26 September2022

Ten Aspects for a High-Flow Lifestyle: Part 1

How to apply flow concepts in your own life

byJason Haller

After ten blogs discussing many of the aspects that contribute to a high-flow lifestyle, I thought we might construct what that lifestyle actually looks like when we put all the pieces of the puzzle together. How might a day or week be structured and how do you go about implementing these flow concepts into your own life?

Before we dive into the strategies and habits, I want to emphasize that none of these things are required to get into flow. These are generalized best practices to help create lifestyles where flow is more regular and predictable, time spent on work is most efficient, and you are able to be present and enjoy time spent outside of work.

Let’s start by breaking down the traditional ideas of what constitutes productivity, which is derived from a factory and manufacturing-based paradigm. In that scenario, if a worker isn’t working, that means production slows down, so most metrics are based on time spent working or the number of things you’re working on.

Now, much of the work being done is intellectual work like problem-solving or creative solution engineering. This is a different kind of work and requires a different set of metrics to measure productivity. Being “busy” is no longer a reliable way to measure output. In a system where we want the most creativity, efficiency, and flow, tracking time and busyness isn’t going to accurately predict the contribution towards the success of the business.

With this in mind and the knowledge that truly productive work happens far better when in a flow state, let’s approach our workflows and lifestyles with an open mind and not feel tethered to old paradigms that are no longer relevant to the vast majority of knowledge work being done.

“The word business is derived from the Old English word ‘bisignis’, which means ‘anxiety or the state of being busy.’ We have come full circle as many people today once again reflexively feel anxiety when thinking about their work. Pursuing flow is a great way to feel productive rather than busy.”

 

-Jason Haller

Establish Goals and Priorities

To start your theoretical flow-driven week, you need to set your priorities. This should be done at the end of the previous week when ideas, obligations, and projects are fresh in your mind, or it could be done over the weekend when you have more time to think about the bigger picture. Do whatever works best for your schedule. Avoid doing this Monday morning though, as the whole point is to set ourselves up to hit the ground running to start the week.

Taking thirty to sixty minutes at most, establish three to five priorities for the week, things derived from larger goals that have been broken down to the level of tasks that can be completed this week. Simple enough right? This gives you a Northstar for the week. Whenever you need to make a decision, you can reference your priorities for the week and clearly identify the hierarchy and make the decision accordingly.

The idea is to take the time during this priority-setting block to think through what needs to get done, in what order, and why. This way you don’t spend time thinking about that during the week when you’ve got obligations and limited time to contend with.

Often the pushback here is about how many “fire drills” pop up on a regular basis and that there wouldn’t be time to stick to a plan during the week even if it had been laid out in one of these priority setting blocks. In that case, the priorities you set should first and foremost be about how to set up systems and processes that strategically deal with and potentially avoid urgent issues. For example, developing, enabling, and empowering other colleagues to be able to handle these “fires” without your direct input.

In this scenario, creating flow blocks based on addressing that priority helps you create a more streamlined workflow in the future that frees up your time to spend on more value-add projects, as well as develops the mastery and capabilities of those in your leadership hierarchy leading to better engagement on their part.

Tools like Asana​ can be excellent at facilitating task management and prioritization. If you’re more of an analog-style person, this productivity planner​ is something I’ve used and it helps walk you through each step of the process. I found it to be a helpful resource to build this habit.

Schedule Flow Blocks

Next, you’ll want to block off time for uninterrupted productivity, or flow blocks in your schedule. These are the blocks where you cover ground on those weekly priorities that have been set. For the most part, this will not include meetings or checking email and should be very task-driven.

This is where the majority of the flow we’re aiming to create happens. However, flow blocks may end up being time spent in the struggle phase​ of the flow cycle, when you need to acquire new information or skills before tackling a project.

For my blogs, these could be blocks spent reading and researching topics and concepts related to what I will eventually write about, followed by blocks I spend actually writing while hopefully in flow. The important part is to keep the block of time uninterrupted and distraction-free. Whether in flow or not, you learn better and think better when you have time to pay attention. Like with many things, adequate preparation is just as important as the final stages and still requires your attention and focus.

These types of blocks can be anywhere from one to three hours, but generally speaking, most people will find ninety minutes is a good middle ground, as that lines up with many studies done on attention span and probably feels more manageable for many people’s schedules.

