What this means is practicing a daily combination of correct eating, rigorous exercise and quality sleep. With these elements in harmony and alignment, I am able to bring it.

I recommend a morning yoga routine [1]. This will clear the mind, revitalize the body and set the ground-work and tempo for a fantastic day.

I recommend girya [2].

I recommend a Nordic Track ski machine [3]. The Nordic Track ski machine is one of the most righteous cardio machines ever designed.

You do not need a gym. You can work out at home. Please see my previous comments here [4].

I wish you nothing but the best in your journey.

[1] https://www.google.com/search?q=ashtanga+vinyasa+yoga&tbm=is...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kettlebell

[3] https://www.google.com/search?&q=nordic+track+ski+machine&tb...

[4] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5617870

Now, I have some gym equipment in my room. This doesn't work nearly as well. I'll start to workout, then check that forum post to see if anyone replied, then I'll browse YouTube for some music, then I might do a few sets, and finally I get distracted by something and quit.

For me, the gym, or biking outdoors works best. Once I'm on my bike, I'll mess around for hours. If I try to bike indoors, I'll last about 2 minutes.

I often go to group yoga lessons (90 min., in the evening), but an hour and a half is a bit much for the mornings ;)

Thanks!

I work a 45 minute morning yoga routine. That seems to be an optimal amount of time for me to do some good work and find my bearing.

After warming up, the core of the routine is a modified version of the Surya Namaskara (Sun Salutation). For example, the flow for this is:

1. Start in a standing position like Mountain pose, but with hands in Namaste.

2. Stretch the arms up and out to either side (parallel to the floor) and bend forward (like a dive).

3. Move the arms in and reach down to the floor.

4. Flow into plank (push-up position: palms on the floor, elbows slightly bent and knees off the floor).

5. Flow into upward dog (knees off the floor).

6. Flow back into plank and do a push-up.

7. Flow into downward dog.

That is the start of the routine, and everything revolves around it. For example, after step 7, I perform different asanas, like Warrior I, Warrior II, Reverse Warrior, Triangle pose, etc. Then, I flow back by reversing the steps (i.e., 7 through 1).

Near the end of the overall routine, I close out with balance asanas, including Chair pose, Side arm balance, Warrior III, etc.

Once my coding day is done, I rock a 45 minute round of some other form of exercise (i.e., not yoga). I personally find that a twice-a-day routine really helps me with my cadence and outlook in all aspects of my life.

Hope that helps!

More is great, of course, but even a brief session does wonders.

There are different modalities to exercise. Many of them are complimentary. All of them hit a rate of diminishing returns in finite time.

What you do (how you train / what your fitness routine is) depends on your goals and needs.

Generally, there are:

• Short-term energy systems training: high-intensity cardio. Characterized by high-intensity intervals, Tabata, fartlek, or similar training protocols. A Tabata workout runs 4 minutes.

• Long-term endurance energy systems training: this can help train the body to more efficiently mobilize fat stores. It's what many people think of as "exercise": long, slow, steady-state activities such as walking, cycling, etc.

• Strength training: high-level resistance training to near failure in the 1-20 reps range, generally. This contains within it additional modalities: strength, hypertrophy, endurance, isolation, compound, plyometrics, speed / Olympic lifts, etc. Also involves progression, periodization, and micro / meso / megacycle training variation.

• Prioreception / fine motor control: not entirely the same thing, but essentially training your coordination and skills. This could be gymnastics moves involving strength and balance, pitching or tennis accuracy, or fine motor control utilized by musicians.

• Mobility work: much of the asana practice of yoga delves into this, but myofascial release (self-induced or received massage), heat and cold therapy, etc., play into this.

• Relaxation, meditation, mindfulness, visualization: different aspects of relaxation, many involving stilling the inner voice. The meditative practice of yoga is an embodiment of this.

• Rest and recovery. Anyone training hard becomes a sleep whore. An eight hour minimum, and often sleep binges of 10-12 hours, aren't uncommon for athletes in serious training.

• Diet. Fueling the engine, specific to your goals, is key. Micro and macronutrients, timing, and caloric content are the major factors.

"Yoga" itself is a multi-form discipline (the eightfold path) of which asanas (poses) are only one component.

I also enjoy walking (and hiking).

