Define “plugged in”

Did you see the movie Social Network (a.k.a. the Facebook movie)? It was about the founding of the most popular social networking site, and in it was a term used many times: “plugged in”. Well, I’m under no illusion that I am or can be among the elite when it comes to software programming, but the fact is I am a programmer, and I tend to become “plugged in” quite often. But what does that mean?

I may be forgetful from time-to-time… actually, I am forgetful. A lot. I remember one of my first jobs working as a clerk in a pastoral care department at a hospital. I can distinctly remember my boss handing me a stack of documents to copy, collate, and staple. She would tell me how many of each, and I would confirm her request. Just as I stepped into the hallway, I would totally forget what she just told me and I would have to pop back in and ask, “How many?”

As an IT professional (most of which is in the past, but I still practice), I’ve worked with IP addresses, MAC addresses, and other numbers — all of which I can forget before the person telling me finishes. Hell, there even been times when I forget where I am in the middle of dialing a phone number! We all have our quirks, I guess, and that’s one of mine.

I’m also not a very good multi-tasker unless the tasks are highly related to each other in some way. Like a lot of men (and you can Google this shit), if my phone rings, I have to stop what I’m doing, mute the TV, and tell everyone else to shut the hell up before I can answer my phone. If someone other than the caller begins to speak, then I can’t discern either person and I have to ask the caller to repeat himself.

But check this out: once I get into coding something, whether a website, iPhone app, or HVAC automation controller, I can lose time like a coma patient. I can’t tell you how many lunches have been completely skipped or how many times I’ve found myself completely alone in the office with sunset approaching. I’ve even missed scheduled phone calls, meetings, and even entire dates because I’ve been so deep into some kind of programming. And, it’s not beyond me to completely forget what day of the week it is! Oh, and I can’t imagine how irritating this must be to my wife, who doesn’t give me near as much hell as maybe I deserve.

Before I saw the Social Network movie, I’d never heard the term “plugged in” before. But as soon as I heard it, right there in the theater, I knew immediately what they were talking about and I became overwhelmed with joy. I now had a term to describe this ability to completely lose time while engaging in long bouts of geeky über-productivity. But having that ability comes at a price.

Being plugged in is not something that you simply “do” — something than can simply be toggled. Plugged in is a state that you reach, like terminal velocity; throw a penny off a tall building, and in time, it will finally reach its maximum speed as it plummets to the earth, but it certainly won’t start out at that speed. And to really drive this one home: ever watch a chainsaw juggler? He’ll start with a couple, and then throw a few more in as he gets his rhythm. But instead of chainsaws, a programmer works at getting his various trains of thought going with enough momentum to keep them all going as he hops from one thing to another.

While writing code, I can have several trains of thought running through my head. Each train of though can be associated with several open files, editors, compilers, command consoles, debuggers, log files, and browser windows loaded with reference pages. I can keep track of all of that, and I can be extremely productive! …until my phone rings. Kablammo.

When someone who’s plugged in gets interrupted, horrible side-effects are to be sustained immediately as well as long-term. For me, I find it very difficult to switch gears and get my little brain to focus on something different. I sometimes come across as rude and abrupt, and even annoyed even though I am not. I know this about myself, and I try to control it, but that’s part of the switching gears thing — a circular dependency. It takes me several minutes to get my mind off of the code I was writing and back into reality.

Meanwhile, all those trains of though that were running so smoothly and safely around the room come crashing down like a bad day at Amtrak. In fact, if you look closely at someone who was plugged in and has just been interrupted, you can see a faint haze of smoke all around and the smell of a caffeine fire being snuffed out. But the problem is not necessarily the interruption itself, but in the recovery. The longer the interruption, the bigger the mental mess.

A short interruption usually isn’t fatal and doesn’t cause permanent damage, and the trains of thought had enough momentum to keep themselves going, and I can catch ‘em and get right back to speed. But when recovering from a long interruption, a programmer like me is faced with several open files and windows, and if the interruption was long enough, he can find himself clicking around trying to figure out just where the hell he was. I don’t know about others, but for me, it’s like being in a horrible accident and not remembering anything before it. “Wow, all these open windows… WTF was I doing here?” So after a few minutes spent clicking and looking at what’s open and where files are scrolled to, I started to get a new idea of what I want to do and where I want to go.

Later on (minutes, hours, weeks), a programmer will begin to find bugs in his application. While this is normal in the software development lifecycle, some of these bugs will be obvious and cause the programmer to ask himself, “What he hell was I thinking when I wrote that?” Well, whenever that was written, he was probably recovering from an interruption! Now, typically, mistakes happen when the programmer is stressed, tired, or distracted. But the really odd, yet obvious mistakes are often a direct side effect of being interrupted while plugged in.

If a interruption lasts for weeks or months, even the faintest traces of thought can be eroded away long before I get back to the project. Getting started again can be very difficult without some sort of physical note on where I left off.

When someone is plugged in, the only safe way to stop is to find some sort of progress checkpoint at which he can safely terminate some trains of thought and pause the others. This is the only way to prevent future confusion, inconsistencies, and colossal WTFs. Sometimes after being plugged in for an extended period of time, we begin to “awaken” and realize that, for some reason, we need to stop… but can’t right now. So I continue to work, but now with a heightened sense of urgency like Mario trying reach the flagpole before the clock runs out. But, eventually, we’ll reach that moment of git push origin, and then we can join the rest of reality and relax. It’s at this point that something is overdue: sleep, food, or smooching the wife.

Being plugged in is a serious state. When a programmer is plugged in, he’s on a roll; don’t mess with him.

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