F*ck Productivity. Choose Flow States.
Productive people look like little walking, talking, mental illnesses ready for a breakdown and another trip to therapy.
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Most people think writing, making money online & entrepreneurship changed my life.
That’s a lie.
What took me from 0% success to top 1% success is flow states. It’s an idea I stumbled across by accident and became obsessed with. I’ve written about it many times before.
In this newsletter I want to go deep on flow states, because people are wasting their time getting tricked by useless productivity hacks.
Flow states are the real hack.
The (updated) 30-second elevator pitch on flow states
Flow states are a state of mind.
The way you experience consciousness changes when you understand what flow states are and how to access them. The best way to describe flow is through a feeling.
Flow alters your perception of time. 8 hours in flow feels like 1 hour of real time. Another big distinction between flow state living and normal living is the time you spend in the past, future, and present.
Too much time spent in the past equals depression.
Too much time spent in the future equals anxiety.
Too much time spent in the present means you’re a monk and have opted out of society forever.
What we want is a balance between past, present, and future. That’s what flow states provide. What most of us are lacking is enough present-moment awareness.
We live our lives through screens that force us to operate in the past and future. They rob us of the moment. And the present moment is where deep thinking is done and wisdom is found.
Flow states help us spend more time in the present. A flow state is when you’re fully immersed in an activity and all distractions have vanished. It’s just you and the activity. You’re teleported to a place with no space and time.
To access flow states, it helps to witness others in this state.
The best place to see flow is in the creative sector. Go watch a Taylor Swift concert and you’ll see she’s in flow. Go watch a live stage show and the actors will be in flow. Go see a magician perform in Las Vegas and watch them be totally immersed.
When we get inspired by an artist it’s not their work we’re secretly attracted to or that we admire. No. It’s their access to flow states.
When we see others in flow it makes us unconsciously want to be in flow.
Productivity enhances your monkey mind
I f*cking hate productivity hacks.
It turns us into circus monkeys who think hard work and knocking items off a to-do list matters. It doesn’t. You won’t remember your to-do lists on your deathbed. So stop getting h0rny over them.
Flow states are different. It took me 9 years to realize that flow states are a way of life. I realized this when my friend Dave Nelson set up a business called FlowSt8.
At first I thought it was a chain of yoga studios, then a chain of gyms, then a boot camp in Bali. It was none of that. What he figured out before most of us is that flow states are a way of life.
You either live in flow or you’re slowly destroyed by a lack of it.
Productivity feels forced
People that worship productivity don’t seem happy.
Actually, they look like little walking, talking, mental illnesses ready for a breakdown and another trip to therapy.
I’ve never found trying to be productive easy. I quickly transcend into the mindset of “Did I do enough today? Crap, I didn’t. God help me …. PLEASE HELP ME.”
This is no way to live. If you have to force yourself to do the work then the model you’ve chosen is wrong. Great work isn’t forced. It feels natural.
I’m writing this Substack right now and it doesn’t feel forced at all. I’m doing what I love, in a flow state, and am at peak productivity without trying. That’s because writing is my flow state activity. The trick is to find yours.
Flow is effortless. It doesn’t require limitations, rules, books, strategies, gurus, or $10,000 an hour coaching. You just do it, as Nike says.
Flow is driven by obsession
Productivity is closely tied to the woo-woo find your purpose, passion, meaning cheesy nonsense.
The problem is these concepts are like looking for a rainbow fish named Nemo in the Atlantic Ocean. You probably won’t find true meaning, passion, or purpose and will drown trying to chase them due to a lack of oxygen.
Obsession is different. When you’re obsessed with an activity you can do in a flow state, much of the process is automated.
You know what you should be doing because it’s the thing you can’t live without.
You know what steps to take - more of the steps you’ve been taking.
You know how hard to work - until you’re done for the day and feel accomplished.
Flow states answer life’s hardest questions – that no meaning, purpose, or passion frameworks ever could.