My personal take is that, rather than viewing one form of exercise as being superior to another, I view different forms of exercise in how they can serve me and fulfill me in their own, unique ways.

Yoga serves me in a different way than walking does, and vice versa. By the same token, kettle-bells serve me in a different way than yoga does, or mountain biking does, or any other fill-in-the-blank exercise activity does.

- Start immediately, as soon as you get to your work environment. For me that means no breakfast, no coffee etc... until one function/problem/failing unit test/something is done. Since I'm at home when I wake up I get dressed then go straight to the computer and open my editor and start working. This gets me in the mood straight from the beginning of the day.

- I find getting into the Zone is often really about finding the next task to complete. Leaving work on your local machine with a failing unit test or compiler error helps is a good way to give you defined task to complete next time.

- If the environment is noisy and headphones are necessary, music without lyrics. I tend to like trance or orchestral movie and game soundtracks.

- If it's not part of what you want to accomplish don't check your email until after you are already running out of steam. Reading and answering emails is easy enough work but usually completely kills any flow I have or at least fills my head with information not helpful to the task at hand. Same goes for any instant messaging etc...

- In much the same vein disable the internet for a while, I've never been more productive than when I was on an overseas day flight.

- People are distractions too, late nights (when I was in my early 20s) and early mornings (nowadays) are productivity's friends.

- Don't visit sites like HN until after work is finished. Hard to do but is knowing that "Company X releases/is bought by Y" ASAP going to help you work in any way?

- Finally (Work from home/self owned businesses only) if you're not feeling it, call it a day and do something else/go out have fun. If you're anything like me, by giving yourself a break you'll make up for it in productivity later.

I'll take this opportunity to plug my ambient noise generator:

http://asoftmurmur.com

There are other non-music options too:

http://coffitivity.com

http://noisli.com

http://rainycafe.com

http://mynoise.net <- very customizable. Great for enthusiasts

    <rant intensity="105%">

The first hour of each day is basically wasted - the first half hour nobody's going to start something because they'll get interrupted half an hour later, and the meeting itself accomplishes nothing except sapping any motivation the participants might have arrived to work with.

    </rant>

http://musicforprogramming.net

Flaubert once said, "Be regular and orderly in your life, so that you may be violent and original in your work."

Go to bed at roughly the same time. Get up at roughly the same time. Eat breakfast (prevents sugar crashes later in the day). Do some light exercise when you get out of bed (7 min workout, holla) and then meditate. Do actually intense exercise once or twice a week. Snack a few hours after your lunch.

Take care of your body and keep it prepared for the work you have ahead of you.

When you get to work, plan out the rest of your day. Write down what you intend to do (you get a lot better with being realistic with this list) and split it out. Don't open HN while you wait for your tests to run. Timebox everything else.

Also, take regular breaks. Get up, stretch, go for a walk, read for a bit.

Procrastination I find is closely linked to mood, so make sure you've taken care of that as well.

I do 80% of the above and I still have procrastination spirals but it's gotten a lot better.

Less likely to only come to my senses half an hour and 8 tabs later ;).

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=191275

and also #49 here:

http://v25media.s3.amazonaws.com/edw519_mod.pdf

*

The single most important thing I do to "achieve laser focus and concentration" is to work in such a way that I don't need "laser focus and concentration" to get my work done.

This has to be done the night before.

I always quit all online work at least 2 hours before bedtime and print whatever I'm working on.

Then I go into any other room with program listings, blank paper, and pens (especially red!) and plan out all of tomorrow's work.

All analysis, design, and refactoring must be done at this time. I do not allow myself to sleep until the next day's work is laid out. I also do not allow myself to get back onto the computer. The idea is to have a clear "vision" of what I am going to accomplish the next day. The clearer the better.

This does 2 things. First, I think about it all night (maybe even dream about it). Second, I can't wait to get started the next day.

I always wake up and start programming immediately. Once I get going, it's easy to keep going. Any difficulties are probably because I didn't plan well enough the night before.

That said, I like https://www.rescuetime.com/ which tracks time spent on distracting vs productive tasks. It's hardly perfect, but it helps "keep me honest" to know I can run a report to see exactly how much time I spend reading junk online instead of working.

