How To Achieve The Impossible with Steven Kotler #189

those moments in time when the impossible became possible, that which has never been done, suddenly what went on in the brain that allowed you to do something that had never been done before. Welcome to Feel Better Live More. Today's conversation is about unlocking your full potential and how we can all access peak performance with Stephen Kotler, he's a journalist and he is the author of a brand new book, The Art of Impossible. Stephen is considered one of the world's leading experts and researchers around the subjects of Flow State.

He actually founded the Flow Research Collective which uses neurobiological findings to train people to achieve peak performance in all walks of life. By understanding what's going on in the brain and body when humans are performing at their best, his goal is to help all of us access Flow State more frequently and in doing so help us realize our full potential. Stephen really is a fascinating character who literally lives and breathes Flow and as he explains in our conversation, Flow is an optimal state of consciousness where we feel and perform at our best, but you don't need to be part of the business or sporting a leap to benefit from his research. Stephen believes that we can all attain Flow because as humans we are hardwired to achieve.

So whether you're taking a walk, writing an email or cooking a meal, you could perhaps find yourself in Flow. Flow is something I've written about before in many of my own books and I've described it as that state when we are so absorbed, usually in a pleasurable activity where time seems to disappear and I've also shared numerous case studies about how accessing Flow more often can improve our health and wellbeing and reduce levels of stress. I actually remember one case for a lady who was really struggling with migraine, stress-related migraines in my view, and the only thing that managed to help her get rid of those migraines was accessing Flow State every single day. So it's something I'm very, very passionate about.

Now, in our conversation today, Stephen and I talk about how psychologists and neurobiologists identify and measure flow. Stephen also provides insights on the brain chemicals involved and we discuss the links between Flow and happiness. We also uncover tools that you can use to access this very creative state, why initial struggles are part of the process, and why active recovery rather than passive recovery is vital if you want to avoid burnout. This is a supercharged episode.

It is packed with insights, information and enthusiasm. I really hope you enjoy listening. And now, my conversation would be inimitable, Stephen Collar. One thing I've heard you say before is that we are hardwired for the extraordinary, but hardwired for peak performance, and not going big is harmful.

I wonder if you could explain what you mean by that. Yeah, like you just start off with an easy question that doesn't require me talking for 25 minutes. All right, best place to start is with the simplest, which is what do we mean by peak performance? And peak performance is really nothing more or less than getting our biology to work for us rather than against us.

What has happened in the science peak performance of the past 10 to 15 years is we've uncovered enough parts of the system to realize it's a system. It evolution shaped us all to work in a certain way and to work at our best in a certain way. The simple example here is the state of Flow, which is the center of the work I do. Flow is technically defined as an optimal state of consciousness where we perform our best and we feel our best.

We can go into more specifics later, but the first thing to know is everybody is hardwired for Flow. At this point, we think it's most mammals are hardwired for Flow and it actually may go deeper into the evolutionary chain, but that's what the research has shown so far. So one, we say every is hardwired for peak performance, every is hardwired to go big. One of the things we mean is every is hardwired to get into Flow and Flow as optimal performance is a significant amplification of a host of skills.

On the cognitive side, you see motivation, grit, productivity, learning, rates, creative problem solving, all aspects of creative problem solving, empathy, environmental awareness, all of these things significantly increase in some studies, like up to 500% about baseline. So 500% about baseline is a huge amplification performance. That's what we mean by every is hardwired for the extraordinary views hardwired to go big. Now, to give the second half of your statement, which is not going big is bad for us, that requires a little bit more about the biology performance because Flow, while absolutely foundationally necessary for peak performance, it is necessary but not sufficient.

When you actually look at the full suite of biological tools, especially on the cognitive peak performance like the mental side, there's a bunch of motivation skills that sort of get you into the game. There are a bunch of learning skills that help you stay there, keep you there. There's a bunch of creativity skills that help you steer, and then there's Flow skills in the back end that help you amplify the results. That's the full suite.

Now, to answer why going big, bad for us, we have to break one more thing down, which is when we say motivation, it's a catch-all term, right? Psychologists say motivation. They mean extrinsic motivation, stuff we want in the world that will motivate us, right? Intrinsic motivation, and there are five major intrinsic motivators, curiosity, passion, purpose, autonomy, mastery.

They also mean goal setting and grit. That's the motivation sort of suite, right? That's what we mean on the motivation now. Those intrinsic motivators, I mentioned curiosity, passion, purpose, autonomy, mastery.

You get it all right, you get all those things pointed in the same direction, all on board, you end up getting a lot of flow. That's all you need to know. Now, what do I mean by not going big is bad for us. As I said, the system is designed to work in a certain way, work in a certain order, work with certain components.

We're designed to go big, not going big is bad for us. So let's look at probably the largest plague in the modern world. And I know it's one that you've written about extensively, which is anxiety and depression. One out of 10 adults is going to be diagnosed with anxiety and depression this year, right?

And it's the largest strain on public health coffers in the world, and we're losing the fight because somebody kills themselves once every 12 seconds. All right, so this is a major plague, a major crisis. There are eight known causes of anxiety and depression. Two of them get a lot of attention.

One is trauma, the other is genetics. Trauma, so the core will happen to me. And I can't get past it. I've got anxiety and depression, genetics.

I can't produce enough serotonin enough, nor enough enough to help me and take you back. And thus I've got anxiety and depression. But when you look at the data, what you actually see is that trauma, the vast majority of the time, it leads to post-traumatic growth. This is what Hemingway's idea.

The world breaks everyone, and afterward many are stronger at broken places. But emphasis on many, if you look at the data, most people get post-traumatic growth. They don't get anxiety and depression. They're lingers for the rest of their lives.

And if you look at genetics, genetics are only ever 50% of any anxiety and depression equation. At maximum, everything else is lifestyle, mindset, etc. What are the other six major causes of depression? Number one, lack of meaningful work.

What does that mean under the hood? Work that I'm not curious about. Work that's not aligned in my passion, that it's not aligned in my purpose, that I don't have the autonomy, the freedom to pursue in the way I want. And it doesn't afford me the opportunity for mastery.

And the boot doesn't produce any flow. That's what we mean by lack of meaningful work, the number one cause of depression. Lack of meaningful values. What does that mean?

Well, it means having values that are not aligned with your passion, your purpose, and don't produce flow. And I could keep going. Even the one that I know you've worked on as well, which is lack of access to nature. If you dig under the hood of that, it's not just nature.

It's that nature helps drive us into flow for a variety of reasons. So it's nature plus flow. In other words, the system is designed to work a certain way. If you get the system working the way it was designed to work, you get extraordinary performance.

If you don't use the system, the way it was designed to work, you get anxiety, depression, probably a whole bunch of health problems, which is much more your area of expertise than mine, etc. Stephen, as I reflect on what you say, it's, for me, the point I just want to make clear to people who are listening or watching, and I want to share the same view is that what you offer people with your wisdom, with your research, is relevant to each and every single one of us. Right. So we can talk about performance and a lot of people.

That sort of puts them up and think, Hey, I'm, you know, I'm not like a Wall Street guy. I'm not a top athlete. But, but I've always said that we're all seeking people from us in our lives, whether it's to be a great dad or a great mother or a great office worker or whatever it is. I think if you ask anyone, we'd also say, yeah, actually, I would like to perform at my best.

