Meditation Creates Better Software

Mert Akkaya
3 min readNov 18, 2020

Ok, meditation does not create better *software*. It’s just for a good title to attract. But it creates better software developers, I believe. I’ve a strong belief on the relationship between software developers’ psychology and the software quality / organizational success. Most of the times, problems occur because people are sad for some reason, it’s rarely happens because of hard technical problems.

Software developers face with high cognitive load and they always deal with it. They need to focus on a tiny problem, then take a few steps back and look for a bigger picture. Making architectural decisions, deciding code models, data flows, possible friction points and so on…

Also, software developers often make guesses about the feature. When developing, it’s so often to creating abstractions for the feature which are not needed actually (which is an anti-pattern too as YAGNI / KISS …)

https://heeris.id.au/2013/this-is-why-you-shouldnt-interrupt-a-programmer/

What else do we have also?

Technical discussions needs to be done free-from-emotions. Technical discussions may end up with triggering some fears, too. As being not good enough, losing your job, losing your status, looking stupid, etc.

We’re carrying stress with incoming deadlines, bugs that have been produced…

So, how meditation helps to overcome on these? Why you should do meditation?

Meditating Helps Focus

You need to focus. You’ve limited “RAM” and you must use it effectively. There is no other option. Therefore, you need to empty some of the thoughts regularly. If there’s a leak, you better gotta find that, otherwise it will effect your efforts :). 10 minutes meditation a day helps you on focusing what matters. Just remember, you’ve enough *time*. You just can not find the energy to dealing with issues all the time.

Meditation Makes You Live in the Present

Meditation trains you about this a lot. Being in slience for just 10 minutes, helps you to track the thoughts which are passing on your brain on the moment. You’re not your thoughts, not every of them at least. But they’re passing on your brain, and creates a feeling. The feeling that’s been created is real. The thought? Not everytime. Ridiculous if you talk about it maybe. Training for this makes you be able to think well. Control your emotions and avoid destructive thinking.

Meditation is your self-retrospective

We’re human beings and we’re not ready for the different situations all the time. We make mistakes. We make them a lot. If we continuously learn from them, those mistakes helps us to develop a better self. Otherwise it’s just a recursion. We’re doing them again and again. Thinking about the past experiences regularly and asking yourself, “why did i do that”, “could i behave better”, “can i change it”, “can i accept it” is your, self-retro meetings.

Meditating is not stupid

Meditation is some kind of “yoga” for some of us. It’s just “niche”, “marginal”, “softy” maybe. Get rid of these prejudices, don’t carry them on your bag. These kind of prejudices oftenly keeps us on a social group, makes us a part of the pack. Sometimes protects us from the “unknown” and sometimes they keep us from learning new things. Give it a try, you can always stop :) You won’t end up on hitchhiking on the roads, I promise. If you don’t want that already, of course :)

Thanks for reading.

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