Welcome to The Door to E. A series-style newsletter for people obsessed with exploring, explaining, and expanding ideas to unlock human potential. Each week, I publish around 3 chosen series that share ideas, experiences, and stories to help you design your life.
This essay is a part of the Practical Philosophy Friday series.
Thank you for reading, and please forward this to anyone who you think needs to walk on the journey.
Dear Friends, Seekers, and Everyone else
Functionality is key.
You could try to be efficient and productive all the time, but that is a disaster waiting to happen.
So, I've been on a one-week creative break to readjust my calendar, events and tasks and make things easy for work.
It is a fact that efficient thought is the enemy of creativity. It's not something I've seen evidence for, but when I try to concentrate on creative work I have to stop thinking about doing things succinctly or in a set block of time.
To me, creativity is not something to be controlled, and as such FLOW cannot be controlled by structures and frameworks either.
But what is flow anyway?
Path of Least Resistance
For all that is said out there, in different fancy and wordy ways, I'll tell you what flow means to me:
A state of Flow is when the mind learns to stop resisting the momentum it's gaining towards doing one action.
You don't feel the passage of time as severely as you would in your normal life, or loss of the inner voice that points out your mistakes or logical movement of memory.
You often see this happen with artists, sports people and even writers. There is effortlessness in their movement and actions, they lose awareness, it feels like they have complete control over what they are doing.
For a lack of better analogy, I'd say it feels like doing mediation through action.
While FLOW as a term is quite new, as new as the 1960s when Dr Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi wrote a book called "FLOW: The Psychology of Optimal Experience" where he talks about a highly focused mental state that helps you do good work.
The concept itself is way older than that, 6th century BCE to be exact when the legendary Lao Zi wrote Tao Te Ching (a book I'm dying to read.)
Not Controlling, but directing
In some parts of the world, there is aggressive attention given to process and productivity. To follow a set framework, checklist, and template to get the desired result.
I'm sure you've heard of people claiming "I've got a 3-hour block of deep work setup every morning". That's a common practice in the areas of time management and productivity.
But there is another side to it... the extremely passive, non-time bound but chained by intention side of things.
Where the priority is given to action and the fulfillment of that action, not necessarily on the time constraints.
That comes from the fact that "you cannot force effortless work if you don't let your mind find the effortless way to do it". After all, transcendental states cannot be achieved with effort.
This is my personal experience as well. I've never been able to honor a time commitment for creativity, but I have been able to honor the Intention commitment for creativity every single time.
Because not doing anything is just as important or even more important than doing something.
There was even this conversation I heard between David Perell and Ana Lorena Fabrega where they were passionately defending the point that "original content arises when you let the mind wander around an idea, and let it germinate the idea".
Similarly, "flow" is achieved not by control, but rather signposting. You add constraints on what you want to do and think and then let your mind do it's thing.
I'm a big advocate for the idea of letting things marinade in your head and embracing the "letting go" aspect of life.
But how can I turn this idea into a practical one?
Get into Flow
Have you ever observed monks when they meditate? What is their environment setup like? It is open, clear, and with little distractions. But there is something peculiar about it.
There's stuff that is common among every type of monk or artist when they do their work.
It is the environment.
Every day they do their work in the same spot at the same time.
For someone to get immersed in their work, they need to cut out as many adjustments and distractions as possible.
So the prerequisite for getting into flow state more often is
1. A clear goal that is challenging enough
The mind doesn't do well when things are uncertain, so make your tasks specific with a fixed outcome.
But you must make it slightly more challenging than your current capabilities, or else your brain won't engage in the process and drive energy to the process and problem-driven side of things rather than to a sense of time, or awareness or lose the inner critic.
“Inducing flow is about the balance between the level of skill and the size of the challenge at hand.”
~ Jeanne Nakamura, positive psychologist and flow researcher
2. Remove distractions and struggles of adjustments
The less adjustments and decisions you have to make while doing the task, the better.
So questions like
Where should I sit?
What time should I work?
What should I wear?
Any more questions you can possibly think of cause this is all I can come up with at the moment.
The fewer roadblocks you have, the faster you'll get into a flow state. But you must be careful because, in a flow state, you lose the sense of awareness, which means you'll forget food, water, sleep, or how you've been sitting on your chair that your back might hurt when you try to get up after a while.
Good for work, not so good for the body.
So have those things at hand - a water bottle, some snacks, a proper desk...stuff like that.
3. Add in sensory triggers
This is somewhat unconventional but it's worked for me.
When I was in college I used to have incense sticks burning when I was meditating, or eat dark chocolate when I used to work or listen to classical music when I studied.
One day I didn't do that, and it felt like hell cause I wasn't able to get into flow state as fast as I would. It was then that I realized that your senses have memory.
I think it's also the same reason monks light candles or incense when meditating or praying.
Your senses create the condition for your body to slip into different environments, even if they are simulated.
Sense like taste, smell, and sound have a powerful recall effect on the body and a great way for the brain to know you're about to get into work and that it should get ready too.
Final Words
The philosophy or psychology of flow is directly connected to LEAST RESISTANCE. And it's hard for a lot of beginners to do because we are soo used to staying in control of the situations, that letting go of the reins seems scary.
But who knows, if you let go, you might really start working like yourself.
Like your real self.
That’s it on the cringy and wise line
Until next time
Be weird and curious
S
P.S. If you are interested in info products and building an information-led creator business, check out Wide Thinker Letters . Series issues go out every Sunday.
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