Something to keep in mind here is to pay attention to your own biorhythms. When do you normally feel positive and energized during the day or when would you be able to limit distractions the most? If you normally experience an afternoon slump in energy and brainpower, that’s probably not the best time to schedule your flow blocks.

You can take breaks during this block as needed, just don’t use those breaks to distract yourself. Go for a walk, stretch or grab a snack, but try to avoid screens and scrolling. Optimally, you’re getting at least one flow block per day, but even one per week is better than nothing.

Power Down Ritual

To end the day, it’s helpful to have a power down ritual. This is your clear finish line for the day that helps us delineate between work and the rest of our lives. We’ve accomplished what we set out to do for the day, we are establishing what needs to get done the next day, and we are walking away from the computer feeling free to move on to other things without lingering thoughts or problems to solve for work.

This is where you assess what was accomplished that day versus what you had on your clear goals list, and you set three to five clear goals for the next day, keeping your weekly priorities in mind. You tie up any loose ends from the work day and likely do a batch check of email. Add anything that needs to get done to the next day's clear goals list.

This way you can trust that those tasks will get done and you don’t have to continue to think about them throughout the evening. The purpose is to set yourself up for success the following day as well as lower cognitive load going into the evening or weekend.

This is especially important now that many people are working from home, as the finish line for the work day is more blurred than ever. Freeing up these cognitive resources outside of work can help facilitate more energy and focus for hobbies, interests, and social interactions that are otherwise tainted with a mindset of “always being on.”

​ “In the roughly one-third of the day that is free of obligations, in their precious ‘leisure’ time, most people in fact seem to use their minds as little as possible…There are literally millions of potentially interesting things in the world to see, to do, to learn about. But they don’t become actually interesting until we devote attention to them.”

 

- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

 

Batch Inbox Checks

When pursuing flow, minimizing distraction is a crucial component. And many distractions in the workplace are caused by notifications, specifically emails. Getting into the habit of batch-checking your inboxes is a great way to carve out distraction-free time in your day to get things done and tap into deeper levels of focus or flow.

When you perform your batch checks and how often will depend on your situation and work, but if you, like the average person, check your email 56 times per day, you aren’t leaving a whole lot of room open for a distraction-free time to get into flow and work on your priorities.

Consider that it takes on average fifteen to twenty minutes to begin a flow state and forty-five minutes to reach a peak flow state, but the average office worker’s task switches every three minutes. You simply don’t have the time to gain enough momentum to reach flow or any other significant level of focus unless you make that time. Checking our inboxes in batches rather than reactively responding to notifications can go a long way toward freeing up time to find deeper levels of focus and productivity while reducing feelings of stress and anxiety.

A tip for phone usage and inbox batching is to take all the apps on your phone that have some type of messaging component and notifications, and put them all into a folder. This folder is now your master inbox.

Then set each app to show badge notifications only when your phone is set to silent, that’s that little red bubble with the number of notifications inside. When you sit down to do your inbox check, you simply go to this one folder and look through the new messages and respond to what you need to, and create tasks for anything else that needs to be done.

There will be situations where you want notifications on and for those situations, it’s simple enough to switch the phone from “silent mode” back to normal. This should allow you to hear the notification again if you’ve set things up correctly. It may take twenty minutes to sit down and set this up, but I’ve found it extremely worthwhile and it definitely causes me far fewer distractions throughout the day.

Creating a Clear Goals List

It has been alluded to already, but creating a clear goals list for the day is an incredibly simple way to boost flow and productivity. This list is the product of broken-down priorities for the week (derived from the larger-scale individual, team, and company-wide goals) and anything else that gets caught in the net of the batched inbox checks. The best time to make this list is during the power-down ritual the day before.

A clear goal should be something that is broken down to a high level of specificity; don’t leave these vague or general. The whole idea here is to not let your brain wonder what it should be doing. This list helps us know what we should be doing now and what we are going to do next. This is the quintessential way to lower cognitive load during the day and allow more focus on whatever task you’re performing at that time.

A simple way to know if something is clear enough is to ask yourself whether or not you could complete it during one flow block. If not, break it down further and order those steps sequentially if appropriate.

Now that I’ve shared a wealth of insights in Part 1, click here to read Part 2, where I discuss concepts like pattern recognition, exercise and active recovery, mindfulness, and flow triggers.

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