How To Get 3 Hours Worth Of Results With 1 Hour Of Work

QUOTE OF THE DAY

THE FLOW STATE

552 Words | 2 min Read

Have you ever struggled to complete a task that should have taken you 90 minutes yet, after 8 hours, you still haven't finished the thing?

Well, there's a neuroscientific explanation for why this happens and a simple way to solve it. Behind the world's most successful people stand the four pillars of flow, which allow anyone to become effortlessly productive.

What is flow?

I want you to remember for a second the last time you were hyperproductive and totally absorbed in what you were doing. Well, that was flow.

Flow is a state of consciousness that makes work feel effortless, and you've experienced flow perhaps when you were riding a bike, surfing a wave, making music, singing, dancing, or maybe working on a big project.

Many of humanity's greatest accomplishments have happened in this state of flow.

From Einstein finally figuring out the theory of relativity to the whole of Facebook being built

They were harnessing the power of flow to pull it off. these superhuman feats that drove humanity forward.

The flow state is a state of mind where time doesn’t even seem real; it's a complete and utter state of deep focus where you and your task at hand are all in sync to create effortless momentum.

Or, in simple terms, it makes a lot of work seem like nothing, and so here are the 4 steps to get into a flow state whenever you please.

Flow Blockers.

Flow is a state of utter focus, and so in order to get into it, you need to make sure that you have no flow blockers or distractions.

If you are an athlete, you need to make sure that you have no injury that's going to impair you from completing your craft. It's the same kind of idea.

That means if you want to get into the flow state, you need to remove all distractions—not just put them to the side, but get rid of them all together.

Flow Proneness.

If you have removed all of the blockers and still can’t get into a state of flow, it's due to your tendency to access flow.

You need to make your body, mind, and environment prime to access flow.

For example, flow requires you to have a long attention span to stay focused on the work that you’re doing. However, you probably have a poor attention span due to consuming modern-day media, so you need to increase it.

You need to train your mind to have a long attention span, whether you read a book from front to back or even if it's boring. It’s all about proving to yourself that you can indeed do it.

Flow Triggers.

Your flow triggers are the things that can instantly lock you into the flow state, and the more triggers you have that help you get into a flow state, the higher the likelihood that you’ll be able to get into it on command.

Some activities are naturally rich at getting you into the flow state, like playing video games, for example, because of the following factors:

• It's something you like and want to do.

• It's something that challenges you just the right amount.

• It's something that gives you instant feedback.

If you can find these triggers in other tasks, you’ll find it easier to get into that state of flow.

Flow Cycle.

This is the last piece of the puzzle, which basically explains that the flow state has a pattern.

Firstly, you struggle to get into the flow state, where you have that urge to distract yourself.

Then you have the state of release, where you bypass that initial uncomfortable feeling and get into the state of flow.

Then you have flow itself, the stage where your frontal cortex actually deactivates to allow for rapid thinking on autopilot.

Then you have recovery, which is the process of recovering after expending so much focus and energy.

TAKEAWAYS:

Here are the four steps to understand the flow state and access it at will:

• Flow Blockers

• Flow Proneness

• Flow Triggers

• Flow Cycle

And by understanding these pillars of flow, you can achieve utter productivity and get a stupid amount of work done in a short amount of time.

LESSON OF THE DAY ⤵️

Emotions are what make you who you are. Emotions make us want, feel, desire and more often then not are the driving force behind what it is that you’re working towards.

You don’t want money to have money but you want money to have the freedom to buy what you want when you want to ultimately feel happy.

On the other hand, emotions can act as an anchor which means that you need to learn how to control them and when it comes to doing things that you know you need to do regardless of how you feel, you need to eliminate them.

Want to ask The Kaizen something? Click this link, ask your question, and every day we pick one out to answer in the next day's newsletter.

Was this forwarded to you? Sign up here

Got any questions or thoughts about this edition? Send us an email at [email protected]