Taxiing To Flow

I’m yesterday’s newsletter I talked about distinguishing all of the tasks needed to accomplish your big new goals this year —and scheduling the time in your calendar. Once that time has been dedicated, then by simply surrendering to your calendar (and your own promise to yourself) you have set the table to feast on results!

But one thing we often fail to consider is how long it will take us to actually settle down and get to work on any given task. It can feel like the seemingly pointless ambling down the runway airplanes sometimes do before finally revving their engines and taking off!

By the time you hear the alert from your calendar and stop doing the previous task, your mind has likely already dredged up thoughts about 5 other tasks you should handle. Now you’re at a mental crossroad—or more apt—one of those “spaghetti junction” highway nodes where 7 different ramps are available to exit.

The cognitive journey from that mental clutter to actually being fully engaged and focused on a single, thoughtful task, can be arduous and time consuming.

I find myself wondering: If I want to quickly focus fully on each task, how can I accelerate the time it takes to do that?

The state of focused deep work has been described as a “state of flow”. The concept of “flow” was first described by?Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi ?in 2008. It is a state of optimal experience when you find yourself so utterly focused on the task at hand, that everything else fades away from your consciousness.

You may be doing something complex like playing a game of chess, or something simple like cleaning the dishes –but you are cognitively?all in.?To do excellent work, it is incredibly useful to be able to bring yourself into that state of focus as quickly and effectively as possible.?

Flow is the moment when you have 100% of your attention on the task at hand, whether that’s writing code, developing a strategy, or discussing a new process with a colleague.?Flow is the desired state. As a bonus, it’s also rather euphoric.

Your Own Pace

In my work with executives of high-growth startups, I have observed a massive range in how fast people can shift contexts and get focused. Some people seem able to do it instantaneously. But others need a good 30 or 40 minutes to really settle into a task.

There is data about this. On average, it takes most people about?15 minutes ?to get into a state of flow.

That assumes you are not still attempting to multitask by leaving on Slack, text messages, or other alerts. But, once you’ve turned the ringer off your phone and the alerts off on your laptop, and are truly concentrating on something, it will still take approximately fifteen minutes to tune out other mental distractions?and enter a state of flow.

Some people struggle with it. For them, it’s harder to clear their minds and bring their attention to the very narrow view of the task at hand. They are plagued by thoughts about other demands on their time, items they may forget, or concerns that they are neglecting someone or something. Those distracting concerns interrupt the process of getting into a state of flow.

What Determines How Fast Your Focus?

There are a few things that affect one’s innate ability to focus. We can control some of them but not others. One factor out of our control is our age.

Young people are inherently better at context shifting than older people. But, like all generalizations, this may not be true for any given individual. There are young people who struggle mightily to get focused, and older people who can zoom in on a task instantaneously. But, in general, our context shifting speed diminishes as we age.

But there is much that we can control.?

Regardless of our age, we can improve our ability to focus by practicing.

Block Time

One important tactic is to embrace?time blocking . That is, scheduling specific periods of time to work on pre-determined tasks. I know we talked about that at some length yesterday. But it bears reiterating. By time-blocking you reduce the need to shift context based on unexpected stimulus (like a colleague’s Slack message).

Knowing in advance what you will next work on assists the brain’s executive function to prepare.

Another thing that makes it easier to switch contexts and get into flow more rapidly, is lumping similar tasks together.

Bear in mind, the executive functions that govern context-shifting are twofold:

• Determining what the next goal is, and
• Distinguishing the tools and heuristics that apply to that next goal or activity.

When the tasks are similar to each other, both of those processes are faster.

Helping Your Brain Locate the tools

To understand this, think of your brain like a library. In step one, the brain adjusts to a new goal. If you can find two tasks where the goals are akin to each other, it’s a bit like searching for two books that are on adjacent shelves in the library.

Whereas if you’re doing tasks that are wildly divergent from each other, one book might be in on the ground floor while the other is in the basement or stored away in the stacks, covered with dust.

In step two a similar phenomenon applies. In determining the heuristics and rules that govern a new task, your brain must look for the applicable mental models. That sorting is more direct and efficient if the tasks are similar rather than very different.

All Executive Functions Are Work

It all takes more cognitive energy. So, what does this mean for you?

You can practice context shifting and focusing, and like most things, practice will lead to improvement. The more you put yourself into that state of flow, the more frequently you work deeply on a task, the better at it you become.

The difficulty so many of us face in being able to get deeply focused on a single task is not a form of idleness or laziness. Instead, it’s lack of practice that can improve our fluency at shifting contexts.

A Primer on Focusing

If you’re reading this, the odds are your work requires thinking deeply, reading with real focus to understand and retain knowledge – all to produce outstanding quality work. The key to it all resides in effectively switching contexts and deeply focusing on the next task. The playbook is simple:

• Determine your current time to get into focus. Are you a one-minute or a 40-minute context shifter?
• Start time blocking,?scheduling durations ?of time in your calendar for specific tasks.
• Try to schedule blocks of similar tasks consecutively, reducing the degree of change in context.
• Ensure that you provide enough duration in your time blocking for you to get into a state of flow. If you need forty minutes to focus, don’t schedule any task for less than 90 minutes.

You already have a sense of whether it takes you two minutes or thirty minutes to settle into a state of flow. Don’t judge whatever that number is or feel bad or embarrassed.?These are learnable skills.

You can become more efficient by practicing these tools and techniques. Becoming better at relaxing into your work will give you a sense of certainty about what you will accomplish and when. And with that comes the euphoria of being engrossed in the work it takes to fulfill your goals.

Like any skill, becoming an extraordinary strategist, leader, product expert or technologist is accelerate when you use expert coaching. Schedule a call to chat about how you and your organization could massively optimize performance with Beyond Better Coaching-as-a-Service.