Ten Aspects for a High-Flow Lifestyle: Part 2

How to apply flow concepts in your own life

by Jason Haller

In Part 1 of 10 aspects of a high-flow lifestyle, I addressed five fundamental components that help better align your routines for modern productivity. In Part 2, I’m going to continue the discussion by focusing on five more components that help you prepare mentally and physically to be your best and provide ten suggestions for creating more flow in your life.

Creativity and Pattern Recognition

One of flow’s biggest attributes is its ability to increase your creativity. But creativity is largely driven by pattern recognition, which means you need to have information, concepts, experiences, and memories to draw upon. If you become hyper-specialized and never have time to engage in anything outside your area of expertise, you are likely to lose some creativity as a consequence.

This doesn’t mean you have to study in your free time. It means you should encourage yourself to take time to learn about things you are interested in, be open to new experiences, and observe your surroundings from time to time.

Developing some observational awareness helps get the variety of mental material that will ultimately be valuable to load the pattern recognition software of your brain throughout the day, rather than relying on specific activities like reading or listening to a podcast.

Meeting new people that you wouldn’t normally meet, gaining experiences that you normally wouldn’t have had, and challenging yourself in ways that make you feel uncomfortable all help contribute to how creative you can be in the future.

“Creativity is not a rare idea that comes to you once in a lifetime and changes the world. Creativity is a way of life. Creativity is a process that consistently leads to creative outcomes.”

– Keith Sawyer

For something that fits neatly into a schedule, however, and doesn’t involve jumping straight into the deep end, try something in the range of a chapter or an article per day in some area of interest you have that is outside your professional expertise.

I used to prefer podcasts for this purpose, but I realized I’m far too tempted to multitask since they’re so convenient. Reading, although slower, is a much better way to develop the habit of single-tasking and build a stronger attention span, and is a more productive habit when pursuing flow. Don’t get too hung up on the details here, just understand that being familiar with things outside of your area of expertise can, in fact, help you in your area of expertise.

Exercise

Exercise is a requirement for peak performance. Aiming for 30 minutes (or more) per day, whether that’s a walk, run, yoga session, or lifting weights, will yield the best results.

But whatever you can manage is always better than nothing at all. The benefits to physical health, brain health, and mental health that exercise provides cannot be overstated. Anyone looking to feel and perform their best in all aspects of life will make regular exercise a part of their routine.

To create a stable habit that doesn’t get sacrificed to more urgent needs, schedule your exercise ahead of time in your calendar, and make it a recurring event if possible. To lower the friction, even more, try to find a convenient place to do your preferred style of exercise. Usually something close by and not overly crowded helps most people feel more motivated to start the habit and keep it. Alternatively, signing up for group classes or personal training can provide an element of accountability that some people will find more helpful.

Mindfulness

To some, this may feel like an afterthought, and admittedly I fell into that category for a long time. But in the context of a lifestyle pursuing flow, how you perceive and frame situations and your ability to stay focused in the present moment have a huge impact on your productivity and stress levels. Using mindfulness practices to create perspective, awareness, and practice being present can help you reduce your stress response, find opportunities within adversity, and promote a growth mindset.

Even just a short 5-10 minute daily habit can make a significant difference, whether it’s going for a walk in nature without your phone, meditating, breathing exercises, or some type of gratitude practice. In our hyperkinetic world, having a mindfulness practice isn’t about finding nirvana, it’s just a tool you can use to preserve your ability to be present, quiet your mind, and recharge.

For me, this can function as a release phase in the flow cycle. I use short breaks throughout the day to get a quick boost in mental clarity and energy before certain calendar blocks when I know I need to be sharp. My go-to choice is a 10-20 minute walk outside, preferably with some sunshine on my skin.

You can also look at things like household chores or grabbing a cup of coffee as opportunities to step away from work and recharge. These small breaks will allow you to resettle your mind before too many things start swirling around, causing you to lose track or potentially trigger some low-level anxiety, which then increases the perceived difficulty of your tasks and diminishes cognitive performance.

Active Recovery

This is our main line of defense against burnout and stress. Mindfulness helps as well, and there is a lot of overlap in these two categories, but while mindfulness is training our brain to be present, active recovery is about helping our physiology replenish and rebuild the biochemistry needed for peak mental and physical performance.

