Beyond Mindfulness: “Hella Focused,” the Neuroscience of Ecstasis, and the Joy of Work
Embracing the limits of limitlessness
You know the feeling. You lose track of time. You’re so engrossed in what you’re doing, and it feels so good — actually, it feels awesome. Not a single thing can pry you away from the task at hand.
Throughout history, humans have sought ways to unlock this latent potential and scale the pinnacles of cognitive performance. Plato described “Anamnesis,” a state of transcendent understanding. Ideas flow, time stops, creativity surges. You just do, without thinking. For my entire adult life, I’ve held this mystical ‘flow state’ with reverence approaching awe.
There were those obsessive few years where I chased this state whenever I sat down to write, eventually training myself through sheer perseverance to appreciate the struggle of just showing up and trying, not getting overly fixated on the output. For the most part, the results were mixed. Sometimes “the muse” would alight on my shoulder, and more oftentimes, not.
“Our normal waking consciousness… is but one special type of consciousness, whilst all about it, parted from it by the flimsiest of screens, there lie potential forms of consciousness entirely different.” — William James
Help for the Bored at Work
In the scientific age, we’ve given a new name to this state of being: Ecstasis. Defined as a state of ‘beyond consciousness’, ecstasis refers to those rare moments where we feel completely absorbed in our tasks, transcending our ordinary perception of time, space, and self.
Neuroscientists have opened the hood to demystify this process. A cascade of neurotransmitters — your brain’s internal messengers — flood the brain. Dopamine, known for its central role in our internal reward system, gives us a sense of pleasure and satisfaction, while anandamide, a lesser-known player helps with pain regulation (which, perhaps, I’ve experienced as an ‘out of body’ feeling) and new idea generation.
As we’re beginning to understand, the real shift induced by these chemicals happens in our brainwaves.
Ever been so bored that every second feels like a minute, every minute an hour? You’re reading this, but aren’t you supposed to be working on that thing? You’re cycling through tabs, stuck in procrastination, monotony, or maybe you’re braindead from an endless carousel of meetings.
When you’re “checked out,” your brain is likely dominated by Beta waves, the high-frequency brainwaves associated with our normal waking state when we are alert but not particularly engrossed.
During Ecstasis, we switch gears from the high-frequency Beta waves to the boundary of Alpha and Theta waves. This transition mirrors the brainwave changes often seen during deep meditation or just before sleep and allows us to delve into a realm of heightened creativity and problem-solving. Overthinking temporarily stops — a phenomenon called “transient hypofrontality.”
Or, a layperson might say, hella focused.
This understanding of brain states is fueling the rise of industries aimed at enhancing cognitive performance. EEG sensors, designed to monitor these shifts in brainwaves. Then there’s the psychedelic medicine market, anticipated to grow significantly in the coming years, relying on substances that can profoundly alter brainwave patterns and states of consciousness. Don’t forget the surge in mindfulness apps, personal coaching, self-help books, wellness influencers, and nootropics to name a few— all forming multi-multi billion-dollar industries.
(And then, there’s the real dystopian industry of literal brain-hacking .)
In their book “Catching Fire,” Steven Kotler and Jamie Wheal estimate the total size of the “Altered States Economy” — money spent trying to get out of our own heads — as exceeding $4 Trillion a year.
Those numbers may seem silly, unfathomable even, but to me their qualitative importance speaks to our most human trait: our limits. It seems that society’s quest for cognitive flow is growing even bigger in our increasingly fragmented, distraction-addled rat race.
Limits of Limitlessness….Player 3 has entered the game
Ever since I became a new parent last year, my open-ended schedule has evaporated. The late nights, the leisurely weekends, the pre-dawn creative hours — all are now (mostly) a thing of the past. Today, my work schedule is rigid, a natural constraint imposed by the duties of parenthood and the schedule of our nanny.
While this shift and the broad psychological transformations of fatherhood have certainly played a central role in my determination and ‘grit,’ I’ve also begun to adopt a more intentional lens to observe myself working over days, weeks, and months — a sort of meta-meditation.
As my quest to “unlock my ultimate self” has begun softening into something light and fun, more like a video game, rather than a gritty, stoic battle or “War of Art,” it works much better. As Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote, “We go all wrong, by too strenuous a resolution to go all right.” I mean, as a word-nerd, I feel like based on the name alone, “ecstasis” should … feel good….right?
The multi-billion dollar industry race to dissect and tinker with our cognitive abilities seems to forget the joy of exploration. Capitalism’s hammer typically overlooks the joyfulness of the process of discovery, in search of the nail of efficient outputs. What’s too often lost in the rush for productivity is the playful interactions and exploration of our selves, our inner lives, and our relationship with work.
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