He seems to mention that his wife paints. So does mine, and she understands the idea of flow because it happens when painting. Or writing. Or playing the violin. Or designing.
In fact, flow happens in loads of places, and isn't unique to geeks or programming.
To the author: get a life, and learn other stuff. Flow is common, even if not always understood or appreciated.
Why does the author think flow is a hard concept to grasp or something restricted to geeks? Basic rule of getting people to understand you: Don't assume they're too stupid to do so.
Well, in this case the author seemed to have some personal evidence that his plight was not being understood.
One thing I have recently noticed is how disrespectful people are to kids in flow. I'll see a little kid really engrossed in an activity, completely in the zone, and the parent will go "Okay time to go!" and yank them right out. And then people complain about short concentration spans...
"I realised the main problem was that she just didn’t understand why the little distractions matter."
He realized. He didn't ask her. She didn't say, "I just don't get this flow thing." And he admits he was being a jerk. Maybe the main problem wasn't that she didn't understand flow. Maybe the real problem is that he was being a jerk.
I'm not saying it's one or the other. I'm saying we don't know. Even though we don't know, the author wants to assume that non-geeks just don't understand flow unless it's explain to them, even though it's a common phenomenon in all fields as the author alludes to by giving not one, but two analogies.
The being a jerk was unconnected to my wife's lack of understanding of flow.
I was grumpy and I snapped at her, that's uncool.
The point of the post was that I wanted her to understand why it's important to let someone to achieve deep concentration when they are programming.
When people don't commonly do activities that require that deep concentration they don't understand why small distractions are a problem. The point is not the understanding of the concept of flow, per se, but connecting it to a geek's ability to output.
In fact, flow happens in loads of places, and isn't unique to geeks or programming.
To the author: get a life, and learn other stuff. Flow is common, even if not always understood or appreciated.