I couldn't agree more. And if you go on, I'm going to break down one step further, which is why I wrote a book called The Argonne Possible. It is a book based on 30 years of research on both kind of running the flow research collective and actively studying the neurobiology, performance, and training people to do this. But mostly I spent those 30 years studying those moments in time when the impossible became possible, that which has never been done, suddenly gets done.

I did this in every domain imaginable. I did this in sport. I did it in science. I did it in technology.

I did it in art. I did it in culture. You know, just to give you one example so people can wrap their heads around this in technology. I was, I covered my beat was those moments in time when sci fi ideas became sci fi technology.

I wrote about this from the New York Times magazine wired for on and on and on for a very long time. So I was in the room. Most times when like bionics became real and the first artificial vision implant was turned on. I was there when the world's first private spaceship was launched.

I was there and so forth and so forth. And what I wanted to know and all this time was how did you do it. What went on in the brain that allowed you to do something that had never been done before. Then I wrote a book about everything I learned called the art impossible.

I'm going to talk about these never before four minute mile kind of things and we could be talking about, you know, this could be athletic impossibles four minute miles. It could be cultural impossibles Rosa parks here in America sitting at the front of the bus and saying no more. It could be Einstein theory of relativity intellectual impossibles we could be talking about creative artistic well, I don't get the picture that's capital line possible that which is never been done. The book though is meant to be utilized by anybody who's interested in small line possible that which you think is impossible for you right I grew up in Cleveland, Ohio in the 1970s a blue color steel mill working glass town.

I wanted to be a writer from the time I was five or six years old. I didn't know any writers. I know how you became a writer. There was no one around ask there's no internet.

There were a few books no TV show. It was like I woke up one day and said mom dad when I grew up I want to be an elf. No way to have it right like what the hell do you do so that's a small line possible meaning there's no clear path between where I am and where I want to go and statistically lousy odds of success. What are other small line possibles.

Overcoming trauma rising out of poverty getting paid doing what you love becoming world class at anything you do becoming a successful artist or entrepreneur. And because performance is nothing more than getting our biology work for us rather than against us the exact same biology would utilize do capital I that which has never been done impossible you would utilize to use small I that which I believe is impossible for me. But here's the kicker and I think this is where your point is let's say you're listening to me and you're like I can't stand this schmuck man I just I just want to get through Monday. Can I have a little more productive to be a little less hectic at home you get my point well it turns out it doesn't matter.

The performance is getting your biology work for you rather than against you the same toolkit that you will use to after capital I impossible you use after small I impossible you used to have a slightly better Monday than you did last week. It's the same toolkit that's the that's the cool thing right in a sense it's the same formula and we can all use that formula because we're all essentially evolutionary hardwired to take advantage of it. Yeah I love that Stephen and it's this is one of the things I love about your approach and I know you do a lot of research in this area is I've heard you say this gorgeous phrase that personality doesn't scale biology does. All right so you have to understand a little bit about me.

I grew up I was. To say I was a difficult kid is an understatement. My sixth grade teacher told me I wouldn't live to see 30 she wasn't wrong I when I became a journalist in the early 1990s my beat I had two things I was covering. One was neuroscience but I was really neuroscience in the 90s was this cool area because from the very first time we were going from like the mechanism of the neuro biological changes to actual human behavior.

And that's what started to come online and whoa like psychology is metaphor useful metaphor but it's metaphor. If you're really interested in being practical and doing some damage you want mechanism of the neuro biology and some of the neuro biology was being linked to behavior was exactly what I was interested in so that's what I was studying on one side. The other side of me was the same kid who grew up that way and I was studying you know I was covering action and venture sports. I was covering the extreme wing of these you know of these activities and you know there's a saying in action sports which is most people call it trauma.

We call it Monday and you know I changed that professional athletes around mountains for a decade in my times to keep up I broke over 70 bones and you know nearly got on a lot of occasions. My and on top of that I was also a journalist so I was covering some other hard complicated stories my point in all this is I had was born with naturally high risk tolerances and then I went into careers. That developed risk tolerances that were through the roof and then I learned some stuff about flow and peak performance along the way and I started writing about flow and peak performance and I had a couple books out and I had a column for psychology today. And my friends thought I knew what I was talking about and I thought I knew what I was talking about and you do what like everybody makes the same mistake when they learn a little bit about peak performance which is they tell other people how to live their lives I mean they give advice right.

And when I gave advice to my people who I was very close to right like I was writing about this but I was giving advice to people I was close to I never tried to coach anybody but I was essentially starting to coach my friends a little bit. I put two people in the hospital and nearly caused a divorce. One of my friends still won't talk to me and it's been 25 years and another friend one of my closest friends didn't speak to me for five years. Why?

I was a freaking disaster. It was an absolute disaster. I made a mess of their lives. Why?

Because foundational aspects of peak performance are based on personality and personality is set up by nature and nurture but essentially it is roughed into place by 12 to 15 years of age. Now you have heart you have your traits by that point right now we used to think those were lock in stone like where are you on the individual extra version scale or what are your risk tolerances. Now we know that those things are mutable but it takes a while five to ten years of the work to really shift those things but if you're trying to train people in peak performance most people make a mistake I make. They learn what works for them and they try to teach other people they expect it to work and most of the time it's a disaster.

And the reason as you pointed out is that personality doesn't scale biology scales. I mean it's so important that and I mean even as you were talking there I think a lot of people a lot of doctors I've come across a lot of people who listen to this show will kind of know also that when they've had a little bit of insight into their own life. And they've improved something I've got I've got a secret now I want to tell everyone I tell my friends I want to my parents. And then we find out this is not going so well either it's not working for them or they don't want to hear it from us.

If we talk about biology and neuro chemistry I think it would be really useful to really understand what goes on what are these kind of chemicals in the brain what do they do. And so how do they show up in various states so whether it's flow, peak performance even happiness you know do we get a different cocktail of chemicals in different states and if so are you able to explain some of that for us. Why do we start with flow. Okay it's a good place to start.

Okay so let's expand on our earlier definition. I when I started I said hey flow it's a state of optimal performance where we feel our best and we perform best and that's the standard scientific definition of flow, but it doesn't get us very far so more specifically flow refers to any of those moments of attention total absorption is so focused on task and so focused on what you're doing that everything else just seems to disappear action awareness are going to start to merge your sense of self your sense of self consciousness even bodily awareness they're going to fade they're going to diminish time is going to dilate which a fancy way to pass this strangely case a little slow down more frequently it speeds up and five hours of line like five seconds and throughout all aspects of performance both mental and physical tend to go through the roof. Now that is how that's a colloquial definition of flow when psychologists define flow and they want to measure it they say hey flow has six core phenomenal logical characteristics phenomenal logical is a very big word for how does the experience make us feel. So flow makes us feel six ways and when those six experiences show up during a given moment.

Oh you weren't flow. What are those. I mentioned that a lot of them already complete concentration on the task at hand the merger of action awareness the vanishing itself time dilation. You don't feel peak performance right so instead what you feel is a sense of control because you're performing so well both mentally and physical you feel like you can control things you normally can't control right i'm a writer and something like my language is dancing or i'm a skier it's only i'm dancing down the mountain doesn't matter right you're a surgeon and something you're you know you're dancing your way through the operation doesn't matter and finally flow is an autotelic experience as a fancy Greek word for an end in itself what it means is the state is exceptionally pleasurable euphoric.

