Ask HN: Skills that give you joy/flow
I have some skills/hobbies like music and boxing, and these things give me joy/flow. What are the skills that give you joy/flow? (flow: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_(psychology))
I love this question. First and foremost, meditation. It definitely helps me be more present. Another skill that gives me joy is reading. I can concentratedly read for 2 hours, but after 2 hours I need to take a break. I can't think of any other activity that I can concentrate so long on. Ideally, I would become a scholar but I'm going into software engineering for now:)
How do you meditate?
Reading, writing, coding (usually debugging, once I have a consistent and smooth repro process), lifting.
I've been painting some walls in my house recently. After getting over the short learning curve of making a mess everywhere I find it pretty therapeutic and meditative.
Listening to music. Flying an airplane. Doing a hard workout. Building a Lego set. Fixing something with my hands. Cooking (trying not to cut off any more finger tips).
Coding, video games, listening to music, painting.
And long time ago when I used to run, running.
Refactoring legacy code.
Coding, solving math problems on paper (equations and stuff)
drawing.
Thank you for sharing the wiki link, I learned something. I like drawing, it let me forget about other things for hours. I use it as a therapy for anxiety.
Same here, drawing and painting is such relaxing activity for me. Much easier to do than meditation, at least, for me.
Ultimate frisbee is a "flow" kind of game.
Bouldering, meditating, ping pong
Machining, making gears.
coding, skiing.
running
runner's high is a real thing and it's such an ecstasy (I've never done real ecstasies)