What is the Flow State?
What is the flow state? It’s possible that you may have experienced flow in passing. Have you ever lost an afternoon to a great conversation? or so got so involved in a work project that everything else was forgotten, then you have tasted first hand this state of optimal experience.
When we access this state, whether conscious or unconscious, we become completely immersed into the present moment, our awareness and actions merge, the need for self validation and evaluation disappears, time can often speed up whilst performance significantly increases.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, who is considered the godfather of positive psychology, initiated the flow state theory.
In the 1970s, he introduced the theory of flow, a highly concentrated state of mind in which one is completely absorbed in an activity. People are happiest in this state, he observed, because “your whole being is involved, and you’re using your skills to the utmost.”
Musicians speak of being “in the groove,” and sportsmen of being “in the zone.” Is it possible for employees in the workplace to experience the same state of performance?
Well, it turns out yes..
In a 10-year study conducted by McKinsey, top executives reported being five times more productive in flow.
Think about this for a moment. If you spend your Monday in flow, you will achieve just as much as your steady-state peers do in a week.
In fact, according to these same McKinsey researchers, if we could increase the time we spend in flow by 15-20%, overall workplace productivity would almost double.
Many companies, such as Patagonia, Toyota, and Microsoft, make flow a critical part of their culture and strategy. Coders in flow built the internet, gamers in flow shaped the video game industry, and sports have never been the same since flow was invented.
There are many examples of flow in sports teams. For instance, the Dallas Cowboys in 1993 credited flow as the primary factor in their victory in the Super Bowl. Every gold medal or championship won in history seems to have been tied in some capacity to the flow state.
It’s those moments where you feel totally in the zone, completely immersed in what you’re doing. It’s almost like you’re on autopilot and the world around you has drifted into your foreground. The difference is you’re fully present rather than focused elsewhere.
Sounds pretty cool. It’s so remarkable that action and adventure athletes have been accessing this potent state of performance and wellbeing for decades.
The flow methodology drives performance and accelerates innovation in everyone from software designers, business executives, jazz musicians, and professional athletes.
Our ability to access this optimal state is available every day, and with the tools and framework in place, we can access it more often.
Greetings and Welcome
Before we delve into this exciting field of human optimisation, I wanted to introduce myself.
My name is Ollie, I am a former professional rugby player. Since retiring seven years ago and exiting the professional arena due to physical and mental exhaustion I have dedicated to becoming a student of the human experience, in particular studying the intersection between mindfulness and the flow state.
In my role as a clinical physical therapist and wellbeing practitioner, I work to optimise the wellbeing of individuals and groups while enabling high performance.
To perform and feel at our best, we must first employ mindfulness as a practice for self regulation and self awareness. This opens up an environment that is conducive to flow states.
Both mindfulness and flow share very similar qualities, they both are high quality states of the mind that bring our focus and attention into the present moment.
Over the past decade, I’ve studied, self-experimented, and practised clinically and in groups in both these exciting fields of research.
The purpose of this article is to provide you with some practical takeaways to improve your performance and feel your best every day of your life.
Accessing states of peak performance requires both confidence and humility. To bring any of the flow aspects to life it will require a very important mindset, particularly a commitment to learning and trialling new strategies.
To access flow, you need to have a beginner’s mind, which is related to the Zen Buddhist word “Shoshin”, which means letting go of preconceived notions and residing in an open attitude. Keep this with you at all times in your pursuit towards high performance and optimal living.
The brain in a state of flow
When we enter the flow state, remarkable changes occur in the brain. Our prefrontal cortex, responsible for self-awareness and judgement, quiets down, allowing other brain regions to synchronise and work harmoniously.
Neurochemicals like dopamine and endorphins flood our system, enhancing our motivation, creativity, and wellbeing.
It is this powerful cocktail of neurochemicals that has driven high performance across multiple sectors and aspects of the human experience, which not only drives performance but also makes us feel great while in flow.
Flow is hailed by world leaders as the key to quality of life. According to research, people who access flow the most are the happiest people on earth.
The state usually shows up when you’re doing something enjoyable, take any of your favourite hobbies and more often you will be experiencing flow. Flow occurs when any activity demands high-quality attention. Whether you are putting together a jigsaw puzzle or creating a business proposal, simply put flow follows focus.