In fact we now know that the people who score the highest for overall life satisfaction meaning purpose well being these are the people with the most flow in their lives. So that's autotelic those six characteristics that have psychologists defined flow and measure flow right do all those six things show up and because flow is like any other experience to be a spectrum right it's not anger. You're a little or your homosidally murder is it still anger right you could have a state of micro flow this is one of those six conditions show up but they're really quiet so you're at work you sit down to write a quick email to co worker and you'll look up an hour later and you've written a huge essay. And time disappeared and maybe you're such a self-diminished bodily awareness was gone when you pop back into consciousness you're like a louder left to go to the bathroom you run off to pee right that happens to all of us all the time that's micro flow macro flow when all those experiences show up in the dial up to eleven and this is where.

Self doesn't just vanish but it can start really strange things can start to happen how the body experiences oneness with everything experience that talk about cosmic unity that's a macro flow state. Now, neurologist the work that I work on. We defined flow by a bunch of different characteristics. Neuroscience will talk about four really fourth levels of the things that you want to pay attention to right there's neural electricity brain waves and neural chemistry brain waves and neural chemicals are this is how the brain talks to itself.

These are signaling molecules right the brain sends signals either via electricity or via chemistry to itself and other parts of the body it's communication modules or you want to know about neural anatomy and networks which is where things are taking place right the prefrontal cortex or the parietal over. This thing's very rarely take place in one spot in the brain they're usually networks we're talking about links that are either hardwired between parts of the brain or they're functionally connected meaning they do work at the same time. So that's what you're talking about you asked about neurochemicals and it's a good way in because neurochemicals are the heart of so much performance. So I give you the big picture in flow what we see is five of the most potent performance enhancing neurochemicals of the brain can produce all show up and all show up at once and this may be the only time you get all five.

Now, what makes these chemicals special in flow is first thing to know neurochemicals are multi tools right when I talk about dopamine most people know dopamine as a so called reward chemical. Right because they're phoned dings they know the curiosity might be underpinned by dopamine means that a little pleasure of like a negative text from right that's dopamine dopamine also underpins pattern recognition right you fill in an answer in a crossword puzzle you find the pattern you get a little rush of pleasure. That's dopamine dopamine that's something cool also to amplify pattern recognition that's why when you find that answer in the crossword puzzle you like to define three or four right after it. Sometimes dopamine also underpins risky behavior and etc etc so and it's also a massively rewarding chemical right cocaine is widely considered the most addictive drug on earth.

And all cocaine does is force the brain to release a bunch of domain and then block its reuptake its reabsorption to the system. So we get a lot of dopamine and peak performance when we talk about for example dopamine showing up in flow but it also shows up in other places motivation is complete every intrinsic motivator curiosity passion purpose of timing master they're all underpinned by dopamine is there you also have nor epinephrine nor epinephrine is peculiar because it is curiosity and excitement and all it is also anxiety and terror. So a little bit curiosity a little bit more excitement too much anxiety way too much terror right so spectrum but you get a nor epinephrine and anything that you're curious about or you're excited about obviously drives focus right and drives attention. This shows up at the tail end of the flow state we believe though a lot more work needs to be done in serotonin this is the common chemical or the pro sac revolution and man to mind the same psychoactive that's a THC in the body.

It naturally occurs incredibly powerful pain reliever stress reducer might hide in creativity may amplify lateral thinking ability to think outside the box. And we also get endorphins really powerful painkillers. In fact dorphins are the internal version of external drug opiates right. And there are 20 different endorphins from the brain and there's a pleasure chemical just to give you an idea the most common is a hundred times in the medical morphine.

So and by the way all the all of these neural chemicals they have these are endogenous meaning internal are brain they have exogenous meaning external drug things that bond to the same thing and these are drugs abuse right endorphins are opiates dopamine is cocaine nor epinephrine is speed to an end minus THC what am I forgetting serotonin which is LSD or MDMA to pathway takes in the brain right. So when you say flow is this huge cocktail of pleasure chemicals and flow may be the only time to get access these are five of the most addictive neural chemicals in the world. And if this is the only time to get all five of the ones now we can start to understand why is flow so auto tellic. It's the most addictive experience on earth when you kid him but just to put it in context curiosity what is curiosity.

Oh it's a little bit of nor epinephrine a little bit of dopamine passion which is built out of curiosity. It's a lot of dopamine and a lot of nor epinephrine purpose which is built out of passion is that say nor epinephrine and don't be now coupled to a bunch of the prosocial neuro chemicals like oxytocin or endorphins or serotonin right and so forth. So when we are motivated depending on what level the brain is giving us more and more of these reward chemicals and since these reward chemicals are multi tools they don't just make us feel better they make us perform better. Now you start to understand why flow right is a state of peak performance where you feel and perform our best at the same time.

Yeah I mean it's so fascinating and as you describe that Steve and I can't help but think that I've been thinking a lot about flow and happiness recently and you just mentioned maybe five minutes ago that the people who access flow the most have the highest scores on life satisfaction question is i.e. By certain definitions they would be regarded as happier people and and it's so that's actually wrong but it's worth teasing apart. Today's episode is sponsored by AG one a daily health drink that has been in my own life for over seven years. Now this is the time of year when our immune systems are under the most pressure between spending more time indoors travel and seasonal bugs.

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The first is that let's just get part this and get it out of the way flow states no more flow in your life how do you do it flow states have triggers preconditions that lead to more flow. And the easy way to understand that is flow follows focus it only shows up on the right here right now now there are 22 known triggers is probably way more but there's 22. The most important one was often called the golden rule of flow is known as the challenge skills balance. The idea here is we pay the most attention to the task the end of what we're doing when the challenge that task slightly exceeds our skills.

So you want to stretch but not snap. So this is psychologically not on but pretty close to the midpoint between boredom not enough stimulation here I'm not paying the attention anxiety whoa way too much in between is a sweet spot known as the flow channel to put that more familiarly. We hit that sweet spot when you're a little bit outside your comfort zone. So you have to get to do this work you got to get a little uncomfortable with being uncomfortable pushing on your skills.

Okay, let's take that to check information park it for half a second or turn to your question. What positive psychologists talk about now, predominantly. And this is a lot of my son has worked on this cover a lot of people have contributed to these ideas. There are three levels of happiness that are available to you beings level one happiness.

How do you feel? Right here right now in this moment. And what we've learned about that level is there is not because of nature and nurture. There in a whole lot you can do on that level.

You can as Dan Harris pointed out probably get about 10% happier but because of something called emotional set points by the time we're 10 11 or 12 we have a low point in a high point and our whole life is going to take place pretty much in between. Now we now know that those can move a little bit and certain experiences can really mess with them. But as a general role, they don't move and that's our lives. Which is why you can make yourself about 10% happier and you know you want to do that gratitude mindfulness regular exercise if you really want to nail it do regular exercise in the outdoors.

You know, so you can make yourself 10% happier. That's level one happiness. That's what that's what we know. What's level two.

This is literally they call it engagement or enjoyment. But what does that mean? It's a high flow lifestyle. And this means that you just have regular access to flow.

This could be flow at work. There are tons of high flow jobs coding is a very high flow job. My job writing very high flow job. Being any kind of a creative is a very high flow job being an architect on and on being a doctor.

All these are very high flow jobs. Or I live in Tahoe. It's a mountain area. The bunch of dudes around me who like they work construction jobs also so they can ski all winter or they were constructing jobs all winter so they can mountain bike on fish all summer.