After a while, I've been conditioned to be "in the zone" on cue by chewing on a coffee stirring rod. it works about 50~70% of the time, and I have to be not tired at all. It's good to have it invoked on cue, though. I find drinking coffee in general not helping; caffeine is great in getting hufed up for a short duration, but I try not to consume more than two cups a week.

Addendum: A sad side-effect was that now I cannot seem to have meals without being mentally engaged - be it reading or conversing.

I love it; side effects of life hacking. Nice tip though, I might try that.

Another lesser known chemical trick is aspirin. Aspirin boosts energy, mood, and concentration. Some days I down nearly three grams. I find it works synergistically with coffee.

Having read the book is there something I'm missing in that guess?

Tennis players speak reverently of the mystical atmospheric condition known as ‘The Zone’ Passing shots chip away at the lines, first serves pop in and mistakes simply don't materialize.

The next citation is from 1990, and refers to the more general creative sense.

Performers, surgeons, or creative artists..find that most important parts of their lives occur when they are ‘in the zone’.

Source is the New Age Journal. Notice how it is no longer capitalised.

I'm midway through that book and I find the way he explains it in clear terms actually something very beneficial to how I'm evaluating my experience. I haven't noticed anything "buzzwordy" about it. So far it's one of the books I've highlighted the most and that, in my book, is a good sign. I highly recommend it to any not only wanting to "get in the zone" but understand what that means for your quality of life.

(It might also help I just bought a MacBook Pro which I'm really enjoying developing on).

I'd say the best thing you can do is eliminate all distractions and block out large swaths of time to work. I took yesterday to do all of my menial tasks such as filing taxes, getting proof of insurance for a ticket, dealt with a verizon phone bill, etc. With all that out of the way, I find it easier to 'free your mind' and focus. Unfortunately I haven't fallen into gear yet naturally so I'm going to try to jump start my engine by just forcing my hand to work. Once you get in motion its easier to stay in motion.

Now once you've started. Don't stop. This may seem obvious but prepare by using the restroom or getting a glass of water beforehand.

Once you've been working for a while, usually >20 minutes, you're in the zone. Congratulations. Don't award yourself. You can go to the bathroom, get more water, but make sure you're getting back to work. If you sense yourself getting off task, X THAT WINDOW! AND FOCUS! It's as easy as that.

It also helps to be challenging yourself. If you're working on some stupid project that an 11th grader could do then I don't know how you get in the zone. Hard problems take more dedicated concentration which makes diving in the hard part and staying in very easy.

http://notmysock.org/blog/2005/Oct/17/

Oh and lots of sleep.

I sleep 8 hours or so and wake up with a lamp next to my bed triggered to turn on 1 hour before I need to wake up.

You really have to keep your body out the way of your mind. I eat far less food when I want to get into the zone.

I take a step up and walk about every 50 minutes or so. 10 minutes of walking around every hour, just to keep my eyes from hurting - used to play pool alone when my office had a table.

I can hang around 10+ hours in the zone that way.

But I get about 4 days of that a month, the rest are just 4 hour work-days (2 hours + 2 hours uninterrupted).

Not exactly on your point, but here he is on video http://www.ted.com/talks/mihaly_csikszentmihalyi_on_flow/

For a different approach, try this article, 'Your Never-ending (and Needless) Pursuit of “the Zone”' 1) You are living in the feeling of your thinking—whose quality is constantly in flux. 2) negative thoughts (actually, all thoughts) are random, neutral, and powerless 3) simply stay in the game.

edit: Never ending pursuit link link added http://garretkramer.com/your-never-ending-and-needless-pursu...

edit2: The video does offer one response to your question, especially when he discusses the chart that appears at 15:28. Adjust arousal and control to home in on the flow state.

My strategy is to create a temporary environment which isolates you -- not necessarily in a physical way. No emails, no meetings, no talking (earphones and loud music help me much, maybe also a sign like "genius at work" -- it's funny but makes people understand you need to concentrate). And then there is only you and the code, and that's your portal into the "zone" or "flow" or whatever you want to call this meditative state.

If you want to get in the zone: find a meaningful task, or allow the given task to take on meaning for you.

- Prep: Define my chain goals in a spreadsheet (like "work on project A at least one hour per day") with a row for each day to track the chain.

- Execution: As soon as I sit down at the computer, start up a timer to track my work that is visible running right there below my screen, put on my headphones, and listen to Fleetwood Mac's "The Chain" on continuous loop.

