```TALK``` S3.EPISODE 4 // How to Flow

Welcome to Flow State, a podcast designed to help you focus. And I'm your host, Bobby Light, here to provide the soundtrack to your work. We're listening to the talk only version of Flow State. In this version, I've removed the music so you can re-listen to or share a specific topic I've discussed. Eventually, I may even expand on the topics with longer talk-only episodes, discussing deep work, neurology, peak performance, and of course, the science of flow. Enjoy! I want to give a shout out to a few patrons. Chris. For Chris, the one word that describes his flow is effortless. Daniel. For Daniel, the one word that describes his flow is peace. Effortless peace. Nice. I like that. This week, I want to share a story that illustrates the value of flow and deep work. Last year, I had left a startup that I had co-founded with two friends. I left because I was miserable. I was unhappy and I realized the only reason I was doing it was because I thought it was the thing to do. There's more to it. I want to focus on one of the reasons I was unhappy, which was a lack of focus, flow, or deep work time. Here's how a typical day would go for me back then. I'd wake up, I'd check Slack and email for urgent messages. Once I dealt with that, I'd go back to coding. Then I'd get interrupted by Slack and then I'd get back to coding. Then I'd be interrupted by Slack or a meeting and then I'd go back to coding. This would go on for the entire day. Finally, in the evening, I'd have some undistracted time to code. But many evenings, I was too tired. I'd eventually just burn out. This type of day would go on for six, sometimes seven days a week. Because that's what you do at a startup, right? Well, it's obvious to me now why I was unhappy. Back then, I thought something was wrong with me. I thought I just wasn't cut for this type of endeavor. But even worse, I started to believe I was not a good software engineer. So finally, I worked up the courage to leave the startup. It was scary to leave because I had no idea what I would do next. But I took the plunge. I left the startup. And for a few months, I had no work. While I did dive more into my music, something very interesting started to happen. I started to code on my own again. I started to build little projects or websites and I absolutely loved it. It was a surprise to me because I seriously got to a point where I thought I was not only bad at coding, but that I hated it. But now, with all the free time, no distractions, I could actually get into a zone and build something. Around this time is also when I started producing this podcast. All that uninterrupted, deep work time led to one of my most successful creative endeavors. But it also made me fall back in love with coding. I want to take this moment to reread one of my favorite points from the book, Stealing Fire. In flow, six powerful neurotransmitters, nor epinephrine, dopamine and dorphins, serotonin, and dandamide and oxytocin come online in varying sequences and concentrations. They are the six most pleasurable chemicals the brain can produce. The experience lifts the course of life to another level. Enjoinment replaces boredom, helplessness turns into a feeling of control. When experience is intrinsically rewarding, life is justified. Again, when experience is intrinsically rewarding, life is justified. As I reflect on the difference flow and deep work created for my relationship to coding, I realized this when I was at the start-up or prior to that at a big tech company, most of the time I was questioning whether or not I was on the right path, whether I should try to leave and do something else. But there were those few rare days when I had no meetings, the slack was quiet, and I got into a deep state of flow. On those days, I definitely wasn't questioning what I was doing with my life. And so this leads me to today where instead of questioning what I'm doing, I focus on how I'm doing it. I focus on creating an environment in which I can experience as much flow as often as possible. Because when I'm in flow, not only is the experience itself rewarding, but I'm also producing my best results. It's literally a win-win. Better experience, better outcome. Well, that's easy to do when you're working alone. How do you maintain deep work when you're working with other people? When you're in a company, you have to collaborate, you have to communicate. While this is true, I believe the way you communicate can contribute to deep work and flow. To be honest, it wasn't really the start-ups fault. I mean, I co-founded it. So whose fault was it really? I would put the blame on myself because I didn't have the awareness that the way I was working was ineffective. And therefore, I didn't create the deep work environment I needed. Today, I'm fortunate to work at a company that cares and teaches us about deep work. The CEO himself has created guidelines on how we communicate. For example, we only meet once a week. We also encourage everyone to respond on Slack only when convenient for them, preferably outside of their deep work session. So what happens when something urgent needs to be discussed? Well, of course, we have that meeting, but the important piece here is that it's considered the exception, not the rule. So if something comes up that isn't urgent, that's not a blocker. Simply take a note of it and bring it up on the next weekly meeting. What this allows is everyone to continue in their deep work session uninterrupted. With this setup, we're essentially prioritizing deep work over all non-urgent communication. While this sounds great, I know many of you are probably at organizations that don't have these guidelines around communication, that don't seem to care about deep work. Well, I believe no matter what company you're at, they probably do care about your productivity, about the results you're producing. So how can you work with your colleagues and your manager to create an environment that you love working in, an environment conducive to deep work and flow? I truly believe it starts with communication and trust. Let's talk through some examples. Here's a tweet from Fiona, a designer at Dropbox. My boss supported me in swapping working on Sunday and taking Wednesday off. I had a great time working on my life, focus, and flow time today. Less lines for skiing on Wednesday. To me, this is a great example of communication and trust between a manager and employee. I have another friend who, working as a manager at Nvidia, convinced her team to stop having their daily update meetings for two weeks. It was an experiment to see if they actually needed that meeting. It was necessary, but without it, they were all more productive and much happier as a team. These are just two examples in which co-workers decided to change their communication patterns in hopes of improving the way they work. I believe that most organizations are unconsciously driven into these unhealthy communication patterns. What it takes to fix this is first awareness, and I hope this podcast and this episode has helped with that. The next step is taking the initiative and putting in the effort to communicate and build a sense of trust that can be a foundation for deep work and flow. So how is your organization set up? Could you improve the way you communicate? Something to reflect on. Thanks for listening today. I hope you got into a great flow. And until next time, keep on flowing.