The lead­ing psy­chol­o­gist of cre­ativ­ity, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, has long argued that cre­ative activ­i­ties such as writ­ing, play­ing music, com­puter pro­gram­ming, moun­tain climb­ing, and chess play­ing are major sources of enjoy­ment and pro­duc­tiv­ity. Such activ­i­ties, he says, put us in a state of “flow,” or intense, unfet­tered focus and con­cen­tra­tion. The beauty of this state is that we can have fun and be pro­duc­tive. The most cre­ative peo­ple tend to fluc­tu­ate between intense inter­ac­tion and intense con­cen­tra­tion. They also tend to be the hap­pi­est when engag­ing in a state of flow.

That’s an excerpt from Richard Florida’s Who’s Your City. I’d never con­sid­ered pro­gram­ming to be on par with moun­tain climb­ing, or even chess, really, but it makes sense: pro­gram­ming is really just prob­lem solv­ing. It requires absolute focus and a par­tic­u­lar mind­set to solve the prob­lem of trans­lat­ing the vision for your project into code that the com­puter will under­stand and inter­pret as you intend.