- Wrapup: Whenever I'm done working, log the time in my spreadsheet and mark the X to keep the chain going.

Something about the timer running and the song playing just kicks me into gear. Usually after the first ten minutes or so, I'm in the zone pretty solidly and can even switch playlists if I'm so inclined (don't usually bother though because I'm usually just focused on the task at that point).

The key is just starting and then the positive inertia takes over. So even if I only need to do 30 minutes to satisfy the chain, it usually lasts at least a couple hours once I'm on a roll.

[1]http://lifehacker.com/281626/jerry-seinfelds-productivity-se...

Some great tips. But, for me, at least some of becoming productive has to do with not doing a lot of meta-thinking about my work. For instance, the more I think about a start time, how to start, etc., the more likely I am to just keep thinking about it vs doing something.

The same is true for hitting the gym too. If I take time off for whatever reason and say, "I'm going to start again Monday" or similar, then I am less likely to do it. Instead, I have to just get up, put on my workout gear and go. In fact, it's like I have to do it as mindlessly as possible.

There just seems to be something about planning, talking, and thinking about things that keeps me in a passive mode of inaction. I think that mode is decidedly "out of the zone".

Also, along the lines of thinking too much, I read somewhere a while back that we spend too much time thinking about how we feel about things. The question posed was "what does that have to do with anything?", which struck me as very true. Sometimes things just are and we have to deal with it. That includes getting work done. I know that if I whine and complain to myself about not feeling like doing the work, it gives me license to slack off.

So now I try to refrain from putting so much energy into thinking about how I feel and instead redirect that energy to just getting the work done. Not always easy, but a prerequisite for being productive at all, let alone approaching the zone.

One way to beat this system is through pacing. This is by working towards short breaks (https://medium.com/the-productive-self/7bdf1f026431) or towards time limits to prevent procrastination (https://medium.com/p/ee13c1600b6b). I wrote these posts after hearing about these situations again and again. I am currently working on Catalist, a tool that effectively deals with these situations of task and flow management (http://signup.catalist.me/).

* Have some external metric that you trust to judge success. Because if you're like me you're internal "sense" of what is productive or not is often wrong. I know my 10 hour long in-zone hacking sessions are way less productive than my four hour well-rested in-zone hacking sessions - no matter how neat they might feel - because I see my delivery-rate drop.

* Get enough sleep (for me, 8 or 9 hours a night).

* Do a sane amount of "work" each day (for me, if I try and code for more than 6 hours a day I see my performance drop).

* Block out time. I have chunks of my day set aside for coding, pair working, reading, etc.

* Don't track time - track off-task interruptions. Keep track of whatever interrupts your N hours off coding (or whatever). Work at preventing those interruptions in future. If you're on a team be broad in your interpretation of "off task" - because your job is to optimise everybody's productivity - not just yours.

* Have rituals / an environment for work (when I sit in this chair at this time I am in work mode.)

* For coding I've found TDD to be a really effective way for me to get into the zone. Especially if I leave myself a failing test. It's got that intermittent reward cycle that's just crack for the brain.

* When I have trouble focussing I find something like Pomodoro Technique (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pomodoro_Technique) a way to trick myself into the zone. I can "force" myself to focus for "just 25 minutes". And after a loop or two it just clicks.

In my case however, this is definitely not what helps me "get and stay in the zone", or concentrating as people used to call it.

The first thing, which I guess is not that easily replicable, is that I used to be fully deaf, and I can get myself in that state of mind pretty much whenever I want to. It's basically turning some sort of autism switch on and off, which essentially involves removing yourself from your environment. I know a lot of meditation can eventually get you to the same point.

The other thing which probably sounds really obvious is staying motivated. I always have several tasks on the go so I try to break them down into less/more interesting tasks. When your motivation is high, go for the least interesting tasks, when you start feeling your motivation getting low, pick one of the more interesting tasks.

I think it's also down to work habits and experience. I've worked crazy, intense hours in my life, simply because I didn't have a choice. The more you do it, the more you don't want to do it, so the amount of time you can spend un-distracted in one go will slowly increase.

One final tip, which is probably going to sound stupid to most people, is keeping rhythm. I play a lot of music and I constantly feel/hear a rhythm in everything. When I occasionally find my mind going idle, I remind myself of the ambient rhythm (tap my fingers together and whatnot). I see my mind going idle as being out of sync in an orchestra, if that makes any sense.

