Flow
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- You know that what you need to do is possible to do, even though difficult, and sense of time disappears. You forget yourself. You feel part of something larger.
 Flow
- is an optimal state of consciousness, a peak state where we both feel our best and perform our best;
- is a transformation available to anyone, anywhere, provided that certain initial conditions are met;
- might be the most desirable state on earth;
- is also the most elusive state
- has seekers of flow spent centuries trying, yet no one has found a reliable way to reproduce the experience…
- let alone with enough consistency to radically accelerate performance;
- …except action and adventure sports athletes;
- is also known as the zone—quite simply, the zone is the only reason these athletes are surviving the big mountains, big waves, and big rivers.
When you are pushing the limits of ultimate human performance, the choice is stark: it is flow or die.
17 Flow Triggers
Psychological Triggers
Psychological Triggers are internal strategies that drive attention into the now.
- Intensely Focused Attention
- Producing flow requires long periods of uninterrupted concentration. Deep focus. This means multi-tasking is out. Open office plans as well. Flow demands singular tasks and it demands solitude.
- Clear Goals
- Know what you’re doing and why you’re doing it—that’s the point.
- When goals are clear, the mind doesn’t wonder what it has to do next, it already knows. Our focus can stay pinned to the present moment and the present action.
- Immediate Feedback
- As a focusing mechanism, immediate feedback is something of an extension of clear goals. Clear goals tell us what we’re doing; immediate feedback tells us how to do it better.
- If we know how to improve performance in real time, the mind doesn’t go off in search of clues for betterment, we can keep ourselves fully present and fully focused and thus much more likely to be in flow.
- The Challenge/Skills Ratio
- Flow exists near (but not on) the midline between boredom and anxiety.
- If the task is too dull, attention disengages and action and awareness cannot merge.
- If the task is too hard, fear starts to spike, and we begin looking for ways to extricate ourselves from the situation.
- In other words, the challenge needs to be slightly greater than the skills we bring to the table. If you can keep yourself in this sweet spot, then you can drive attention into the now and maximize the amount of flow in your life.
- Flow exists near (but not on) the midline between boredom and anxiety.
Environmental Triggers
Environmental triggers are qualities in the environment that drive people deeper into the zone.
- High Consequences
- When there’s danger lurking in the environment, we don’t need to concentrate extra hard to drive focus, the elevated risk levels do the job for us. Since survival is fundamental to any organism, our brain’s first priority is to scour all incoming information for any sign of a threat and focus intently upon it.
- A big wave surfer may need to ride Jaws to pull this trigger, but an ordinary shy guy needs only to cross a room to talk to a pretty gal to do the same.