I can easily find my obsession. All I do is open my Google Search history and it’s so obvious a blind giraffe who doesn’t speak english could see it.
Flow is the power of doing only one thing
When you try to do too many things the focus you have is ruined.
What you want is for your focus to compound so it produces extraordinary results. The way that’s done is by having one focus, not ten.
Over the years I’ve dumbed down my life. My focus is to write online so I can spend as much time with my 9-month-old daughter as possible. That’s it. I don’t have any other life goals.
The question to answer for yourself is:
“What’s the one thing I must do every day that would make everything else feel pointless?”
One way to play with this theory is to eliminate options in different areas of your life.
For example, most weeks I only listen to one podcast: The Tim Ferriss Show. Most days I wear the same outfit instead of having 30 different fashion looks. Most days I drink the same thing: water.
I find this approach is a good precursor to choosing one activity you focus on while in a flow state.
Productivity is a status game
LinkedIn gurus share their Elon Musk morning routines, not to be helpful, but as a way to quietly say “I’m better than you.”
Showing off status is one of the lowest things a human can do. And much of society is built on chasing status through titles and luxury purchases. The reason people fall for the lie of productivity is because it’s cool to do so.
Flow states aren’t cool because 99% of people don’t know what they are.
Or, if you’re like me, you were accessing flow for years but didn’t know what it was or how to get it on-demand.
Productivity destroys our most important thing: time
They say customer experience is everything. I call bullsh*t on that.
The most important thing in life is how you experience time. We all have the same 24 hours in a day but many of us have a terrible, toxic relationship with that time.
Whereas people who live in flow experience time as enjoyable. They don’t live for 5 PM or for the weekend. Those things are irrelevant.
People who choose flow states choose higher states of consciousness.
They see the world in 4K resolution instead of like an 8-Bit Space Invaders Game from the 1970s.
When I think productivity, I think of to-do lists. And they give me anxiety. They lower the quality of the human experience to zero.
When I live a productive life I live like a mindless machine following orders and passing through GO on a Monopoly board without collecting $200.
Change your experience of time with flow.
The simple formula for a powerful flow state
At this point I’ll assume you’re sold on flow states, otherwise I can’t help you. All that’s left is to find a way to access flow. Here’s the formula:
Apply flow to your chosen obsession.
Schedule when the flow state should roughly start.
Then implement this flow state boot-up sequence:
Wake up in the morning and eat high-energy-producing food.
Go do a form of rigorous exercise.
Throw your phone in another room and turn off all notifications. Take off all devices including an Apple Watch.
Read a list of ideas associated with your flow state activity.
Once your brain is loaded with ideas, go have a warm shower.
Then … drink a cup of coffee.
Play a playlist of movie soundtracks on Youtube that last at least 8 hours.
Start with one small task associated with your flow state activity. Use it as a warm-up. Make it so simple and so stupid you can’t not do it.
Transition from the small task to the bigger tasks.
Stay in flow for as long as possible and let your creativity warp reality.
Bringing it all together
The activity you choose to do in flow can’t be too easy or you’ll get bored and flow will shut down.
You want an activity that pushes you slightly outside of your comfort zone and forces you to level up. That’s why writing is one of the best flow activities there is. Writing will never be easy because writing is thinking, and thinking is hard as hell.
Whatever you choose to do in flow, make it your life’s work.
The takeaway from this article is simple: practice being in flow for 4 hours a day.
Watch how it changes everything. Watch how your progress accelerates. Watch how you live in a higher state of consciousness. Only then will you see that success isn’t based on luck, connections, or money.
Success is based on flow. So spend more time in flow.
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One of the best articles yet on the contradiction between conventional consensus on what productivity is and isn’t..... and why our obsession should be on what we love vs what we are misled by conventional thought to believe it is!
We should all flow towards passion in line with our gifts and our likes, not a LinkedIn produced cultural insanity!
My first read on Substack..and a wholly relevant and completely helpful and engaging article..will be following these principles..Thank you for enriching my day!