

Coding As A Substitute For Meditation? - npguy
http://statspotting.com/2012/12/coding-as-a-substitute-for-meditation/

======
kristofferR
To be fair - there's a massive different between focusing on something you're
passinate about (like coding) and focusing on not thinking. Not thinking and
letting your mind relax is completely different from, and often way harder
than, thinking about a passion.

Jusy "getting in the flow" is not the point of most meditation.

~~~
ciex
Please keep in mind that the flavour of meditation you are describing is not
the only one.

"[M]editation refers to a family of self-regulation practices that focus on
training attention and awareness in order to bring mental processes under
greater voluntary control and thereby foster general mental well-being and
development and/or specific capacities such as calm, clarity, and
concentration" Walsh & Shapiro (2006)

"[M]editation is used to describe practices that self-regulate the body and
mind, thereby affecting mental events by engaging a specific attentional
set.... regulation of attention is the central commonality across the many
divergent methods" Cahn & Polich (2006)

The practice of 'coding in the zone' might as well achieve the same effect as
traditional meditational practices and be called meditation on that ground. In
fact, you _are_ training the control of your attention with that practice.

~~~
wslh
I have similar deep experiences doing meditation related practices (Pranayama)
and programming. This happened when I was focused on solving a single
algorithm for long time. If I have to describe details about this time I can
say that I was 18 years old, was doing my own parsing algorithms for a small
language, and I debugged the algorithm in my head all the time.

------
leoh
Exceptionally misguided. Having meditated for an average of forty minutes
every day (sometimes for as much as 2 hours a day, in 40 minute blocks) for
the last half year and having coded many, many hours in my life, I can say
that this conclusion is decidedly incorrect. Most forms of meditation are
about doing nothing except breathing. Coding, like any other task, is far from
this. Again, exceedingly misguided.

~~~
danieldk
_Exceptionally misguided._

Indeed, I would even say such misconceptions are harmful, since coding has
quite the opposite effect. After a day of too much or too intensive coding, I
usually find that my brain continues to be occupied with coding problems. E.g.
when I'm half-sleeping I see problems that don't exist (at least not in
sleeping ;)). Meditation has the opposite effect: the mind becomes calm and
unoccupied.

It's important to give the mind rest and time to process your day.

~~~
stacycurl
I agree, I think the original post is harmful because the author suggests an
activity that will strengthen identification & thereby increase suffering.
Meditation does the opposite, in my experience, anyhow.

------
mbrock
Why not do both until you understand the real differences?

The reason people voluntarily stay up late to code, while meditation by
contrast seems kind of boring — the reason why people are so eager to come up
with different "substitutes" for meditation that just so happen to align with
their favorite things to do — is very near the essence of why meditation
probably shouldn't be replaced by coding, or running, skiing, drinking,
smoking, or whatever your favorite activity is.

------
dschiptsov
Meditation is not about cluttering your consciousness, but freeing it from
agitations and useless load, we produce themselves.

It is not about chanting mantras. It is about realization of the "source" of
the mental content.)

Calling a concentration, deep focus of so-called state of flow a meditation is
confusing misuse of the language (using wrong associations).

Constant agitation and restricted, repetitive patterns of "thinking" is misuse
of the mind.)

------
ramblerman
No. What you described is called flow.

There is a good chance however that practicing meditation will help you find
more 'flow' in your activities.

------
bradleyland
I'm not a Buddhist, but I have attended a few classes on medetation. I had a
bit of an epiphany at one session. Portions of the experience of meditation
are similar to being "in the zone" when coding. A lot of other commenters here
have already mentioned it: "flow".

There is a significant difference though. When you are coding, you experience
flow with your mind already full of things. When meditating, you start with an
empty mind, so the perceptive influence of flow is far more noticable. It's
enough to throw you out of the meditative state if you are unprepared.

