emails from other team members right away since you don’t want to be a bottleneck for their productivity. My team has a clause in our Team Agreement that says, “Do not disturb means no immediate response. You can expect a response within three to four hours of the working day.” Problem solved.