So this is the second level of happiness available to all of us right you can get 10% happier on the first level. But on the second level if you figure out a way to live in which to get regular access to flow. Now you've skipped up a level now you're getting into life satisfaction and actual well-being right highest the best we get to feel what the research pretty much shows is so high flow lifestyle and the things that are producing flow. Make the world a better place for other people.

You want to take the focus off yourself put it on other people put it on animals put it on plants put it on the ecosystem as a whole but you want to make you know you want to make the world a better place. And if you can get flow while making the world a better place that seems to be the best we get to feel on this planet. So flow is now you know standard part of our definition of level two and three of happiness. But here's the kicker and this is why I talked about the challenge skills balance and this is what I want to go back to and this is why you're wrong about that one that one thing that you were talking about and this is interesting.

If you have a high flow lifestyle or you have a high flow lifestyle that's tied to purpose the higher two levels you are that by definition you are making good use of the challenge skills balance you're pushing on your skills to the utmost again and again and again and again and again which means most of your daily experience is uncomfortable it's not pleasant. What is pleasant is the unbelievable satisfaction of a job well done again and again and again right and little victory after like we like that more but on a moment by moment experience flow actually high flow lifestyle may actually make you a little less happy in the moment because you're always pushing so hard. Yeah no I love that and I mean what one of the things when we talk about happiness or a lot of people talk about it. They're just talking about level one they're talking about more hedonistic experiences more experiences in the moment make us feel good or I'm happy because I've just done this thing that makes me feel good was I really feel that that's the level two and level three as you describe it I feel although it's still called happiness it's very different isn't it it's much beyond that just hedonistic pleasure and I think that's really what people are craving.

I agree with that completely I think you what fleeting versus enduring right is really right is really the difference. You know that I did this for years as an experiment until I can now kind of say this with confidence but for almost 30 years I would ask almost every I met the people who had accomplished amazing things. You know to tell me about the stuff in their life that they're proudest of that has led to the most life satisfaction and well being that has led to enduring performance meaning like it was an experience where they trained up so many skills that everything is different afterwards. Not once in 30 years of asking people this question did anybody ever tell me about a time they sort of got lucky and so they was just given to them right like those are not the things you hear about you hear about the things that took 10 years of really hard work.

That's what people talk about over and over and over and I've already and that's the stuff that we're proud of that's the stuff that and I think that's the same for almost everybody. We know what I mean when we look inside a little bit we think well what am I proud of what made the biggest difference in my life. It's never the time we got lucky because you can't trust that the problem is a lot more cool and phenomenal. It doesn't there's no guarantee to lock or whatever that is is going to happen again right and the human brain likes patterns like safety and security and patterns that can be repeated over and over and over again.

That's one of the things that really makes us happy and luck doesn't fit that. Yeah I love that it sort of fits with this thing that we intuitively know that anything worth while in our life. Usually has had an element of struggle to it you have to work hard you got to you hit a roadblock along the way you got frustrated you had to overcome it. And then when you get there you know man I'm four books and I'm currently writing my fifth book and man you know you've written more than me but you know that process of writing a book you know I'm at that phase at the moment where.

Oh man I just can't you know it feels like a struggle it feels like but I bumped into someone yesterday when I went out for a walk you said he hasn't got to say. What I said was like I'm on that phase which I know I always go through which is a struggle but I know it's necessary because actually that's what makes it worthwhile when you get to that end point. Yeah there's so I want to tell you a story first and then I want to explain something really amazing neuro biologically about peak performance that relates totally to this. The first is just.

I always used to say to people that guaranteed I've written 13 books 14 books now if you're counting the one I'm working on. At some point or another in every one of them I end up screaming face down on my office floor punching the floor and for years I was I was almost mortified by it you know what I mean by the fact that my board and then I heard this interview with David Foster Wallace one of my giant heroes. The novelist and he said and I wish I could find this again and I almost believe that it didn't happen because I can't find it again but he said in this interview that I think I heard. I said once a book I end up screaming sobbing punching the floor and I can't figure out how I got there and I literally wanted that moment.

Oh my god it's not just me and it turns out not only is it not just me or you David Foster Wallace here's so we have been working in my lab at the floor research collective on for a couple of years now on what happens in the brain during flow state onset as we go through the first two seconds of flow. What happens in the brain during the first two seconds of flow and here's what we've learned. It appears that before you can drop into flow you will always have to trigger the fight response. Now the fight response is there people put them together fight freeze flea and it's the same response and it's not the fight response lives in the thalamus freeze and flea responses the amygdala.

They live in different parts of the brain they're different responses and when you self stimulate when you self stimulate the fight response two things are interesting they've been very few experiments on this because letting you self stimulate their brain is you know not something we do but there there's been a couple of experiments and one it seems to be it's people's favorite spot we love stimulating the spot but the feeling it generates is one of frustration. We love the frustration because it actually the frustration of leaning into a challenge that translates to courage and courage may be our favorite feeling but the actual experience is frustrating. Meaning you have to go through that frustration if you want to get into flow frustration is a sign that you're moving in the right direction so you know it sucks you take it as sign progress because it actually is we always say in peak performance. There's a couple things that are very counterintuitive and one of them is your emotions don't mean what you think you think they mean.

It's just frustration frustration does not most people take frustration as a sign that they need to stop and back off and in this work it's often a sign that you need to keep going. You're on the perfect track. I mean I think that will be so reassuring for many people who are consuming the podcast at the moment because whoever we are in whatever job we've got this is going to be a project on or something that we find challenging right and therefore you're sort of framing and saying hey that struggle is part of the process. Yes that has to be the right struggle because if you're if you're struggling over the wrong thing or your boss has made you do something that you don't want to do and you don't enjoy the struggles not going to be the kind of precondition to flow there is it it's going to it's going to have a slight difference.

Yeah, as a general rule when it comes to you got a job and your boss says you know you don't like your boss you like your job he says do this so she says do this and you don't want to do that what you have to do is reframe the task around an opportunity for mastery. Right so this used to happen to me all the time when I was coming up as a journalist I was young I was poor I can't take whatever work came my way I was I mean one of the reasons. I'm often graded as being one of the most successful freelance journalist in the history of magazine journalism. And that's because I was poor I needed the work that I'll take any like I took any job you could possibly give me which meant I had to write about a ton of shit that I was not interested in.

And when you've got to live inside a story for three months you know what I mean and really like that's that's a detriment to creative work. So I'd have to find the thing inside the story so maybe I hate the whole story but I'm going to try to write in the style of Charles Dickens because that's gives me the opportunity to get better at writing which is this thing I love or maybe I hate the entire story but it gives me the opportunity to learn to get along with difficult people because the people I'm interviewing are difficult and that's the thing I'm going to have to do over the course of my life to be successful so I can use it. You got to find autonomy and freedom inside the thing you're doing why attention and autonomy are coupled. So you can't pay full attention to something you can't perform your best and you can't pay full attention to something if you don't feel like you're pursuing it out of your own desire out of free will.

So even if you hate it find a reason to learn something from it anyways. Otherwise it's otherwise it's really difficult but if you can do that then it affords you the opportunity for flow and mastery and a whole bunch of other stuff. So that's sort of the secret to that situation but burnout we've discovered which is really common to executives today you know everybody today I think I'm especially post COVID. We found that if you have sort of a rather active recovery protocol in place meaning like you don't finish work and drink a beer and watch television you finish work and do go for a long walk in nature or take an absence of bath or restorative yoga and friends on our get a massage or you know be smart about it so there's a recovery and regular access to flow those two things.