The goal of meditation is different than that of coding as well. Meditation
starts from an empty mind so that you once you reach a meditative state, you
may choose to do any number of things. One exercise the instructor had us
perform was to find a meditative state, then meditate on the first thought
that entered our mind, and to not sway from that thought.

When you're coding, you are keeping many things in mind. I find that when you
end up in the "flow", it is because you have pushed everything out of your
mind as a result of there being no space for it. Meditation is about pushing
everything out of your mind so there is space for anything.

------
jinfiesto
I'm kind of turned off by this post. I'm a fairly experienced meditator in a
few Buddhist traditions. You could definitely make coding a kind of
meditation. People do driving meditation, or dish washing meditation, but it's
usually as an extension of other mindfulness practice. I wouldn't just slap
the 'meditation' label on coding unless the practitioner is explicitly going
out of his/her way to make it a meditation.

------
stacycurl
Commenter on the blog nailed it (“noise is a substitute for quiet”), or:
activity as a substitute for inactivity, work as a substitute for rest.

In the Buddhist traditions meditation is used as a tool to examine the subtle
nature of the mind's processes, how they may create suffering through craving,
aversion & identification (dependant origination) which initially at least
requires some down-time to bring the mind to a relatively quiet state. You
really learn a lot about craving when all the goodies are taken away,
similarly you learn about aversion from the small discomfort from sitting.

I love coding, it's my main intellectual outlet, but I never want to be
someone who has to lug along a laptop on holiday because the pain of being
away from code is too great, I take any such pain as indication that I'm
broken in some way (addicted). If I simply coded every time I feel that
addiction I'd never truly discover how dependant my happiness is on coding &
I'd never discover that I can be happy without coding. I think coding is nicer
when I'm not addicted to it.

------
knowaveragejoe
Perhaps there are comparisons to be drawn between the two, but I think don't
think they should be dependent on set amounts of time doing them: After an
hour of coding something, I'm likely to either want to continue hacking on
what I started, work on something else, or stop working entirely(rather than
presumably continue working with a refreshed mental state..?).

Part of meditation is precisely /not/ doing or thinking about anything. As
another comment pointed out, this is sort of finding a substitute for
meditation in something most of us would likely being doing anyways, since the
majority of us have trouble breaking out of our day-to-day cycle to literally
sit for 15 minutes and do nothing whilst so much is going on regardless. I
think there are similarities to be drawn in terms of "flow" or getting "in the
zone" so to speak while writing code, though.

------
freshhawk
I don't think it's valid to compare a flow state with meditation. Coding isn't
just "one thing", not like mindfulness mediation practices are about "one
thing".

It seems to me that coding is about actively using a lot of your brain. At the
abstraction level of a brain or a mind coding is a whole lot of different
things.

I happen to think meditation is good practice for directing your attention
mindfully, improve your ability to direct your thoughts. Good at directing
your thoughts at something? You'll find you enter flow states when doing it.
So I see the connection, but they aren't the same.

------
adamnemecek
This is wrong on so many levels. Why is this on the front page?

------
clueless123
I think you are mixing the feeling of achieving a state of flow with the goal
of an activity.

There are many ways to reach a state of Flow , coding and meditating may get
you there, but as practices I don't think they have more in common than
skydiving, rock climbing or surfing a perfect wave..

Personally.. meditating for me is more is like a call to System.gc() on my
brain.

------
6ren
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_(psychology)>

------
twiceaday
Similarly, I've found that playing engrossing video games draws most of my
attention from pain -- or anything else really.

~~~
falava
Yes, when I was exhausted from coding or simply the stress of work playing an
imersive video game helped to refresh my mind.

Also, years ago when I was studying and had headaches, playing chess against
computer was also refreshing. I suppose I was using different parts of the
brain and letting others rest.

------
namank
This an observation well supported by the theory of Flow. It's psychology's
foray into positive thinking, a big part of which is productivity.

Coding, when you're good at it and have mastered your tools, IS meditation (at
least on the surface) as you feel an intrinsic sense of well-being.