First, I take the normal step of laying out the tasks for the day into small chunks: bugs, pieces of a feature, whatever. I put them in a format that I can easily check off as I work.

Once I'm ready to work I put my over-ear headphones on and crank up something with a beat. It needs to be loud enough that it's all I can hear. I use a standing desk which means...

I start to dance around a little. It looks something like this, only less cool: http://youtu.be/jECu2MZsrmE?t=16m50s

I'm not sure why this works for me. I could speculate about my mind/body getting into at rhythm so that even when I break focus on a task to wait for a compile or a test I'm able to jump right back in without... Missing a beat.

As I check off the tasks I prepared I feel more like I'm shouting for the DJ to play one more song than a dude working to complete tasks for his corporate overlords. I only discovered this about myself in the last few months when I switched to a standing desk. Changed my life!

We have all experience the zone but if you over do it you will go Manic and then burn out. Your goal should be consistent, sustainable productivity and not mania.

-planning the day in advance. Planning between tasks incurs HUGE overhead.

-isolate yourself from distraction

-declare goal in terms of whats-in-it-for-me

-list things to do, write down (.txt / post-it)

-iterate on breaking down

-only do work if you can not break it down further

-measure time

I found the biggest waste is not in working slowly but between blocks of work. Include them in your next task's log. Log time every time you finish a task. Guesstimate time when breaking down a day/task, log time when finished. Improve.

I found being in a flow is different from being extremely productive. Being in a flow only guarantees high concentration. It doesn't verify that you are moving in the right direction. Regularly breaking down tasks and iterating on breaking them down gives you a habit of refocusing.

... and if you get your meetings and lunch done and behind you by 1130am that's like 6 hours of a straight working afternoon with no planned interruptions :D

I used to come across code I'd written while in the zone later and have a hard time figuring out what I was doing/thinking. As such I end up with poor variable name choices and weird hard to follow algorithms that all made sense at the time but are a maintenance issue after the fact.

When you're programming in the zone, you're programming at your peak cleverness. I'm reminded of the Brian Kernighan quote - "Debugging is twice as hard as writing the code in the first place. Therefore, if you write the code as cleverly as possible, you are, by definition, not smart enough to debug it."

  1. http://www.livephish.com/
  2. http://www.phishtracks.com/

For a good one listen to the famous "Tahoe Tweezer": http://www.phishtracks.com/shows/2013-07-31/tweezer

Also, check out Marco Arment's "Geek Intro to Phish": http://www.marco.org/2011/05/26/geek-intro-to-phish

That said, I think learning how to start quickly be productive through consistency beats the hell out of chasing the zone. An hour, or even 20 minutes a day, every day or damn near it as opposed to multi-hour binges when the stars align.

For me the key to be in the zone is to turn off my internet and force myself to do one small step. If I am coding, I force myself to write 1 line. If I am designing, I force myself to design one small part of the page.

But once I finish the small step I realized that I am not satisfied by my work and next thing I know, I am coding/designing the whole feature.

After I get in this zone and I need the internet for answers, I turn it on but don't get distracted. By that time, I'm too paranoid to finish my task!

No rap or hip-hop though, that's too distracting. If I want to sink down, shut out everybody and get into the "flow" like someone said before, it has to be vocal trance for me. I mean, they call it "trance" music for a reason:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trance_music

"A trance refers to a state of hypnotism and lessened consciousness. This drifting sensation is portrayed in the genre by mixing many layers and rhythms to create build and release."

Once you find a genre that works for you (mine is vocal trance), you can literally shut everybody out and have that laser focus for long periods of time. It's a borderline ASC - Altered State of Consciousness.

http://www.rdio.com/people/syneryder/playlists/598011/Music_...

1. No distractions or interruptions. That includes a clean desk, no interruptions (closed door is preferable).

2. Comfortable chair and desk. You'll need something that you can sit in for extended periods of time.

3. Big container of water. I don't chug this, I sip. Your brain needs hydration, but I don't too much at one time as that forces bathroom breaks.

To preface all this, I usually always make sure I start as early as I can, have some coffee, and food. Before kids, I would usually do 6a-10a straight. Now, I can do an hour or so straight before I'm interrupted.