And you're getting seven eight hours of sleep and I've discovered it's very hard to burn out. It's almost impossible to burn out with those things. What you said about burnout there really struck me burnout is super common yes in the executive population but I think it's I think it's coming in in all creates and whatever your job status is. I think we're seeing it I'm certainly coming across it more and more in my work and when I sort of talk for companies I'm seeing it everywhere.

And so what you said that was if I go right is regular active recovery regular access to flow state and seven to eight hours of sleep and I makes it almost impossible to burn out so let's just break that down when you say active recovery as opposed to passive recovery you did give some examples but can you just explain what the difference is because I think at the moment what I see my patient population is many people will come back or they finished a long day on zooms at work at their working from home. And relaxation is the glass of wine and the television. Why is a more active form of recovery better what does it do to our biology. Okay, so I am not not a fan of booze or TV right I'm not saying booze or TV are bad you shouldn't do them but what I will say is if you're interested in significant performance ongoing.

So when you finish the day and you want to relax problem with booze is once you have really more than like one last of whatever starts messing with your sleep cycles so you cannot get seven eight hours of sleep I'm not you're going to start running at a detriment not pretty much instantly. It's hard to make that up which is the problem with one of the big problems with booze there are a couple others but that's that's one of the bigger ones and then if you're drinking you know more than two or three. Right and now you're now you're like now forget people from it's like you're right like so okay so that's the problem with booze which is not like I like to tell people. I shake the stove up and go on vacation every now and again from your brain I'm fine with booze and drugs I really am like I got no judge when I find their very effective tools sometimes when you can't take a vacation you can't whatever but you just want to shut it off.

But there's a you physical penalty on the other side of that and you better spend sleeping the entire next day you know then trying to go to work TV here's the problem. You have to spend a bunch of time. You have to change your brain waves. So brain waves normally are when we're awake and we're alerting paying attention to the world they're in beta it's a fast moving wave right now you and I are having conversation with both and beta.

Right if I crank beta up give you a high beta wave that's anxiety right underneath beta is alpha alpha is daydream modes where you're sort of going from thought to thought without a lot of kind of resistance. That is theta theta is REM sleep it's where you're going to think that they would know window resistance right REM sleep you know in in alpha. You may think of a green sweater and it might remind you of green turtle right like that you might bring it but in theta the green sweater becomes the green turtle becomes the green planet becomes the green universe becomes the incredible Hulk who's right it's just one athlete's next kind of thing flow by the way take place on order line between alpha and beta television you need what are all the techniques that you and I were talking about restorative yoga long walk in nature. Epsom salt bass what it like what all those do is a general rule they help flash cortisol and the stress hormones out of our system and they help kick the brain towards alpha alpha seems to be some time and alpha seems to be what we need to recover here's the problem with TV.

TV makes us feel passively like we're in alpha it makes you feel like you're relaxing TV even if you're dealing with like a corn TV slow British dramas right even then anytime there's a quick cut between things. You have it what's known as a salience network right this is a novelty detector and it's scouring the world at all times for anything new in novel and it's doing this because one anything new in novel could be a danger could be a threat might want to run away from it or could be an opportunity could be something to eat could be something to make with right so we have a salience network it's hyper tuned and as soon as there's a quick cut that's a novel perspective change oh my god novelty so even though you feel like you're chilling out your brain is going from alpha jumping up to beta every time and if there's any violence in what you're watching or anything else like that so into high beta and even though it feels like you're relaxing you're not so your brain is not recovering and if you couple the not recovery of television to booze and you do this consistently as your way of unwinding night after night after night you're not recovering at all. Regular access to your primary flow activity is sort of part of that as well and more than anything else to put it colloquially flow is when we feel most alive and right it's really hard to get through hard days hard times without that feeling now. Also working from home and for zoom there's other things we can layer into this that are sort of how do you you know survive in a crisis I can we can add on to that whatever but for burnout regular access to what we call your primary flow activity.

Primary flow activity is that thing that you've done all your life it could be skiing surfing snowboarding rock climbing dancing the hip hop dancing salsa playing chess walking your dog whatever it is everybody's got a primary flow activity. You don't want to double down on that in times of stress for sure but you definitely want to you definitely want regular access to that and this is key. So we're talking about two things that busy executives or busy let's not even say executives busy 21st century citizens don't like to do right they don't like to play because we're adults now and we're going to put down childish things and I'm not going surfing and I'm not going skiing and I don't get to go out and dance to hip hop anymore because I've got an adult and I have responsibility and I've got kids and I've got family and I've got you know I put away childish things and it's just a disaster and it's the rest we were burning primary flow it says you get some great examples could this be for someone a 30 minute walk in nature. Oh yeah by the way the most common flow states on earth are reading.

You always know reading flow is so it doesn't happen usually happens when you're using this a little bit intellectually challenging and makes you think. So when your brain starts pinballing from idea to idea like you're totally engrossed and then something you have that insight and it leads right then that's reading flow very common. So yeah this could be whatever works for you. And it could vary from week to week or season to season or month you know what I mean some months it could be you're learning to cook and being in the kitchen is the most flowy thing you could possibly do and some months is playing with your kids.

And so you know like there's lots of activities here that work but you have to double down on it and the reason is this three things are really key. One, especially if you're fighting burnout or if you're just fighting crisis like COVID 21 century life right now. One, as we move into flow. Stress hormones are flushed out of our system there's a global release of nitric oxide is a gas and signaling molecules everywhere in the body pushes stress hormones out of our system so you're resetting automatically resetting the nervous system.

This is another reason the primary reflectives are so important a to combat and crisis is and be to pause and burnout because they flush the stress hormones from your system to reset the nervous system. Secondly, the same neurochemicals that show up in flow. Besides performance enhancement pleasure they boost the immune system. So you're getting an immune system boost you're saying the nervous system you're getting an immune system boost, which is important for stabbing off burnout or cutting with crisis as well.

Here's the coolest part the increase in motivation possibly definitely increase in creativity we know this more that was done at Harvard. These are massive increases by the way, depending on whose numbers you're going for. Flow will amplify creative problem solving of four hundred and seven hundred percent. It's a huge amplification and creative problem solving and that heightened creativity in this history so model is working at Harvard out last the flow state by a day maybe two.

So one of the reasons this matters in crisis situations or burnout situations you want that creativity because it's how you get the fuck out of the bad situation you're in. You need it. Right. So you've got one state primary flow activity that's going to reset your nervous system boost your immune system heightened creativity and heightened motivation and generally increase overall.

I'll be in the live satisfaction that is so when we work at the flow research collective we work with we work with everybody between about a thousand people a month. But on average they're people farmers now we could be doing these could be you know insurance workers from Delhi or you know stock brokers from Munich or soccer moms from Indiana like it doesn't matter but they're just interested in performance or it's us Navy seals or CEOs of fortune 500 companies. Here's what's interesting when I teach active recovery for example or primary flow activity. These are grit skills to be performers they require grit that's why in order possible I have active recovery is a grit skill people farmers don't like to shut it down.

