Find flow and be better at everything you do

Think about the last time you had a brilliantly productive day. You worked effectively, felt focussed, motivated and accomplished. It’s as if your work flowed through you. While days like these are brilliant when they happen, they don’t have to be left to chance. You can proactively put yourself in such a flow state, and the benefits are wide-ranging.

What is the flow state?

The ‘flow state’ was coined by the renowned professor of psychology, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, who explains it as a state of intense absorption.

“There’s this focus that, once it becomes intense, leads to a sense of ecstasy, a sense of clarity: you know exactly what you want to do from one moment to the other; you get immediate feedback”
Csikszentmihalyi, 2004 TED Talk

He unearthed this by interviewing high performing individuals from various walks of life, from dancers to chess players, mountain climbers, and surgeons. The key finding was that when faced with a challenge that matches or is slightly beyond our skill set, we enter a state of intense concentration.

His study found that flow-producing situations occurred three times as often when working than during leisure time. In fact, too much leisure is less fulfilling than regularly being in a state of flow, which leads to positive emotions in the short term, and increases our happiness over the long run.

As for productivity, a 10-year study by McKinsey found that executives in ‘flow’ were up to 5x more productive. Imagine that, getting everything done that much faster!

So, the flow state is highly desirable. But how do we activate it?

Activating the flow state

There are a few preconditions for activating the flow state.

You need to care about the task at hand. It’s a lot harder to zone into a piece of work and think deeply about it if you’re not invested to some degree.
The activity, job or task cannot be too easy or too difficult. As seen by the diagram above, if a task is too easy you’ll feel bored, or worse. However, if it’s too difficult for your skill set, you’ll feel stressed and frustrated.
Optimally, the activity should be something that you are good at. While it is possible to find flow in tasks you’re not an expert in, it will lead to more interruptions, breaking your concentration. It’s like playing a piece on the piano that’s beyond your skill set and constantly tripping up.
Your mindset surrounding the task should be focused on the journey, not the destination. When you’re thinking about the destination, you’re not thinking about the task at hand. Sometimes imagining your goal can lull you into a sense of having already achieved it, ironically hindering your progress.

Extra tips for supercharging effectiveness

If your work aligns with the above, you’re in an excellent place to activate the flow state. Now, let us look at some further things you can do to supercharge your effectiveness.

Work when you’re at your best

While we all hail time management, which is an important skill, to truly elevate your productivity you should manage your attention.

Studies show that some people are early birds and others are night owls (the split is unclear). The early birds work more effectively in the morning and night owls in the evening. If possible, concentrate the work that requires flow into the periods where you work most effectively. Block out these times in your calendar if you need to. It will save you time in the long run.

Eliminate Distractions

Your environment greatly influences your ability to concentrate. In your physical environment, remove anything that will distract your attention. Most of the time this is your phone. Simply seeing a notification pop up has proven to be massively distracting, even if we’re trying to ignore it. If it’s out of sight, it’ll be out of mind.

This also goes for your digital environment. Notifications from slack/teams/skype etc. can trip up our focus and once we’re out of flow it can take up to 15 minutes to get back into it. Take a look at your settings both on your laptop and within individual applications. Set them to ‘do not disturb’ when you’re aiming to smash out some work.

One thing at a time

Multitasking is enticing. Tackling multiple things at once feels like progress on many fronts. But research has shown that multitasking makes us less productive. We rapidly task switch, depleting cognitive resources, and find it difficult to develop creative solutions and problem solve.

You’re much better off focussing on one thing. By losing yourself in a single task, you think deeply and find paths and results you might not have otherwise.

Find your focus music

Music can be a great accompaniment alongside work but did you know there is a specific type of music that changes your brain patterns to support focussed work?

When we consume and process information, such as in the flow state, our brainwaves move to a higher frequency. Binaural Beats create notes that sync your brain to that higher frequency pattern, making it easier to focus. You just need to listen to it through a pair of headphones as it relies on each ear hearing a slightly different frequency.

Here’s a Spotify playlist to try next time you want to get in some focussed work.

Alternatively, listening to the same song on repeat or a movie’s soundtrack can be a great way to drown out other noise and find focus.

Go with the flow

The flow state is a feeling of ease and concentration. By recognising how it works you can adapt your work to find flow. As the diagram at the beginning showed if the work is too challenging you simply have to work on improving your skill. If you’re not feeling challenged, go and find something that just beyond your skill set.

I hope this post has given you some insight into how to think about work and get stuff done.

If you’d like to see Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi 2004 Ted Talk where he explores the subject you can find it here.