Maybe the difference between programming and most other office activities, for me at least, is that I'm very often working near the limits of my competence for long periods of time. Over the years my competence grows but my problems expand to match it.
I don't think that's at all comparable with writing sales copy or finding a venue.
Figuring out an accounting discrepancy might be harder for a junior auditor than a senior one, because competence grows but the problems remain a similar size. (Or I'm talking out of my ass, I only have second-hand knowledge of audit and I'm led to believe that the attitude of big firms is that if something is very hard to find, it's not worth finding because nobody else will find it later!)
Planning the next quarters projects tends to be a collaborative activity rather than one requiring deep individual flow state, I think.
> I'm very often working near the limits of my competence for long periods of time. Over the years my competence grows but my problems expand to match it.
I think that's an interesting way of putting it. I've seen coworkers in non-tech positions go through this. There is a scope expansion (though of a bit of a different flavor) going on often. Many people go to their 1-on-1s and talk about wanting to be challenged more, and looking for new problems to tackle.
But I do think that a lot of stuff, including "collaborative" things, do end up with similar mental blockage. How many times does your manager tell you "I wanted to get back to this message, but I had so much come up all day", even though the final response was maybe only a paragraph or two long? Especially in more chaotic environments people are facing unique flavors of problems pretty often in my opinion.
At one point the systems being juggled are probably very complex, and perhaps the ceiling of problem is highest for programmers. But I think it's important to not underestimate the difficulties and intractability of things other people are working on (since the intractability is ultimately what generates this whole issue with focus)
I don't think that's at all comparable with writing sales copy or finding a venue.
Figuring out an accounting discrepancy might be harder for a junior auditor than a senior one, because competence grows but the problems remain a similar size. (Or I'm talking out of my ass, I only have second-hand knowledge of audit and I'm led to believe that the attitude of big firms is that if something is very hard to find, it's not worth finding because nobody else will find it later!)
Planning the next quarters projects tends to be a collaborative activity rather than one requiring deep individual flow state, I think.