





Programming can be hard. It’s common to sit with a programming problems for hours, days, or weeks until settling on a solution. After spending extended periods with a problem the mind often settles into fixed views of problems and solutions. Adopting fixed views in problem solving reduces the likelihood of discovering creative and elegant solutions. Take for example, these flow charts. The first flow chart is an early attempt of mine to map the business logic needed to display tasks in an interface and in a report. The image that follows has the same requirements, but is a vastly simpler solution.

This is a simple example and the differences between the two flow charts may seem inconsequential. On the contrary, the first flow required about three times as much written code and would have been much more challenging to maintain. I was also able to reduce the number of unit tests because the problem was much simpler than I originally thought.

The simplification of this flow chart did not come to me by searching aggressively for it. In fact, I thought the first solution was just fine. It was in a moment of pause that a flash of intuition hit me: “Every task has an Opened Date and any Completed Date must be greater than or equal to the Opened Date. Why am I checking for a Completed Date first, when I could already have useful information about it from the Opened Date?” This question was enough for me to pull up Visio for some experimentation.

The definition of intuition is “the ability to understand something immediately, without the need for conscious reasoning.” The bustle of daily life can drown out the voice of our intuition often leading us to move from thing to thing to thing to thing without consideration. Meditation is a practice that helps us access our inner intuition on an increasingly regular basis. Novices start to gain access to their inner intuition after only a short span of regular practice.

Some meditation practitioners have spiritual beliefs that are used in conjunction with their practice, but the act itself is inherently secular and can be executed without threat to religious beliefs. It can be and is often used as a tool to help people tap into their intuition, achieve greater focus, improve relaxation, acquire relief from distraction, and live in an overall more peaceful manner.