You don't want to stop you want to always go go go but the lesson here there's two really big lessons and people from the first is your emotions don't mean what you think they mean the second is a lot of times you've got to go slow to go fast. This is one of those times you have to go slow to go fast burnout is so costly. Any kind of kind of stress and anxiety is costly burnout is so exceptionally costly performance and we'll sit you back so far that you just you have to stay ahead of that curve so you've got to go slow to go fast. Primary flow activities how often do you recommend people access them because obviously it depends if it's seeing and you don't live near a mountain while you're going to struggle.

Like whereas a 30 minute walk in nature if you can get into flow doing that and I wonder where that comes into flow because if we have to hit that challenge sort of sweet spot where it's hard enough to walk I can break that down for you but yeah I mean get into flow. Anyway you possibly can more important than your primary flow activity what we have found and I think it's first of all you got to start by starting right like if you've got 10 minutes a week then you've got 10 minutes a week that's what you're doing if you've got 20 great what the research seems to show. And I think we need way more research on this particular thing but the way research seems to show that about an afternoon a week is is sort of the minimum requirement now you can split that and then by afternoon I mean like three to four hours right now you can split that up half an hour half an hour half an hour right 20 minutes 20 minutes two hours however you want to do it that seems to be what works best but I think there's going to be a lot of individual variation I think it's going to change over time I think it's going to change with age maybe different men to women. So run the experiment for yourself but three to four hours is sort of what we see and so for a primary flow activity how do you walk yourself into flow.

I do this all the time. I do this every day in fact though. So I start my day with a four hour writing session I write every morning from four a.m. to about eight a.m.

And then I take my dogs for a hike in the back country I live in the mountains and I just walk out the door and go out and. Sometimes this is just an active recovery process I'm just going for a walk or sometimes especially if the writing was a real struggle right and it didn't put me into flow right usually writing up to drop me into flow. But if it didn't and I'm really frustrated then I will do a flow walks what's a flow walks. We have something called exercise induced transient hyper frontality the temporary deactivation the prefrontal cortex of the party of brain that's right back here.

This is why all those strange things happen and flow for example why does time pass so strangely and flow when you go out and for a walk in nature and you walk depending on your fitness level about 20 to 40 minutes. It gets quiet upstairs right it gets that shuts off now that's not flow but it's the edge of flow and you've now produced one of the conditions one of the major conditions that has to happen to flow if you now want to. So this can just go out for a walk 20 to 40 minutes now and you may want to time this ahead of time meaning because there's a location thing that's going to matter here so you're not probably going to get this right the first time out. But at the point that you tend to for me it's about 30 minutes of hiking uphill you know slowly with my dogs in the morning it'll quiet things quiet down once that happens you want to introduce some dopamine into the system.

The easiest way to do this I do it with risk I hike up a hill and then I run down the hill. If you don't want to do it with risk or you want a lesser version hike into the forest and then just jog through a forest just what weaving in and out of the trees is going to be enough it's novelty it'll be enough new visual stimulation. Novelty also gives you dopamine so you don't need risk you can just have novelty. Unpredictability will also give you that dopamine so take a walk into a part of the city that you don't you've never been to before where there's lots of novel things to look at that will do the same sort of thing.

And then I like to like or if that once you've got a little bit of dopamine in your system if you really want flow at that point. I try to exhaust myself I basically like what I'll do is I'll hike for 20 minutes. Go up here really hard for five minutes and then run downhill for five minutes and then you're essentially in a low grade flow state. So 20 minute walk I would make things more vigorous for like five minutes that's just to get a little bit of endorphins in the end of my painkiller right and then you want to introduce some dopamine.

So walk until it's quiet upstairs make it hard. But just for a brief you don't need a lot of hard you just need like 30 seconds to a couple minutes just to get a little bit of painkiller flowing. And then you want some dopamine and that is either novelty or risk and anybody can do that pretty much anywhere. Yeah I love that and it's I mean the benefits I can I can just see a profound you know whether it's you're trying to deal with burnout just generalize stress whether you're trying to solve a problem and your work that you can't solve.

You've written about the impact of nature on our neurobiology also right. So if you walk in nature right you're also getting you know additional benefits and if you walk in nature someplace where you can fly really wide vistas to look at that's even additional benefits. But like walking in nature you can see far and wide it's really freaking good for you and it's going to outperform pretty much any antidepressant in the market. And then if you add in a flow hike to boot you're doing you do some good stuff for yourself.

It doesn't matter if you are listening to music and all podcasts when you walk and the reason I ask this is because clearly it's very very popular these days. I do it myself sometimes but I've also noticed sometimes if I'm really busy in my head if there's been lots of I'm trying to process a lot of stuff let's say for writing and all these different ideas and I start walking with a podcast on. I don't want all this noise I just want peace I want calm and I'll eat a mood to relaxing music or I'll take my earphones off and just listen to the wind and the birds or whatever. So I think podcasts are you don't want you want your brain turning off right you need it to go from beta awake alert down to the alpha theta borderline to get into flow.

You can only do that if you're not really using too much brain power or if you're reading even the reading flow you can consider like one thing but hiking walking that's going to be taking your energy and I think you it's a limited thing flows high energy state. As it gives you energy or it takes you both both it gives you a lot of energy but it takes a lot of energy so if you want to be in flow on a regular basis. You gotta you know you have to hydration nutrition 78 hours of sleep at night these things matter because these are high energy states right. So that that that's part of it as well.

Yeah. Wow there's just so much so much to think about with respect to these things I want to move on to emotional intelligence it was a really interesting section in the book on emotional intelligence and. What's the relationship between emotional intelligence and peak performance but then also what really struck me in that section was that you wrote about empathy and you said empathy is an easily trainable skill. I don't think most people think it is I think many people think you're either born with air you either you've you've intuitively can be can practice empathy with other people or you can't.

So that really just made me stop and pause and reflect a little bit so I wonder if you could explain a little bit around those those areas. Emotional intelligence and empathy so let's start with emotional intelligence positive psychology has been 30 years sort of outlined what do people forms basics. There are cognitive basics and there are physical basics on the physical side we've been talking about. You need hydration and nutrition to maintain proper energy levels you need seven eight hours of sleep and you need a third thing on the physical side that people often don't talk about on the physical side which is social support.

When you do not have a robust social support network and I don't mean you know lots of people. I mean you may not only have people but they love you and you love them there's a deeper relationship there and regularly check in. Why does this matter. Whenever you encounter a challenge right your brain says oh here's a problem is this a challenge or is it a threat.

This is all day every day for all of us right you're always encountering stuff and you're like challenge your threat challenge your threat. And when your brain makes that determination one of the things asks is hey you got posse because if you're solo man solving that challenge it's a threat and I got a sound the alarm bell here's some anxiety here's some stress. But if you've got posse you've got people around who love you help you will pick you up if you fall down or etc etc. Maybe it's just a challenge and you can rise to the occasion so on a fundamental level.

Social support emotional intelligence matters because you have to maintain robust social networks just to sort of be able to perform your best. More importantly to really kind of mercenary statement between you and your dreams other people lie. Like it's just there's no way around it there are other people standing between you and your dreams maybe these people are going to be in your way and you're going to have to find ways to move around them. There are obstacles and maybe they're there to help you out and you can finally and if you can get along with them.

You can really get farther faster but either way if you want to navigate that situation quickly and you really want to get where you're going most of intelligence matters and to put it another way people forward is hard life in general is difficult. And if you're going after high hard goals right which is what people is really about well it's going to be even harder. Why would you not train emotional intelligence. It's I mean it just doesn't make any sense right it gives you better energy levels at a foundational level we know by the way that you know Chris Peterson has the positive psychologist who's at the University of Michigan.

