Optimizing Focus to find Flow in 2024

“We live in a culture that is constantly amping us up with stress and stimulation.” – Johann Hari, Stolen Focus

Tackling the Elephant

How do we avoid distractions? There are so many ready to derail us across our professional and personal lives. Since I started writing this early on a Saturday morning during a rainstorm – a time when my kids will often sleep in – all three kids have gotten up and needed various levels of support with transitioning into an activity. Focus interrupted, and that's only from the parenting side of things.

A few months ago, I read Stolen Focus by Johann Hari, which is an extraordinary discovery journey into modern life and an attempt to get focus back. Hari argues that we're not losing our focus because of personal failings; our attention is being actively manipulated and "stolen" by external forces.

While this book has a wealth of research covering everything from manipulative technology to fetishization of efficiency and the minimization of mind wandering driven by constant stimulation, Hari’s personal research into the topic was my favorite part. He moved to Cape Cod?in the off season and cut himself off from technology. Reading about his exploration to find a non “smart” phone before he even started his trip was eye opening as it seemed almost impossible.

Life’s Distractions

How can anyone possibly find Flow in 2024 with the never-ending distractions that invade our day, especially if it was so hard for someone purposely planning a digital detox trip to even find an app-, email-, and internet-free phone? Emails, texts, alerts, calls, pings, Slacks – which I’ve only ever thought of as the app until writing it just now and thinking how funny of a name it is when you think about the pants – Teams chats, Apple-Google-Amazon alerts about the weather, the Golden Globes, the election…I could go on all day, and then parenting is its own special recipe of interrupted focus.

What is this elusive thing we call ‘Flow’?

Flow is a state of optimal experience where individuals are fully immersed and engaged in an activity. It’s basically being locked into what you’re doing in a way that’s like tapping into a superpower – a feeling of being super or magical in the moment, and happy, fulfilled, and tied to meaning. Your life has a high level of purpose driven by what you are doing.

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (pronounced Me-High Chick-SENT-Me-High), also known as “Mike” according to this beautiful tribute from the University of Chicago, identified, named, and defined “flow” in his book, Flow: Living at the Peak of Your Abilities, which published in 1990 and has changed the way people approach that previously undefined state of euphoria in activity. He’s also inspired countless other thought leaders and has been referenced in many of the books I’ve read over the last year, which made me want to dig in deeper.

Csikszentmihalyi laid out eight specific criteria to help understand this state of being:

The 8 Characteristics of Flow:

1. Complete concentration on the task: Being fully absorbed in the present moment, with other thoughts and concerns fading away.
2. Clarity of goals and reward in mind and immediate feedback: Knowing what you need to do and experiencing direct results from your actions, keeping you motivated.
3. Transformation of time: Time can seemingly warp, with minutes feeling like hours or vice versa, due to the intense focus.
4. The experience is intrinsically rewarding: Doing the activity for the sheer joy of it, not for external rewards.
5. Effortlessness and ease: Feeling like you're operating effortlessly, even if the task itself is challenging. Actions flow smoothly and naturally.
6. Balance between challenge and skills: The task is challenging enough to require your full skillset, but not so overwhelming that it feels impossible.
7. Actions and awareness are merged: Losing self-consciousness and becoming one with the activity, without any internal distractions.
8. There is a feeling of control over the task: Having a sense of agency and mastery over your actions and the outcome.

Identifying Flow

We’ve all felt flow at one time or another in life. I imagine many people think back to times of flow with mixed feelings – inspiration from that moment, longing to tap into it again, and frustration that it can be so difficult to achieve on demand.

When I started digging into flow recently – about 2-3 years ago – I thought back to moments of flow to try and understand how I got there in an effort to get there again and to do it more consistently. About 15 years ago, I used to go into the office at 5am – a silent wonderful time of day. I would write for hours in complete peace while the sunrise slowly cascaded through the windows. It was a routine that fostered concentration and made it easy to tap into flow while writing. While I thrived in those moments, what I think back to the most is how easily I could maintain focus throughout the day. That early morning flow-training, which I didn’t realize I was doing, powered me to tap into it and get my work done in half the time.

Achieving Flow

A consistent practice makes it easier to tap into flow more frequently. The routine bakes in the access points to your flow state: a great workout, a time of day, a specific setting, and/or the right music.

My wife thinks I’m a crazy person because I listen to the same album on repeat when I write. What she doesn’t realize – but will now know – is that I listened to every album I own along with every Pandora station in existence 15-20 years ago in an effort to find my flow music. As anyone that has spent any time in a car with me can attest to, I can listen to DMB without end. While I had hypothesized that would be the answer, it didn’t have the right tempo to pace how I write. Go figure.

In the midst of all that sampling and failing, I kept coming back to one very specific album that I bought in eighth grade. It had sat mostly dormant until I embarked on this musical odyssey to find the flow trigger I needed. What I found was that Fashion Nugget by Cake was the perfect album for me. It captured the right beat with the heavy base lines and the rhythm across the album to keep me moving. While this is one flow hack that I’ve found, I recently read a great book that dug into this with a more rigorous approach.

Stealing Fire by Steven Kotler and Jamie Wheal dives deeply into flow practices using mindfulness, meditation, and psychedelic experiences. Kotler and Wheal use compelling stories with examples that show how these practices are used beyond personal development including fields like sports, technology, and business to optimize performance and foster innovation. They show that understanding and harnessing these altered states can lead to breakthroughs in creativity, collaboration, and overall well-being.

Developing a Practice

Finding what works for you is likely going to be a series of trial and error as experimentation seems to work best. Extraordinarily, I wrote a majority of the outline for this post with a two-year-old stuck to my back, while my other kids wandered around, dropped things on the floor, and made all the bizarre sounds that come with our morning routine. I tribute this accomplishment to consistency, practice, and acceptance.

As a parent, acceptance is especially important and took time to build up (still building up) across raising three kids. Regardless of the time of day, I know that there's a high chance I’ll be grabbing raisin bread, refilling milk, and answering endless questions while writing with kids home.

As a writer, I’ve been working in the morning for a while, and I think about it before bed. I’m finding that when I wake up, it’s easier to lock in – I know it’s my goal to start the day and my mind allows me to do it.

Despite more distractions than I could count on both hands and feet, I’m able to keep the chain of thought connected in my mind to complete some writing. I can accept that I’m not going to finish or perfect anything in the moment but will be able to make progress. And a little progress every day makes for big progress when stacked together.

?Last Thoughts

“Focus only on what you have control over.” – Hasard Lee, The Art of Clear Thinking

In The Art of Clear Thinking, Hasard Lee, who’s a former fighter pilot, dives deeply into the importance of mental focus to improve decision making and drive clear thinking. The above quote stood out to me as Lee discussed being present in the moment, accepting the situation as it is, and training your mind to focus only on the things that are within your control. The mind uses a lot of our energy and, Lee continues, it’s important – vitally important in certain situations – to use that energy in the most efficient possible way to think clearly, drive positive results, and achieve your objective.

This is another proof point and method to achieving focus in our daily lives – to train our minds to focus on what’s in front of us. Lee talks about breathing techniques, which also resonated as I reflected on my own newer practice of meditation and how it’s helped both focus and motivate me each day.

However you begin or continue your flow practice in 2024, I hope that some of the techniques mentioned here are helpful. If you have other ideas to share, I would love to hear them in the comments or a direct message. As you may have guessed, I'm always excited to hear new and different approaches to focus, flow, parenting, and life.

Thanks as always and, if you read this far, please recommend this newsletter to someone you think would appreciate it like you do!