⚡️Flow Lever 2: Get Clear and Focused on Your Goal
Or Establish a Clear Set of “Rules” and Constraints to Play Within
*This is part of a series on how to design flow experiences to propel your creative work.
🔎To Experience Flow, you Must Get Clear and Focused.
To create an opportunity for Flow, we must direct our attention on a clear goal (or at the very least, a strong sense of what we want to accomplish).
A clear, compelling goal locks our attention on a target.
When our attention is locked in, it becomes more impenetrable to other non-priority elements in our environment — and thus helps our attention reach peak absorption and Flow.
A smoother, more effortless, and more productive path toward our goals unfolds.
This is easier said than done, of course.
🛑Obstacles to Designing Clear and Specific Goals (or Rules)
Idea Overwhelm
One of the main challenges that my clients experience is having too many possibilities. They have idea overwhelm.
Rather than “pausing” some possibilities and setting clear priorities for what to do next and why, they approach their creative or entrepreneurial work trying to move everything forward all at once.
This leads to scattered attention and overwhelm (and thus, no Flow).
Making Things Too Big and Complex
Rather than simplifying and making their next goals more specific and smaller, they stay in the land of the fuzzier, grand creative vision.
When they sit down to actually bring their ideas to life, their goals are not clear and specific enough to find a way to get started and move forward.
Fear of Making a Decision
Further exacerbating the situation is the fear of decision-making — which often stems from perfectionism.
They’re worried about making the “wrong” choice of what to focus on, so they don’t make any committed decision at all.
This leads to unclear priorities, goals, and rules of engagement (and thus no Flow).
☝️These are all completely normal, by the way.
But also non-optimal for experiencing Flow.
At the very least if clarifying specific goals is too challenging, it’s helpful to identify a “set of rules” to constrain your choices.
For example, if you’re an artist your “rules” could be to only use three colors.
If you’re a musician, perhaps it is to create a song or practice your chops in the key of A minor.
If you’re a writer, perhaps it’s to only write in the first person and draw from your own personal experiences.
What rules could you set to help you narrow your focus?
✅ Ask Yourself: “Do I have a clear goal of what I want to achieve? Do I have a clear set of “rules” to follow?”
Ask yourself these questions before any creative work session:
- What is my priority? What matters most to make progress on next?
- What am I NOT focusing on or NOT doing?
- How could I make my goal more specific for this work session?
- How could I simplify my goal for this work session?
- What is the very first thing I will do? What is my starting point?
- How could I make getting started on this easier or smaller?
- If my goal still feels fuzzy, or I am still exploring — what constraints or rules could I create for myself?
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.