And, of course, stay away from HN and other news sites.

I have had a really hard time with this over the past 6 months. I have plenty of time to work, but when I sit down I have a very hard time focusing on the task at hand. I find myself working on other tasks that aren't a priority. The days when I have 100 small things to do are the worst. Logging into a server to change one line of code on 5 different servers is so scary to me.

I am really at the point now where my life is getting unmanageable due to my schedule and lack of focus and I need to make a change.

* Eat healthy.

* Expose yourself to a lot of sunlight.

* Use F.lux and wear blue light blocking safety glasses after sunset to prevent melatonin secretion suppression.

* Meet people at least every other day.

* Get a treadmill and a standing desk ($300 + $300).

* Get a sitting ball ($20).

* Have two monitors connected to your computer so that you can quickly switch between treadmill and sitting ball.

* Always have a notepad and a pen on your desk to be able to quickly postpone thoughts and tasks.

* Never write down TODOs that take less than 3 mintues, do them right away.

* Only do one thing at a time.

People who are depressed are given SSRIs (selective seratonin reuptake inhibitors) because your mood is largely governed by the levels of seratonin available in your brain. Similarly, your focus / "motivation" / "drive" is largely determined by dopamine. Acetylcholine, another neurotransmitter, is described by Wikipedia as having the key function of "responsiveness to sensory stimuli, a form of attention". The neurotransmitter GABA is commonly referred to as the "relaxatory neurotransmitter" - the one released when you do yoga or meditate.

The levels of these neurotransmitters are affected by what you're eating (and your body's ability to process what you're eating in terms of your baseline metabolic rate, digestive ecology etc.), how much exercise you're getting, what you're doing and even the thoughts you're having themselves.

So, in my opinion at least, you could equate "being in the zone" with having all your neurotransmitter levels and other body mechanisms functioning at their "optimal" levels. What complicates this is that "optimal" is person-specific. So a person who is "out of the zone" and very lethargic could make themselves more "in the zone" by taking steps to raise their dopamine levels whereas someone who is "out of the zone" because they're too over-active could become more "in the zone" by raising their GABA levels and bringing more "calm" to their life.

Raising your levels of a particular neurotransmitter can be done directly or indirectly. For example, you can raise your levels of the relaxatory neurotransmitter GABA by drinking green tea which is high in theanine which is the amino acid which your brain uses to make more GABA. Alternatively, and more interestingly to me, is that your actions affect your neurotransmitter levels too. For example, see the link below to a study concluding that a "12-week yoga intervention was associated with greater improvements in mood and anxiety than a metabolically matched walking exercise. This is the first study to demonstrate that increased thalamic GABA levels are associated with improved mood and decreased anxiety." http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20722471

I can't really substantiate this and it might very well sound like hippie bullshit but I honestly feel that there are ways to live your life that are better than others. For example, I think it would be difficult to argue that you feel better if you spend the day outside than if you stay inside sitting at a desk in an air-conditioned office. Of course, you can point to increased vitamin D being correlated to improved mood etc. but I think we all have an instinct that certain activities are "good" for you (in the sense that they help you become more "in the zone").

I've found the following to help move me more in alignment of "being in the zone" and move my neurotransmitter levels in the directions of "where they should be" for me to be in the zone: * 15 minutes of yoga every morning

* Omega 3, vitamin D and a solid multivitamin every day

* 40 minutes of intense cardio 3x per week (7-10km run)

* compound functional weights training (squats, deadlifts, pullups, etc.) for 40min 3x per week

* cut out sodas and drink at least 2.5 litres of water daily

* try not eat heavy meals at night (your digestion goes to sleep when the sun goes down) - eat your main meal in the middle of the day when your digestion is strongest

* cut out allergens (milk, nuts, wheat) and add them back slowly because you could very well be perpetually functioning beneath your optimal simply because your body is constantly in an allergic response state

* green smoothies every second day (kale, broccoli, spinach, bananas, ginger, coconut oil)

* 20 minutes mindfulness meditation daily

* listen to good music

* smile

:)

Just open up the editor and start coding. Pick something off that list, and hammer away at it. It may suck, but just keep going, re-write it, pick something else on your todo list, but keep going. The secret is: There is no "zone", there's hard work, and perseverance. The "zone" is just a figment of your imagination.

