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Over the years I've seen a number of programmers talk about bursts of productivity. And those are just fantastic -- everything flows and just fits. But then... it's gone, and that you had such a flow just highlights the times when you don't. (Doctor: Why do you keep smacking your head with the hammer? Patient: It feels so good when I stop!)

So why can't I be like this all the time? Is it just that I have a limited pool of smarts? Or do I only have sufficient smarts to solve a problem after churning for a long time then bursting out the result superfast. (Like how cats sleep all the time...) Mark and I have joked about this before: "You lazy bastard, you're just sitting around reading Fark and bloglines!" "No, I'm tending to long running threads working on a few hairy problems."

Or maybe I just need to always have challenging problems to work on? (That would be the most emotionally satisfying answer: it's not that I'm lazy, I'm just not challenged!) But: if I were really smart, wouldn't I just figure out how to make the boring stuff challenging?