Active recovery is a key component to sustaining peak performance over the long haul. Many people can get into flow and ride the wave of passion and excitement for a time, but to keep that momentum going long-term takes extra levels of self-care and intentional choices.

Having a drink and turning on the tv or seeing what’s on your phone is tempting, but those will not speed up your recovery. They won’t make you better at what you need to do tomorrow. At best they have a neutral effect, but they definitely have the potential to produce a net negative impact on energy, mood, and productivity. Those aren’t off-limits activities by any means, but if you have time to do those things, you probably have time for active recovery first.

Many of the things that constitute active recovery are also intertwined with exercise and mindfulness. This is why it’s never a bad idea to just go for a walk; it can be exercise, it can be mindfulness, and it can be active recovery. But other options for active recovery include a sauna, cold exposure, a nap, sensory deprivation chambers, massage, moderate exercise like yoga or hiking, and last but not least, uplifting social interactions.

Like exercise, the best way to form this habit is to find your preferred method of active recovery and put that in your calendar as a recurring event. Maybe Monday through Thursday you just go for an evening walk, but on Fridays, you schedule an afternoon sauna session for example, and that just becomes your routine.

Flow triggers

At their core, flow triggers are meant to narrow your field of focus and draw your attention to the present moment. By focusing on less and being present, the brain is primed to allocate more resources to the task at hand and potentially heighten into a flow state.

Layering in flow triggers throughout your day or at least being aware of them as a tool that can be used may help those who find themselves struggling to get and stay focused for longer blocks of time.

Start with something I’ve already referenced in this blog: clear goals. By knowing what you’re doing now and what you’re meant to do next, you lower your cognitive load and think only about the task at hand.

Charles Schwab called a version of a prioritized clear goals list one of the most valuable pieces of business advice he had ever received when he and his executives were consulted to try the Ivy Lee method back in the early 1900s. If it was good enough to help the Bethlehem Steel Company become the single largest independent steel producer in the world, then it’s probably good enough for us.

Autonomy is another flow trigger that has been studied and shown to produce excellent results in the workplace. When you have more control of your life, you also pay more attention.

Many companies have leveraged this flow trigger as a performance booster for decades. Companies such as Google, Facebook, 3M, Patagonia, Apple, LinkedIn, Toyota, and many more have used some version of autonomy to boost employees’ productivity and innovation.

“Over 50% of Google’s largest revenue-generating products have come out of 20% time, including AdSense, Gmail, Google Maps, Google News, Google Earth, and Gmail Labs.”

– Steven Kotler

Designating time for yourself or employees to work on passion projects, or simply giving them the power to make their own slice of the process as efficient as possible, creates an environment where flow and innovation are more likely to occur. Now the business has many more minds working on many more problems, making those businesses more agile and adaptable to changing markets and technologies.

For employees in situations with extremely limited autonomy, bringing some ideas of your own to your managers along with examples of companies who have used strategies that improve autonomy successfully can potentially open the door to a conversation about the value of increased autonomy in your role.

A very recent example was that of the successful implementation of the Kaizen model being applied to hospitals amidst the initial Covid 19 outbreak. “As cases surge throughout the nation, many institutions are searching for more effective methods of improving inefficiencies in their workflow due to increasing demand and shrinking budgets,” wrote Jason Kumar, later concluding that “wait time and cost were severely decreased, while overall machine capacity and revenue were increased. Such a drastic benefit in healthcare facilities can potentially mean more lives saved.”

Another flow trigger that can be used often is the challenge-skills balance. Flow comes when you are stretched to the edge of your perceived ability. Breaking larger problems or projects into smaller pieces that fit this description can go a long way toward boosting motivation and performance.

This trigger ties in nicely with clear goals and the weekly priority setting for those who have been paying attention so far. On the other end of the spectrum, if you find yourself bored or procrastinating, this may indicate you would do better with an increase in challenge to help perk you up into a more purpose-driven and motivated state.

There are several more flow triggers for both individual and group flow, which you can read about here, but even just focusing on the three discussed in this section can make a huge difference for many people in terms of lowering anxiety and increasing focus and productivity.

