A few weeks ago, I went down the Factorio rabbit-hole. I generally don’t play video games, but I had explored the base game a few years ago, and already experienced then recovered from the addiction. However, when the Space Age expansion was released, I dove right off the wagon.
For the purposes of this essay, the most important background is that 1. engineers love this game and 2. many of them report unexpected addiction to the game (often 50+ hours in a matter of 1-3 weeks). I may have also sunk some hours into this myself (~35 hours + 15 of team playtime over 2 months, but who’s counting).
But what’s most striking to me is the complete timelessness of it all. I’ll sit down for ‘maybe an hour or so,’ blink, and it’ll be past midnight and several hours in. This has happened to me multiple times. One of my cofounders, who also has tasted of the fruit, refers to it as “disappeared time,” because that’s really what it feels like.
The concept of flow state isn’t new, and it’s one I’ve thought about on and off since I first encountered the phrase several years ago. But Factorio is special because I enter flow state immediately. I don’t need to ‘get into it’ or turn off my notifications or psych myself up for it. It happens too forcefully for any of that.
So what gives Factorio that flow factor? Others have already written about this, summarized below:
I would add one more:
- when you decide to start a task, the time estimate is generally pretty low. But often, once the task starts, you’ll realize it requires an additional subtask (more iron), which requires another subtask (more trains!), etc. So the thing that you thought would take 10 minutes, ends up eating an hour. It’s the equivalent of saying yes to a Netflix show that shows “10 minutes” on the bottom corner, but actually takes 5x as long.
I’ll just focus on the “the next step is always super obvious” for now though. And it’s spot on: there is never a moment of doubt, a period of uncertainty, where you’re not sure what to build next. Every item you will need in the future has a clear recipe, and you know you can make progress by starting to craft just one of the ingredients. Which might have its own recipe, so you start with one of those ingredients. Uncertainty is incredibly painful. Which is where this game so clearly diverges from life and some of the greatest work people do.
Deep solutions to big problems are usually found only after people wallow in that uncertainty for long periods of time. If the solutions were easier to find, the problems wouldn’t be considered big ones. But the wallowing sucks, so people avoid it, and the people who survive the wallowing for long enough to come out the other side are considered geniuses.
Conversely, running through flow feels amazing. Which brings me to my main and final point: flow feels awesome, but it’s not required to do great work. Obviously, I’d personally rather work in flow than not. But it’s like eating Michelin-star food vs a hearty homecooked meal. The wonderful presentation and taste feels amazing (and, to be clear, can be of great value in and of itself) - but both meals feed you equally in terms of calories and nutrients. Put differently, your tongue cares a lot about the taste of the food, but the rest of your digestive system less so.
In a way, school spoiled me. Every semester (or quarter), I would go through the cycle of struggle with my classes, usually slightly confused and slightly behind the professor’s lectures. Then, come exam time, I would crunch, actually run through all the material, and figure out what was going on. That crunch time always felt amazing, because hours would fly by (usually close enough to the exam that I had turned away all other commitments, or sometimes pull the necessary all-nighter) and slowly but surely, I would come to understand all the material that had previously puzzled me. And eventually, it would end, and I’d crush the test. So to me, until I did the crunch and felt the flow, I still hadn’t really “done the work” for the class. Naturally, I began to conflate the feeling of flow with “the actual work” of the class.
But not every job allows for flow. Yes, being a software engineer with lots of ‘maker time’ probably allows for higher percentage of flow. But it’s probably also a function of the nature of the work, whether tests take 10 seconds to run, or 20 minutes (big windows make distraction inevitable, killing flow). Sweeping a big room, or writing when you’re in the zone, or gardening, or going on a run, or any number of things, can allow for that feeling, the emotion of competence, the timelessness. But lots of jobs don’t have room for that. The scientist taking a walk, hoping for inspiration regarding that seemingly impossible problem that’s been on her mind for weeks. Or the writer staring at the blank page, waiting for his muse. Flow is a privilege. I’m grateful when my work allows for it, but otherwise, I’m going to eat that hearty homecooked meal instead of waiting for the next Michelin one.
This past week, I didn’t feel like I was “at the top of my game.” I fumbled over my words in a meeting, I put off a task for longer than I wanted, I didn’t use my free time judiciously to read dense books and discuss mind-bending ideas with friends. But it was still a productive week. Or even more, it wasn’t just productive, it was good. The things got done well enough, I spent good time with good people who matter to me, I had good conversations, I still did and learned things. I might not have felt like I was at 100% peak performance… But a lot of that perception was because I never felt that feeling of flow. And the truth is, this week, just doing the prep and showing up was enough.
So, I guess all I’m really saying here is, when flow comes, I’m learning to be grateful for it. But when it feels sucky or weird because I can’t see a clear solution to a problem, or I don’t know what to do next… Embrace the suck. Because that’s real work, too. And, probably (or even likely), that’s where the real reward is, too.