⚡️Flow Lever 1: Design Your Environment for Complete Focus
Eliminate Distractions that Fragment Your Attention + Optimize Your Focus
*This is part of a series on how to design flow experiences to propel your creative work.
🧠Flow is all about the quality of your attention.
If there are things interrupting and distracting you, you won’t get into Flow.
Fragmented attention leads to an experience that feels scattered, disjointed, tiring, and unproductive.
Unfortunately, fragmented focus is often the norm. 😟
- We try to multitask.
- We keep a million tabs open.
- We make sure our iPhones, Slack, Discord, Instagram, Twitter, and Email are all in sight and easy to access.
- We keep ourselves accessible and available just in case anybody needs us (and so we don’t miss out on anything).
Experiencing Complete Focus is a major challenge.
It takes deliberate effort to overcome the standard mode of operating.
But it’s doable.
✅ Ask Yourself: “Will I be able to fully concentrate, without interruptions, for a sustained period of time?”
To allow your attention to become totally absorbed in what you are doing, you need to:
- Minimize and eliminate distractions
- Put yourself in the right environment or workspace
- Give yourself enough time for your attention to reach peak absorption (you likely won’t get into flow during a 10-minute work session)
- Set boundaries and expectations with yourself and others
- Identify what contextual elements enhance your focus (e.g. the right music, the right tools, the right coffee ☕️, etc.)
⚡️Here are some specific questions you can ask yourself to design your work session for more Flow:
- Where is the best place for me to work on this?
- When is the best time to work on this?
- How much time can I block for this?
- What can I do to create an environment that gives me better focus?
- What distractions can I block, eliminate, or lessen?
- Can I turn off my phone and other notifications?
- Is there anyone I need to communicate with to let them know I will be focused on doing XYZ (so that they don’t interrupt me)?
- Is there music or sound that I can use to help me better focus?
- What else will help me focus?
Experience More Flow: Design Your Work and Life for More Flow
In my time spent in my Positive Psychology PhD program studying under the Flow master himself (Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi), from my own experiences bringing more Flow to my creative endeavors, and from coaching hundreds of clients across every creative domain, I’ve identified 6 specific “levers” that you can use to deliberately design your activities for more Flow.
I share them with you in my free Find Your Flow Checklist.
👉Grab your free copy of the Find Your Flow Checklist.
⚡️Use this checklist before any creative work session to significantly increase your chances of getting into Flow.🤘
When you get the free checklist, you’ll also get a free mini-course via email diving deeper into each Flow element.
More About Coach Jeff
My name is Jeff Fajans (rhymes with “lions”) and I help creative entrepreneurs bring their biggest ideas to life and reach their next level of creative success.
I have a PhD in Positive Organizational Psychology from Claremont Graduate University, where I studied under Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, the world-renowned author of Flow. My research focused on how to help people learn, develop, and lead more effectively to better achieve creative goals.
I am also an avid music creator and guitar player. 🤘
Through my 1-on-1 coaching, 30-Day Creative Momentum Challenge community, internationally acclaimed digital courses, and speaking engagements, I’ve helped thousands of people from around the world connect with their purpose, clarify their creative vision, amplify their motivation, and create actionable strategies that make achieving their most meaningful goals inevitable.
These are people who are pursuing big goals like starting or leading a business (and scaling it to higher levels of innovation & growth), writing + filming a feature film (and it winning a Sundance award), building an app or product (and getting accepted into Y Combinator or getting VC funding), writing a book (and hitting the Amazon bestseller list) or even exploring a meaningful side hustle or passion project.