Making Changes

David G. Myers summarized thousands of studies on happiness and well-being in his 1993 book, The Pursuit of Happiness, and found several factors that, to me, are strikingly similar to various flow triggers and concepts:

Fit and healthy bodies
Positive self-esteem
An internal locus of control
Optimism (or positive affect)
Challenging and meaningful work
Adequate opportunities for rest and leisure

I find it interesting and encouraging that some of the very same factors that lead to happiness and well-being are also the things that can help lead us toward peak performance and productivity. Maybe we don’t have to “choose ” one or the other. By choosing flow perhaps we can have both.

The status quo or orthodox way of doing things can be hard to break away from; there’s comfort in avoiding change or risk. The people we all end up looking up to, however, are the ones who break the status quo, take the risks, push through adversity, and in the end create the new orthodoxy.

Creating change in your own life and with your schedule can be difficult. You see complications, obligations, and barriers in every direction. You also know things don’t feel good or sustainable because you’re always in a rush, rarely have time to improve yourself, and are constantly neglecting things you enjoy due to your busy schedule.

The pursuit of a high-flow lifestyle is not meant to be the pursuit of perfection or the cause of more stress. These strategies and concepts are meant to make us more efficient with our attention and, as a result, more productive when we work, and more present during our lives outside of work.

This level of intentionality is more important than ever, as we are constantly faced with algorithms, advertisements, and notifications designed around capturing your attention. Taking the time to make deliberate choices about how, where, and why you spend your attention is not only critical for your ability to access flow, but for your ability to lead a life that is more than a conglomeration of obligations.

The great part is you can dabble and experiment and see what works best for you. There is no perfect schedule or combination of flow triggers other than what you find helpful and sustainable. Feel free to take the Bruce Lee approach and “absorb what is useful, discard what is useless, and add what is uniquely your own.”

Quick Tips/Summary

If you are interested in making some changes to your routines in an attempt to create less stress and more flow in your life, I understand that it can feel overwhelming at this point, and may be hard to know where to start. The best advice I have is to pick just one aspect to work on initially. Aim for something that will be easy to implement and that motivates you. This combination will have the highest likelihood of success and can act as a springboard that motivates you to adopt other habits and continue the momentum.

Set priorities for the week (20-30 min). If you could only get these things done, the week would still be a success. Try to limit yourself to 3-5 priorities or less so you can truly focus. If you have a manager or someone you work under, they should be part of the process that determines what your priorities are.
Set flow blocks (90 min). There’s no use having priorities if you don’t have time to work on them. Set aside time in your schedule for uninterrupted work. Aim for a minimum of 1 hour but up to 3 hours if your schedule and tasks dictate that. One block per day is great, two would be even better, but at minimum one per week otherwise, it can become difficult to feel like you’re covering ground on your priorities.
Create a power-down ritual (20-30 min). End your day with a routine that helps you tie up loose ends and will allow you to start the next day productively. Setting clear goals for the following day and checking email for “to-do” items are probably the most important parts of powering down. If you can get to the point where you actually close down tabs on your computer during this activity, you’ve reached pro status.
Batch check your inboxes (30 min). Schedule blocks throughout the day dedicated to inbox management. Turn off notifications during the parts of the day you have designated for productivity.
Make “clear goals” clear (5-10 min). When putting together your clear goals list for the next day, the clear they are, the better. Flow is about focus, not indecision. If this step is done properly, challenging work will feel a lot easier.
Exercise daily (30 min). Aim for 30 minutes or more of your preferred form of exercise.
Mindfulness daily (5-10 min). Breathwork, meditation, gratitude, prayer, time in nature, etc.
Active recovery daily (10-20 min). Walking, exercise, sauna, massage, cold therapy, sensory deprivation, sleep, laughing with friends.
Pattern recognition (20 min). Read one chapter or article on a topic that interests you.
Load up on flow triggers. If you’re feeling overwhelmed, anxious, bored, or unmotivated and find yourself procrastinating, look through the flow triggers. Sometimes just applying one or two can dramatically improve a situation and get your motivation aligned better with your task.