Any of these examples might cause you to glance at the clock after getting pulled out of flow state and realise that hours have passed.
In writing this article, I wanted to deliberately utilise the swiss army knife of flow triggers to access the state, one that is centred around complete absorption.
Flow, however, is energy-intensive and requires intentional periods of release and recovery. In a future blog, I will discuss how mindfulness creates a space for recovery from high-flow activities.
Getting into Flow
What is the best way to induce a flow state? What are the prerequisites for entering “the zone”?
It has been reported that over 22 triggers are involved in flow states and more are being developed. For the purpose of this article, we will highlight 3 fundamental triggers that will provide you with a flexible framework to access the flow state.
Flow triggers are derived from evolutionary biology and are effective because they bring our attention into the present.
From the perspective of neuroscience, these triggers drive adrenaline and dopamine into our system. In order to be more aware of the present moment, evolution has equipped us with the ability to narrow and increase our focus.
Listed below are the essential conditions of flow, which include for the purpose of this article specifically the internal flow triggers that speed entry into the state.
Internal Flow Triggers
Internal flow triggers involve psychological processes that generate a state of flow spontaneously during engagement in a particular activity, these are your essential pillars for high performance and flow.
Trigger 1
Humans are hardwired to challenge themselves on a regular basis, the challenge to skills balance is critical for accessing flow and must be continually experimented with to access high performance and flow.
The most simple way to describe this is that if the challenge is too great for our current abilities, adrenaline and cortisol will overwhelm the system, whereas if the challenge is too easy, we will lose interest, allowing boredom and procrastination to set in.
Scientists recognise the emotional midpoint as the “flow channel”, which lies between anxiety and boredom, and exists at a range of 4-5% of our current capabilities.
The goal here is to increase the level of the activity or task enough to stimulate enough dopamine and adrenaline to stretch your capacity in any given task without overextending and putting the brakes on flow and peak performance.
In order to achieve the challenge skills ‘sweet spot’ you must adopt a growth mindset. You will need accurate information, even if it is unflattering, to make progress.
In order to develop a growth mindset, you will need to be aware of your limits and fears, and how to overcome them. It is a process that requires patience and perseverance, as well as self-knowledge.
Self reflection is at the heart of mastering the challenge skills sweet spot. This practice is about learning, looking back on your day to take stock of what happened (without bias or regret) and contemplating the consequences of your actions.
In order to do this, you must sit down with yourself and take an honest look at what happened, what worked, what didn’t work, what can be done, and what cannot.
The ability to reflect requires courage, it involves thinking deeply and deliberately. In order to engage the future effectively, you need to extract lessons from your past.
The path to mastery is not a straightforward one, it will involve resistance and many obstacles along the way.
The selected flow triggers are in place for you to feel empowered through a sense of personal control over any meaningful task you are immersing yourself in on a daily basis.
Trigger 2
Clear Goals
The ability to set clear goals might be one of the most powerful flow triggers, reducing cognitive load and flooding your brain with neurochemicals that will propel you into the flow state.
A clear set of goals activates the reward centre in our brain, causing an increase in dopamine levels.
The chemical dopamine plays a crucial role in motivation and focus, especially in goal-directed behaviour. It is one of the first chemicals to appear in flow state.
In this context, “clear” is in many ways more important than “goal” because clarity drives us deeper into the deep now, where focus tightens, motivation rises, and irrelevant information is filtered out.
As far as neuroscience is concerned, this filtering process occurs in the prefrontal cortex, which is responsible for executive functions like decision-making and attention.
A clear goal creates “tunnel vision” and a sharp locus of attention that directs the prefrontal cortex’s resources solely to goal-aligned activity.
Despite popular belief, the brain cannot multitask when it doesn’t know what to do. In contrast, it does task switching, which is the act of losing and finding attention between multiple tasks. This over time puts a lot of unnecessary load on the brain.
Lack of clarity can also drive procrastination as your brain switches to something easier or becomes distracted. Setting clear goals is your super tool to prevent inefficiency.
In the journey towards flow, the brain’s remarkable plasticity plays an important role. Setting clear goals activates neural pathways associated with the tasks required to achieve those goals. As these pathways are strengthened through repetition and practice, the brain becomes more efficient at executing the required actions.
By practising and paying attention, we can make these neural pathways more efficient, and this deepens our brain’s engagement.
