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How To Hack Into Your Flow State And Quintuple Your Productivity
What Flow is
Flow is an optimal state of consciousness, when you feel and perform your best. It’s the moment of total absorption.
Time speeds up or slows down like a freeze-frame effect. Mental and physical ability go through the roof, and the brain takes in more information per second, processing it more deeply.
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How to trigger the flow state
- Flow follows focus, and taking physical or social risks drives focus into the now.
- Change your routine and increase novelty, unpredictability, and complexity
- Focus with all senses, listening, looking, smelling, tasting, and touching. Whole body experiences, mindfulness, balance and agility training, and even video games work.
Research Findings On Flow
- When a person is in a state of flow, all five potent neurochemicals massively amplify the immune system.
- While on flow, stress-causing hormones are flushed out of body, and the autoimmune and nervous systems go haywire.
- A Gallup poll found that most American workers are disengaged and spends less than 5% of their day in flow.
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Requirements To Enter Flow
To enter flow, you need appropriated self-control, environmental conditions, skills, task and rewards. Besides that, you must know what you’re doing, be able to see whether or not you’re ...
Mihaly Csíkszentmihályi
"In the flow-like state, we exercise control over the contents of our consciousness rather than allowing ourselves to be passively determined by external forces."
Self control to trigger a state of Flow
To get into a state of flow more often, we need to be able to increase our level of control over our consciousness:
- Find standards to determine whether any action you’re going to take is desirable towards getting into a state of flow.
- Self-control and flow depend on immediate feedback; find ways to constantly monitor your performance and adjust as you continue.
- Be wary of your mental energy. Define your work schedule to account for the variations in mental strength throughout the day.
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Flow is the state of mind
... where we are so immersed in a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and enjoyment in the process of the activity that we lose sense of space and time.
It is thought to be t...
Why it’s hard to achieve flow in your workplace
- The processes, policies, and busy work gets in the way.
- Most jobs don’t have a clear goal.
- Feedback can be inadequate.
- The pace of work has increased, and it’s hard for people to spend time thinking deeply.
- Your skills aren’t well matched to the challenges you are allowed to pursue.
- There’s a lack of control over interruptions or when and how you work.
- The job doesn’t push you out of your comfort zone.
Take more risks
... to push your mind beyond its comfort zone. Flow happens when we get a bit out of our comfort zone. Too much, and you get anxious; Too little and you get bored.
You need to know your physical or emotional limitations and consciously push past them.
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The Flow State
Flow is characterized by complete concentration in the activity at hand, resulting in a loss in one’s sense of space and time. It’s a state of both high challenge and high skill—a place where we’re...
The Six Parts of A Flow State
- Intense concentration on the task at hand.
- A merging of action and awareness - “being and doing become one”.
- A loss of reflective self-consciousness.
- A sense of personal control over the situation.
- A distortion of the perception of time.
- Autotelic experience: the activity itself is intrinsically rewarding, rather than the expected outcome.
What Flow Is Not
- It’s not easy. Flow is not just a state where we love the work so much it just pours out. Flow is a state where hard work meets joy and meaning.
- It’s not for beginners. The act of learning how to do something won’t always allow us to get into the flow. Getting into the zone in a specific discipline is something that needs to be learned and practiced.
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