You can literally be blocked out of flow for days, weeks, months or even longer. People have fallen into deep depression over this. Wait, What?
My brain instantly snapped to attention as Steven Kotler, head of the Flow Research Collective and best selling author of The Rise of Superman, spoke to a small group of performance experts pursuing the latest science on flow states and said just that.
We were high above Seattle on the conference level of the iconic Space Needle when I first met Steven Kotler. The vista itself serving as a flow trigger as we engaged in group flow throughout the weekend. For years, his books and recommended reading had been my guide to getting into flow and bringing out the best in myself, as well as the team's I led at my startup.
“Flow is defined as an optimal state of consciousness, a state where you feel your best and perform at your best," Kotler said. "More specifically, the term refers to those moments of rapt attention and total absorption, when you get so focused on the task at hand that everything else disappears . . .
Action and awareness merge. Your sense of self vanishes. Your sense of time distorts. And throughout, all aspects of performance, both mental and physical, go through the roof.”
But too much time immersed in flow can block you out of future flow states. In fact, many of the routines we have in our life can block us out of flow.
This is why I was on the edge of my seat as Kotler explained more. Being in a flow state means you are flooding your brain with so many feel-good neurochemicals that you need to give the body time to replenish and recover so you can do it again. Recovery, both before and after a flow state, is essential.
When I spoke with him after his talk and in every conversation we've had since, I understood that getting into flow is like a pre-game routine. You want to enter the challenge and drop into flow from a solid mental and physical place and when you end your flow session, you want to take care of yourself so you can get back out there to do it again. That applies to physical competition as well as creative flow work.
To sustain, regular creative flow, you need to focus on recovery to prepare yourself mentally and physically. This is the biggest lesson I learned from my mentor, Steven Kotler.
There are 10 categories that you can examine to help learn how you might be blocking yourself from flow. Take this self-assessment to get some insight into where you can begin to work on streamlining your pre-game and recovery to more consistently get into flow.
We'll explore more techniques to achieve creative flow during our upcoming SecondBrain SuperPowers course opening for enrollment in early February. Get course updates by adding your name to the pre-registration list here.
The biggest lesson my flow mentor taught me