Travis Rice Photo: RiseofSuperman.com
Editor’s Note: Last year, we did an in-depth interview with Steven Kotler on the Flow State. The following is just a quick reminder of how to access your best self on the daily.
In his groundbreaking book The Rise of Superman, Steven Kotler chronicles the incredible advances in surfing, snowboarding, wingsuit flying and other extreme sports and explores the integral part that flow states have played in this progress. Simply put, being in flow means that you’re physically, mentally and emotionally dialed into what you’re doing, that time has become irrelevant and that you’re fully present in your activity. While Kotler suggests that the danger of injury or death that you face while surfing a big wave, carving a big mountain and hucking a waterfall encourage flow, the ability to get into a flow state can improve performance in safer sports, creative endeavors and work, too. Here are a few tips to help you create flow state conditions in whatever activity you’re passionate about:
Focus
One of the pre-conditions of being in flow is that you’re fully present in the moment. In a fast-moving sport this is a necessity, and in yoga mindfulness is encouraged, but in the rest of our chaotic lives, there are too many distractions that keep many of us from regularly accessing flow states. So your first task is to eliminate potential interruptions, whether that’s sounds, sights or any other stimuli that will keep you in distracted mode. You should also set aside a dedicated chunk of time for your activity, and flat out refuse to let yourself be mentally or physically pulled away from the task at hand. Whatever your flow activity is, treat it like a meeting and even block it off on your calendar to prevent you skipping it and other people trying to hijack that time slot. Your goal is uninterrupted concentration.
Bobby Brown Photo: RiseofSuperman.com
Make it Hard to Make it Easy
Kotler contends that one of the prerequisites for accessing flow is to dial up the degree of difficulty. This is not to say that if you’re used to surfing 3-foot waves that you should suddenly try and prove yourself at Peahi, because that’s too big of a leap. Rather, you should aim to incrementally increase the challenge during each session, within the possible range of your competence. Maybe it’s mastering a spin on a snowboard, or just executing it more cleanly. Or perhaps you try to cut a couple of seconds of your 10K time each time you lace up your running shoes. Dialing up the challenge will force your body and brain to go into high gear, increasing not just your speed, power and efficiency of movement, but also your ability to process information and make decisions. This is no place for comfort zones, but rather for setting ambitious goals and getting immediate feedback to measure our progress toward them.
Put Yourself in a Rich Environment
It’s great to master a particular rapid, to tame our local ski hill, or to crush a certain trail again and again. But if we get too familiar with our surroundings and too comfortable with our environment, it’s all too easy for our brain to give the body a preset amount of effort. In contrast, switching up where we snowboard, run, ski, write, paint or whatever, provides novelty and unpredictability, forcing all our systems to switch into high gear in order to make the continual adaptations and adjustments needed when we don’t know what’s next. We’ll focus more intently if we don’t know what’s around the next tree or turn or over the next hill. And flow may well result from the heightened state of attention that results.