At this point, we are led into the deep “now,” where time seems to dilate and focus intensifies. In the presence of clear goals, neuroplasticity reshapes our brain’s wiring to support the demands of the task at hand, in turn facilitating flow.
Having clear goals creates certainty, we know what to do and where to focus our attention while doing it.
With a clear goal in mind, the brain narrows its focus considerably, disregarding the unimportant, and savouring the present moment, not focusing on the past or the future.
Try breaking tasks down into bite sized chunks or blocks of focused effort. This way the brain remains present oriented rather than spending too much energy and focus through solely a future oriented lens that can slow down and mitigate entry into the flow state.
Trigger 3
Direct & Immediate Feedback
As a focusing mechanism and shortcut into the NOW, immediate feedback is an extension of clear goals.
It is through accurate feedback that we receive greater clarity. As a result of this clarity, our minds can achieve a state of alertness and ease, allowing us to enter flow more easily.
There is a tight coupling between cause and effect in the present time, and the smaller the gap between input and output, the more we know about what is going on and how to improve.
If we can’t course correct in real time, we start looking for clues to better performance, things we’ve done previously, what others have done, and things that can pull us away from the present and into the past or future.
In addition to aligning our awareness and attention, instant feedback further reduces cognitive load, since the brain does not have to wonder how things are going.
Goals provide a clear course of direction, while immediate feedback tells us how we’re doing and drops us firmly into the present moment and deep now.
In action and adventure sports, feedback comes from the activity itself and with regularity, imagine yourself skiing and suddenly with the change of weather conditions you become off balance, this immediate feedback will provide direct information for you to change course.
Providing feedback in creative endeavours and the workplace comes less naturally, so we need to choose how much and in what form to receive it.
Consider asking for advice instead of feedback in a professional context.
It has been noted in a recent Harvard Business Review article that “organisations are full of opportunities for learning from peers, colleagues, and clients.”
Despite its common occurrence, asking for feedback is often an ineffective strategy for growth and learning. As a result, people who focus too much on evaluating past actions fail to provide tangible recommendations for future actions.
What can we do to overcome this barrier? Instead, we can ask our peers, clients, colleagues, and bosses for advice.
Additionally, women are often given personality feedback rather than real, tangible feedback on what is working well and where improvements are needed. Asking for advice vs feedback makes it less likely to fall into this trap.
What would happen if you tightened feedback loops in your work right now? Would you benefit from more regular input? What if quarterly reviews became daily reviews?
With constantly tweaking your goals through continuous feedback, you’ll quickly develop a habit response of dropping into flow.
Final Thoughts
Here you have now 3 potent science backed flow triggers for peak performance, now it’s your time to begin if you aren’t already to integrate the flow triggers into your everyday life.
As an easier entry point, you could first bring the triggers into an existing hobby or activity that you thoroughly enjoy, assess how you found bringing in these flow triggers and how this may of impacted the activity.
Did you feel more engaged? More creative? More focused? More autonomy over the task at hand? Did time seem to disappear? If you are ticking a few of these categories then great you are accessing the flow state.
If you want to take this one step further, you can apply this same model to anything in your life, whether you are creating a project proposal, preparing a speech, or completing a normally mundane task that seems difficult.
In a future article, we will explore how external flow triggers and how mindfulness practices create the foundational environment and bedrock for flow states to emerge from.
Accessing the flow state is an individual endeavour that always has an initial struggle and resistance inherent to the process.
In time, through deliberate practice and self-experimentation you will create your own unique framework for accessing the flow state, which will be aligned with your values, mission and overall purpose in life.
Flow rituals are short, repeatable routines you can use to calm your mind and refocus all your energy on one goal.
Change is possible when you become comfortable with discomfort; only then can we embrace growth. How appealing does “being comfortable” sound if it’s synonymous with “mediocre and stagnant.”
The truth is that feeling uncomfortable can push you towards great things. That is how we grow, this how we become more present, open and connected to ourselves and the world around us.
Flow is central to our experience at Mindful Elements , enabling us to meet our growth edges and safely stretch our capabilities as far as they can go.
For more information about our full array of programmes and experiences on offer, visit our website if you’re looking to elevate your team’s performance.
#workplacewellbeing #teamflow #highperformanceteams #mindfulworkplace #flowstate #nervoussystemregulation