Has said that you can summarize 30 years of positive psychology in a single phrase which is other people matter right like that's what he's talking about we need other people were social creatures we need other people. And they're going to be between you and wherever you're going anyways. Now what I say when it comes to emotional intelligence is first of all it's readily trainable right like I tell people to take an 80 20 approach to it right we tend to get 80% of our results from 20% of our effort to what really matters the most when it comes to emotional intelligence where are the things that where do you get the most mileage active listening right that means that when I'm a conversation with you. I'm not thinking about the cool witty thing I'm going to say next or that sarcastic thing you might have just maybe said I'm just paying attention to you I'm not judging you.

I'm not thinking about what I'm going to say next and paying attention to you and listening to you and when it's my turn to speak then I speak then I start you know what I mean that's active like the other thing is empathy. Now empathy is totally cultivatable. There are a couple of really easy ways to do it the simplest ways to get into flow more often we know flow foundation expands empathy expands perspective taking our ability to see things from other perspectives. So you have more empathy when you come out of flow state.

Yeah, in fact we are doing you know you have to be blind death and dumb to be ignoring the situation that's been happening in America with the police forces. So we have been doing a lot of work with a phenomenal organization called Blue Courage that works with Chicago police, San Francisco police, et cetera, et cetera. And they're working with us because they're interested in flow for peak performance but peak performance right now for the police means empathy. They're training with us.

Yeah, they want more flow they want to be better at their job and all that stuff and they need empathy. Otherwise there's you know we're looking at an open revolt in America if the cops don't figure out how to get it together on that stuff. So we've been with the flow research like I'm very busy training police forces in flow because they want empathy but if you don't if you don't have the regular access to flow that's not you know your way in or you want to boost it. Dan Goldman and Richard Davidson have done significant amount of research into compassion inducing meditation that works with the Dalai Lama.

And I'm not going to just look up compassion enhancing that Asian or really are impossible because it's in there. It's fairly easy to learn how to do. And they've discovered that I want to say it's two weeks and maybe a month but two weeks of 20 minutes a day of this form of mindfulness is for it's a breath work plus visualization training basically will significantly expand empathy. So empathy is very, very, very trainable.

And for going A to B it's I mean it's a weapon. It's a skill to get you through every day every interaction right? You have to understand like I'm an introvert as I said and I don't love people in general. I've been massively successful.

One of the reasons I've been so successful is when I was a little kid I made a living as a professional magician did birthday parties and pharmacists and then I became a bartender and then became a journalist. You have to talk to strangers a lot. You got to find common ground with anyone right in magic. You got to find the common ground so that you can then pull that common ground out from under the person in bartending.

You got to find that common ground because I need your tips to live in journalism. I got to find that common ground because I got to get the story. But either way I was forced to develop emotional intelligence. I probably came at mind the hard way, but it's such an advantage.

It's such an easy skill to get. Yeah, no, I love that. And I just want to really get an understanding just to make it super practical for people. Flow, right?

We're clearly from what you're saying and from what the research shows we want to access flow more often. It will have multiple benefits in our life. So I think about my own life. I think there's multiple things that I do including book writing that gets me into flow.

But in terms of discrete activities, I meditate first thing every morning as part of my morning routine for about 15 minutes. Some days, it just feels like it's happening. I'm in the zone and everything just quite as other days. It doesn't.

I'm just paying attention to my talking busy mind. That's one thing I do. I like walking or running. And I often find that my brain can switch off that the prefrontal cortex can just quiet and have a new perspective when I get back.

But the other thing is typically something I do in the evenings is my son and I really like snooker. We've got a snooker table at home and I used to play as a kid and this sort of said, but I've realized now in my early 40s. Like if I'm on my way to bed and the kids are asleep and I just pass the snooker room, I'll go in. And I am so obsessed with the game.

Like I love trying to learn new shots, new kinds of spin. I love the sound when the balls clink together. I love watching the reaction come off the cushion with different levels of Czech spin depending on how much you've delivered. I honestly feel like I didn't flow when I'm at that snooker table because time stands still and you know, I'm just mesmerizing that process.

So from what I'm describing, would you say meditation, walking, running and snooker gets me to flow? How do I know? Is it important to know? Meditations was the first question.

Let's start there. The short version is there are differences between meditation and flow. They're not the same state. They share a lot of underlying properties.

So Justin Brewer at Yale has done some really interesting work on meditation. One of the things that we seem to think happens in most flow states, if not all, is the medial prefrontal cortex, the very middle of your prefrontal cortex. Almost every other parts of the prefrontal cortex shut down and flow. As I mentioned, transient hyperfrontality, this part seems to get really active.

Why does a bunch of different jobs? One of the things it does is creative self-expression. Flow is all about creative self-expression. That's what is going on.

You're always sort of, it doesn't matter what you're doing. You could be playing snooker. You could be, right? But in meditation, self is trying to go away.

No self, right? So this portion of the brand gets really quiet through the different states. But back in the, I want to say the 80s, through the God of Intention Research, Michael Posner, super great guy, he pointed out, hey, I think meditation would be really good training for flow. This was back before anybody had any idea how to train flow.

And he pointed this out really way out of his time. And it turns out, yeah, we train people. We often use box breathing. You can look that up on the internet.

It's a breath work protocol developed primarily by former Navy SEAL Mark Divine. We like it because it just tends to train a bunch of different things at once, including focus. And also, I got a really busy brain. So, like, if your brain is like mine, if your brain is hyperactive, box breathing is a really, like, it's an easy way to distract yourself for 15 minutes.

And anybody, like, you can, the research shows that you need 11 minutes minimum of focus breathing a day to really sort of regulate your nervous system. If you want to use mindfulness that way. So box breathing, I find, is a really fast rate of pass those 11 minutes. Anyways, meditation is not, is not flow, but it's really good training for flow because it focuses teaches you focus.

So second question was walking and running. We sort of covered walking, I guess, before, but we covered walking running is. If you want more flow in your life, there are 22 flow triggers, right? I break them all down at the end of the art impossible.

There's a whole section on it. Running for certain people is totally fact of those flow triggers. I'll tell you that I have, I have been running on and off since I was 16, 16. I am probably one of the world's leading experts on flow and I've been running since I was 16 and we all talk about runners high, which is a low grade version of flow.

I have not once ever run myself into a flow state doesn't happen to me while running, but for certain people running is packed with flow triggers, but this is where personality comes into play. These 22 flow triggers, they all work by driving attention to the present moment. They will work for everybody, but which triggers are your most susceptible to are going to work best for you, totally individual based on your personality, and it's not going to be fixed in time. Right.

The triggers that are going to work for you today could be different by next Friday, probably won't, but they're probably going to be different 10 years from now. Right. That sort of thing. So running is a maybe, but for you.

Yes, very flow. We covered walking. The final one was snooker snooker. I was laughing when you were saying this because I'm one of the earliest lessons I learned in micro flow.

Micro flow was I played a lot of pool. And what I discovered is, for me, if I want to maintain my micro flow state while playing, I can't talk to anybody. Same with golf. It's really easy to lose focus for me.

Now, I don't know if this is true for everybody. Again, this is a personality thing. So novelty, complexity, and unpredictability are all flow triggers. So is autonomy, mastery, challenge skills balance.