- habit

- music (headphones)

- get started

One thing that really helped me is to just "go through the motions" a few times when I sit down. I will literally compile/run a few times only changing a comment or adding a blank line and then removing it. Not only does it help my laptop "warm up" and swap in the pages it needs to compile quickly, it helps me get into the edit/compile/test cycle.

- starting a block with something you will be happy for doing later.

- but also building momentum by starting on smaller tasks

- sometimes and for some people and some tasks hacks like pomodoro (basically: the next 25 minutes I will not do anything but this particular thing I have decided. Then and only then I will stop and decide what to do next.)

-"auto focus" is also a winner sometimes

My home work environment is set up with minimal active distractions (no coworkers, no TV in sight, etc.). Working on something I'm interested in causes me to naturally ignore more passive distractions such as messing with my phone, doodling, etc.

http://www.di.fm/goapsy/‎

http://www.di.fm/progressivepsy‎/

Your issue with distractions is almost certainly a negative. Sometimes you've simply got to face those head-on. It's very, very difficult to handle both these and creative work. A sense of fatality about whatever's causing the distractions may help -- there's something to be said about Ashleigh Brilliant's "I feel much better now that I've given up hope".

Csikszentmihalyi's book Flow is probably the canonical reference. Read it. He's also appeared in multiple interviews (I encountered him a couple of decades back during a long road trip through the back country, it was a wonderfully serendipitous discovery).

I also listen to numerous interviews with authors, musicians, artists, and similar creative types, including occasionally scientific researchers. I'm finding these to be increasingly interesting with time. The task of getting yourself into a state to allow creativity or problem-solving to emerge is one shared with many others.

As for my own observations:

• Routine helps. Having a regular "beat" to my day provides structure.

• Recognizing my own limits and rhythms is key. As I posted elsewhere in this thread, there are many forms of physical exercise and fitness practices. For many of them, a relatively brief training period (as few as 4 minutes, generally up to an hour or two, rarely more) provides optimal benefits. Rest and recovery are esssential. I'm finding similar patterns in mental tasks: there's only so long I can remain focused.

• Removing distractions and concerns helps greatly. At their best, academic environments are almots coddling in their embrace, and allow freedom from immediate concerns to explore and analyze topics in depth. Many corporate or government research environments similarly remove these concerns. Frank Herbert's Dune includes the litany against fear: "I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain." I see stress as the mind-killer, and its negative influence on creativity and flow is legion. Mind: short-term pressure can lead to focus, but chronic stress is an absolute disaster.

• Engagement with the problem at hand and belief in the mission helps greatly. Among my frustrations with present tech trends is that much of the work is what David Graeber calls bullshit jobs: http://www.strikemag.org/bullshit-jobs/ I've expressed those frustrations here on HN more than once, and have been working for the past two years on my own response to this. A key problem is that non-bullshit jobs and compensation tend to be inversely correlated. Working for something I don't believe in, however, is ultimately as destructive as chronic stress (and is likely a form of it).

• Creating an environment in which you can work without distractions and which is filled with calming influences helps greatly. I'm fortunate to have a space of my own, a physically comforatale environment (not too hot, not too cold, good lighting, excellent seating), free from interruptions. I've found myself listening almost exclusively to classical music, and avoiding (at least for much of the day) news programming. I avoid virtually all contact with advertising, which I find has a tremendously negative influence.

John Cleese's presentation creativity is another I've found insightful. In particular, he points to the role of humor in creativity: it's the brain's response to surprise (or one of them), and may exist in part to help us be aware of a novel circumstance or phenomenon, one which might prove useful to us. It drops our mental defenses against novelty.

http://fixyt.com/watch?v=AU5x1Ea7NjQ

I won't claim to have licked the problem -- it's a process, not a product. But I've made a great deal of progress in exploring ideas and issues that I'd been wanting to look at for years or decades. And it absolutely makes me all but positive that many trends in business and workplace practices are very highly counterproductive for creatives: open-plan offices, communications overload, business-faddism in general, brainstorming, constant progress reports and evaluation, punitive consequences, lack of opportunity for professional development, treatment of employees as disposable, and badly broken evaluation metrics (themselves a characteristic of trying to assess quality of a complex domain, see Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, which I've been revisiting.