Part of being on autopilot and in flow for many people might be thinking about/solving/planning what you will do next while you are writing code for the last item…
I find this especially true while working on data science tasks - slicing and dicing data, visualizing, fitting initial models, etc - things where the larger more complex data generation pipelines are already taken care of and the data (or temp data/subsets of data) are readily available and you are free to rely on the improvisational skills you have developed working on similar data science tasks countless times over.
Also feel something similar when working on frontend wireframing/laying out and styling dashboards with no reference design.
Anyways, point is, it’s definitely feasible to enter into a flow state where you mind is a few steps ahead of your fingers and is actively solving problems that your fingers catch up to.
Exactly. And this has very little to do with the concept of flow except for the relative end of it with no quantification of the flow that may have come before it.
I find this especially true while working on data science tasks - slicing and dicing data, visualizing, fitting initial models, etc - things where the larger more complex data generation pipelines are already taken care of and the data (or temp data/subsets of data) are readily available and you are free to rely on the improvisational skills you have developed working on similar data science tasks countless times over.
Also feel something similar when working on frontend wireframing/laying out and styling dashboards with no reference design.
Anyways, point is, it’s definitely feasible to enter into a flow state where you mind is a few steps ahead of your fingers and is actively solving problems that your fingers catch up to.