If you're trying to learn new shots, you're pushing. All these things are flow triggers. So yeah, of course, very high flow game. And the final question was, does it help to know your inflow?

And the answer is yes. It helps for a couple of reasons. One, the goal is got to be to turn micro flow into macro flow. Most people don't notice when they're in micro flow.

In fact, there was recent research that shows we spent about 5% of our work life in micro flow, 5%. Now, automatically, it just happens, right? Even if you're not trying. And if you notice it, you can stretch that out, right?

You can protect your flow states in various ways by protecting yourself from interruption or distraction or that sort of thing. That's one thing. You can turn micro flow into macro flow by proper usage of flows triggers, right? This is when you walk yourself in exercise, induce transinability, and then you run down.

They only get some dopamine or run up. They only get some dorphins, right? You've noticed you were in micro flow and now you're pushing it to macro flow because you know what you're doing. That's also really helpful.

And the third reason is, this is very true macro flow, the really potent flow states, as any of you has ever been in one. You can tell you they're incredibly pleasurable, but pattern recognition is all turned up, right? So anything you look at is going to lead to a new idea, to a new idea, to a new idea. So you have to have, I always say that if you haven't spent a lot of time in flow, most people sort of act like stone teenagers for the first time.

Like people get stoned for the first time. They're like, oh, look at the sky. Look at the pretty lights. Look at the right, like it's all distraction, distraction, distraction.

That'll happen in flow, same neural chemicals. Don't mean in an animal that are producing that in marijuana. They show up in flow. You're going to act the same way.

That's not useful, right? Flow is a great state for performance. You don't want to waste it. You don't want to be frivolous with it.

You want to identify it and be able to drill down. And the other thing that I think is, is finally the most important thing. So at the Flow Research Collective, we don't have a lot of swag. We don't have blood T-shirts or stuff that we follow.

We have one T-shirt and it says, never trust the dopamine. And the reason it says, never trust the dopamine is, dopamine is a wonderful reward chemical. It feels really, really good. But not every idea you have when pattern recognition is turned way up is a good idea.

So you have to be able to adjust because it feels like the truth with a capital T, right? It doesn't mean, I always say that there's an order to this. Insight, then research, right? Then publication, then communication.

And that's how I train my staff. Meaning have whatever, don't mean addled insight you want to have. Get all excited about it. But then you don't get to stand on the stump and preach it to the world as gospel, which is what everybody does is that's the personality doesn't scale thing.

That's what everybody does. But you don't get to do that. You have your inspiration. And now you do way more research to figure out, was it real?

We tell people all the time, we teach people, don't go shopping. If we're going to train you in to go get in the flow, don't drop yourself in the flow and then like go close shopping or something like that. Unless you really have an unlimited budget because like in flow pattern recognition is amplified, everything looks good, right? You're getting your idea to single-handedly revise 70s polyester disco fashion.

It's going to seem great at the mall. And then you're going to get home and be like, Oh, what am I doing? Anyway, I wonder if that's to do with, I used to be like this when I used to go to a lot of rock concerts. You'd probably have experienced collective flow at something we didn't get into.

We can do next time, I'm sure. But you're buzzing at the end of that concert and then you pass the merchandise stall and suddenly I walk out with four different t-shirts. And then you come home and you're like, did I need four of these things? You know what the funny, I noticed this yesterday?

I do this thing where I'll be writing in the morning and I'll have attention. It's usually a tangent. It very, really happens when I'm actually like doing the thing I was supposed to be doing, but I have a tangent and it reminds me of something. It's something like, Oh my God, I need a t-shirt that says blah, blah, blah, or I need a t-shirt that represents, you know, Hong Kong, phooey.

And then I'll like, Amazon is just terrible, right? You're like, anything you want. And so I like, I literally have to remind myself because it's four o'clock in the morning and there's nothing like there's no one around to protect me for me. And like, if I've been writing for a while and I'm deep in flow and suddenly like I want to break and something just move me, I'm like, Oh, I got to go by.

Like, no, no, you don't. No, I mean, that is so helpful because I'm sure a lot of people will actually resonate with that. Stephen, that in that sort of creative flow state, you end up buying things just to close off. First of all, you have shared so much information.

I really, really appreciate it. The book The Art of Impossible is fantastic. I really recommend people pick up a copy. They're going to learn so much more than we covered in the conversation today.

But just to finish off, Stephen, I always love to leave the listeners and the viewers with some simple tips that they can utilize in their life to improve the quality of them. And you know, so much, but could you leave my listeners with just three or four of your very top tips to enhance the quality of their lives? Double down on your primary flow activity, right? Seven, eight hours of sleep a night.

Hydration, nutrition, regular access to social support. Tune your nervous system, right? The research shows there's three ways to keep your nervous system in check the performing your best. You can do a five-minute gratitude practice.

You can do an 11-minute breathwork mindfulness practice. You can do 20 to 40 minutes of exercise, exercise until it's quiet upstairs, right? And all three of those things help you regulate your nervous system because the challenge skills balance, right? Too much anxiety blocks flow.

So helping to flush the anxiety out of your system on a regular basis really, really matters. Those are like where I start with the absolute basics. The only other two things I'm going to say are this. We didn't talk much about flow triggers, but flow follows focus.

It shows up best when all of our attention is the right here right now. The first flow trigger is complete concentration. And what the research shows is that 90 minutes to honor up concentration is the absolute best. In the same way that we dream, 90-minute REM cycles, we have 90-minute waking alert cycles, same kind of biology.

So I'm not saying if you, so what I like to do is start my day with my hardest task, the one that if I accomplish this, that I guess win for the day, and I try at least 90 minutes of honor up concentration, I practice distraction management the night before. So long before I'm sitting down at my desk at four o'clock in the morning or three o'clock in the morning, my phone's off. Social media, anything that's going to distract me, I keep the lights in my office off. I look at my screen and focus view.

I literally, it's nothing but the words for me because that's what worked best, but distraction management. And if you don't have 90 minutes for honor up concentration, cool. Great. Start with five minutes, 10 minutes, 15 minutes.

The single largest intervention that we've seen is 90 minutes for honor up concentration. Start your work session with that to really block that off for flow. That plus a primary flow activity, you're really getting far. By the way, one last thing about a primary flow activity, one of the reasons you really want to double down on that activity, I forgot to mention this earlier, flows of focusing skill.

The more flow you get, the more flow you get, right? Like you're training your brain. So I go skiing and get them to flow. It seems like some, if not all of that skill, the way I'm using my brain, it shows up when I sit down to write or when I go to work and I'm running my company, right?

So the more flow you get, the more flow you get, the more flow you get. So doubling down on your primary flow activity and starting your work session with a 90 minute block for honor up to concentration, you are really, really, really going to see increase the amount of flow in your life. And since flow amplifies motivation, grit, productivity, creativity, learning, empathy, and environmental awareness, everything is suddenly going up, right? It also is amplifying strength, stamina, endurance, fast, which muscle response and a couple of other things too, but like whatever, you get it.

Flow is Superman or Superwoman for each of us, and it's accessible. Yeah, Stephen, thank you. You've shared so generously. Thank you for your time.

Thanks for writing a great book. And yeah, good luck on your next projects. Thank you, sir. Good spending time with you.

We really hope you enjoyed that conversation. As always, please do have a think right now about one thing that you can take away from this episode and apply into your own life. And of course, do check out Stephen's latest book, The Art of Impossible. But before we finish, I want to let you know about Friday 5.

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