Painting the Shed

I painted the garden shed over the weekend. I began at about nine and finished at almost four. No breaks. I meant to stop when I was hungry or tired but I did not get hungry or tired. In recent years my appetite has been on a reliable schedule, so I was surprised.

Some time ago I wrote about the psychological concept of flow, a state of mind where time seems to disappear and where the person experiences a sustained period of concentration.

This was not "flow", but it was something like it. The thing is: I don't particularly like painting. I don't mind it, but its not an activity I would choose for its own sake. I do not find it absorbing. It has a momentum, though. You can see progress and you can see the end point. And there is a cost to taking a break: you have to clean your brushes.

A few years ago we had to have a sewer line replaced. This took a week and the workers would work into the evening. Sometimes we would have to go out and tell them to stop for fear that they would disturb the neighborhood. When talking to the workers I would be surprised to learn that they had not stopped all day, not even for a meal. They would have worked through the night, too. This was dirty, backbreaking physical work, not the kind that the inventors of the concept of "flow" had in mind, but indeed they clearly had lost track of time.

I think gamblers feel the same thing, and this is not quite "flow" either. Pulling the arm of a slot machine they clearly sometimes feel, "just one more pull and I will stop."

-- J