When it comes to productivity, there’s an almost mythical state many of us spend our professional lives searching for. It’s known by many names. Finding our groove. Getting in the zone. Unlocking our focus factor. But all of that describes one state: flow.
The flow state is an ideal state of consciousness, where we feel great and perform our best. When we are in flow, we are full of an energized focus. More than being wholly involved in our project, we also are thoroughly enjoying ourselves. It is engagement so complete, even our sense of time is transformed.
While being in the flow may be attributed to business and daily productivity, research shows we benefit from being in the flow state in many areas such as creative arts, athletics, teaching, and more. Since the flow state is an important part of skill acquisition and learning, it is a valuable process that can help us push through obstacles and unlock our unlimited learning potential.
The Four Stages Of Flow
Stage 1: Struggle
As with anything unfamiliar, the beginning stage is the hardest. Part of the struggle is being bad at whatever we’re trying to achieve. We won’t have the knowledge or skills to make progress in a meaningful way. In fact, we may have a lot of set backs and feel like we’re spinning our wheels but staying in place.
No matter what our goal is, whenever we are learning something new it’s normal to feel anxious and overwhelmed. We don’t know what we’re doing and it takes time to learn. This stage requires a lot of focus, concentration, and effort. It can feel like this stage is immovable, that we’ll never move forward, that we’ll never reach the goals we’ve set. Many people end up stuck in this phase and give up on the goal instead of pushing through.
While this stage is difficult, and often frustrating, it is important. This tension is priming our brain for learning. It releases cortisol, adrenaline, and norepinephrine to increase our focus and attention. And because these hormones are also related to stress, we will feel our stress levels rising.
It’s important to remember that in this stage, we are going to be bad. But we won’t always be bad. Right when we feel like we’re banging our heads against the wall and our frustration is at its highest, we’re ready for stage two.
Stage 2: Release
At some point we’re going to stop making progress. Perhaps we’ve tried reading the same passage for over an hour, or have been staring a blank screen willing words to appear, or have attempted to solve what seems like an unsolvable problem. This means we’ve hit a wall. And it’s time to take a break.
The key with release is that it can’t be just any break. We can’t turn on our favorite show or scroll through our feed. Those activities keep our brain in an active state of tension and won’t allow our brain the relief it needs. Instead, we need a focused break, where our brain can go into a relaxed state.
There are any number of ways we can achieve this. We can go for a walk, complete a short workout routine, engage in deep breathing exercises, or even take a nap. Another trick is to do an activity we know we’re already good at, one that’s easy for us. The goal is to switch our mindset from the tension and focus of struggling to something that takes us into a completely opposite state of mind.
When we disrupt the tension like this, our brain releases nitric oxide, which flushes the stress chemicals out of our brain. Not only does this help us relax and change our brain wave activity, but it primes our brain for the next neurochemical release.
It’s important to remember distraction is not relaxation. If our brain remains active, it can’t release the necessary tension to move on to stage three, which means we will miss out of the benefits of achieving flow.
Stage 3: Flow
After we’ve rested, it’s time to get right back to business. When we sit back down, our brain is primed and ready to enter the flow state. We see the answers, are able to solve the problems, come up with next steps, and overcome obstacles that held us back before.
This enhanced focus and brain performance is due to the release of dopamine, anandamide, and endorphins. But it isn’t simply the hormone release that creates the flow state. The stress hormones built up in the struggle and the flush of nitric oxide during the release optimizes the brain for this new neurochemical cocktail. Without the first two stages, we cannot enter the flow state.
The flow state is almost an out-of-body experience. We are not only doing our best work, but it happens almost effortlessly. Our thoughts, our emotions, our thinking are all completely within our control. Time can speed up in the sense that we lose hours, but it can also feel slow, allowing us to achieve massive amounts of work in a shortened period. And physically, we feel fantastic.
This heightened state of focus and performance isn’t sustainable for extended periods of time. And if we don’t take the time to effectively recover, we risk our ability to enter flow state again.
Stage 4: Recovery
As we leave the flow state, we come back into a more aware state of consciousness. We become more aware of our surroundings and our performance will return to our normal levels. This can produce frustration, as flow state is such a powerful feeling that we don’t want to leave. But being in that hyper-focused, hyper-productive state is hard on our body and our central nervous system, so recovery is essential.
As with stage two, how we rest and recover matters. But where we wanted to remain active in stage two, we need to completely decompress in stage four. We need our brain to take the progress we made in stage three and transfer it from short-term memory into long-term memory. In fact, our brain releases serotonin in this stage to help facilitate this memory transfer process.
The best mode of recovery is sleep, however that isn’t always possible depending on where we’re at with our day. But we can still engage in active recovery techniques where our brain can enter restorative rest states. Engaging in activities like extended exercise programs, taking a long walk, meditation, or relaxing in the bath are all ways to rest and recover.
It’s important that we take the time to allow our brain and body to rest. When we continue to push and don’t allow our neurochemical stores to replenish, we hinder our ability to get back into flow and our efforts will lead to burnout instead.
Conclusion
Understanding the four stages of flow can help us increase not just our learning potential, but our productivity levels as well. The flow state is incredibly potent for achieving our goals, but the process itself has some impressive side effects. Going through the different brain wave activity levels enhances our creative thinking, and we may find ourselves coming up with more ideas outside of being in flow.
The more we practice getting into flow state, the easier it becomes to unlock. We can fall into flow state faster and build our neurochemical stores so that our recovery time shortens between sessions. This also builds our neural pathways, strengthening our motivation and turning productivity into habit. Using the flow state consistently will improve our baseline skill set. Every time we enter the flow, our performance will increase and our natural abilities will continue to progress.
The more we go in and out of flow, the stronger our belief in ourselves and what we can achieve becomes. That makes using the state of flow a powerful tool, taking us one step closer to becoming limitless.
