Using more productivity hacks won’t make you successful.
All they do is try to force you to get more done by doing stuff you’d prefer not to be doing.
When I used to work a 9–5 finance job, I’d try to find flow. It was rare. I’d have to juice up on three coffees to have a chance. Then my phone would ring with my boss making demands. Flow died straight away.
What was strange was that before and after work, I’d write online. I had no problem finding flow. It was effortless. And after a while it became automatic. I couldn’t understand why.
Then I saw a tweet that changed everything.
I’ve been writing about flow for 5 years.
Flow is when 8 hours feels like 2. It’s because flow creates extreme focus. This powerful state happens when you start to work without distractions and block out background noise with white noise or movie soundtracks.
The top 1% in the world — athletes, writers, movie directors, entrepreneurs — all use flow, even if they don’t realize it.
My two favorite books on the topic are “Flow” by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and “Stealing Fire” by Steven Kotler. Much of the information is good but it always feels like there’s something missing.
I love to ask my readers questions. When I asked them about flow the biggest problem they had was this:
“I can’t get into flow.”
Because I had no problem getting into flow with writing, I couldn’t understand it. You just sit down and flow turns on, doesn’t it?
That’s not the case. All the books and studies of flow have left out a crucial detail I discovered by accident.
The tweet that changed everything (which only got 5 comments) was this one from Zach Pogrob:
At the start, it’s always work. Getting into flow is rare. But eventually, flow is instant, and easy to enter. And that’s when obsession really begins.
Perhaps you didn’t catch the big insight…