State of Cul-de-sac

I was working with Microsoft Silverlight technology lately.The project I was given had some specific requirement which would be practically impossible to achieve with regular server/client approach. So my options were ActiveX, Flash or Silverlight. For variety of reasons I've decided to go with Silverlight. That seemed to be a simple enough project but nevertheless it plunged me into a state of mind I somewhat reluctantly call a state of cul-de-sac.

There are many different states of mind. Well, I better say states of my mind for I have no idea how other minds function (Malcolm Gladwell has more to say about it). I can spend a lot of not incredibly exciting hours trying to categorize and describe them but it would be better to concentrate on just two of them.

The first is, like I mentioned, is a state of cul-de-sac. That state happened very frequently once I entered high school, then in the university and then again once I started to deal with computer programming. This state is characterized by acute sense of being in some kind of dead-end, like you are browsing in unfamiliar neighborhood, getting lost and ending up in a cul-de-sac. You have no idea where you are, there is no way ahead since it is a cul-de-sac and going back does not look too promising since you just come out from there. So you are standing in front of that cul-de-sac, scratching your head and making serious face so local kids, who play hockey nearby, will not think you are one helpless miserable moron. Descriptive enough?

Being in that state can be quite depressing. That what happened to me once again when I have started digging into Silverlight. I was in one cul-de-sac, then another, then another... I was googling through myriads of highly technical webpages, I was trying to follow video tutorials, I was considering buying a ridiculously expensive programming books... I was almost hearing quiet grinding sound of my overheated mind.

Then, at one undetectable moment, amount of information I was exposed to somehow transformed into very weak, almost intangible sense of connectedness between different parts of the seemingly chaotic whole. It felt like I caught the tail of Silverlight and my grip on it grew stronger and stronger with every minute passed in front of my computer. At some point of time I even thought I had a clear vision of overall Silverlight architecture (it turned out to be just one of the incarnations of that technology) and that thinking really pushed me forward.

And then I have entered into a second state, which is referred to by programming grands like Joel Spolsky as simply "zone". There is no clear-cut beginning of the "zone", and you only understand your being there when you (usually suddenly and roughly) pushed out from that state by some external factor (like co-worker asking something or phone ringing or alarm of a car parked outside goes berserk). The longer you stay in that "zone", the better chances that something good appears although it is not 100% guarantee.

Stay in the "zone" is also not entirely homogeneous. It is rather staccato of iterations "cul-de-sac/zone" with different duration each. Gradually duration of the "zone" gets longer than of cul-de-sac. When it is much longer and when urgent IM of your boss severs your happily creative presence there you can start feeling acute sense of hunger. It was always puzzling me - all you do is sitting in front of your monitor with fingertips flying over the keyboard and nevertheless you feel so terribly hungry like you were playing soccer 3 hours in a row. Something extremely voracious for energy going on while your are in the "zone", no matter what spacial position you are at.

So, I was working on that Silverlight project, feeling frustrated, then hungry, in the cul-de-sac, then in the "zone". Eventually, I found solution and learned several interesting concepts by the way. And while those concepts are related to Silverlight only, there is another one related to the whole process of creative thinking. That concept can be formulated this way:

No matter what you do, you will never find yourself in the "zone" unless you spent some time in a cul-de-sac.

That's honest truth about any creative process and, in my opinion, a major factor in stopping yourself from creative expression. Thinking of potential frustration of being in cul-de-sac can be really scary. The only thing that mitigates it a bit is when you have a genuine interest to the subject matter. And that's probably why myriads of psychologists and HR professionals highly recommend to do for living something you genuinely love.