Become Hyperfocused — Flow State Guide
Pure presence on its own is a great state to be in — you get to escape the past traumas holding you back and shift your focus away from what the future holds (whether it be real or imaginary worries). You get to define your reality as you deem fit.
We can take this a step further and integrate ourselves with reality where nothing feels scripted or false, everything happens at the right time spontaneously and flows like water.
That is when we become hyperfocused and reach a flow state.
You might have experienced this before: you’re working on something or you’re chatting with friends. The perfect actions and words come to you naturally, you don’t even need to think about them. Suddenly you’re sucked into this vacuum where fullfillment is maximised and you’re growing as a person. Life just seems perfect.
That’s not all. Flow states can be used to shortcut your path to success all whilst making the process more enjoyable, demolishing any competition which stands in your way.
— The Basics —
There are two main variables to consider: the difficulty of the task at hand and your skill level. The aim is to strive for a 1:1 relationship between the two where the task you are doing is aligned perfectly with your abilities or sits just slightly above them. Too much challenge and your anxiety will spike up, too little and you will get bored (see the graph below for reference).
Within your mind, you will have a cursor which points towards what it is you want to achieve. Do your best to follow along as closely as possible. You want this process to be smooth as butter to allow you to integrate with the task at hand. Naturally, it will seek out the right challenges for you to solve. Any hiccups where you are steering off course will work to bring your flow state to a halt.
Immediate feedback is how you gain immense momentum and fine tune this process further. The more indicators of progression you can leverage, the faster your transition into a hyperfocused state. You want to be able to see your progression in real time and maintain a steady course where your actions are just the right level of difficult.
— Reaching a Flow State —
Now we are ready to put this all into practise. In this example, I’ll walk you through how this would look like in the case of writing. Using your inner cursor, you identify what it is you want to achieve like lets say writing a guide on flow state — this will act as an entry point for our journey.
A flow state thrives when it is fed with new challenges around your skill level. For this reason, we should aim to automate what it is we already know. This may sound confusing but let me explain. When riding a bike, we don’t think about the way we need to move our feet to pedal or what it is we need to do to stay in balance — it all comes intuitively from muscle memory.
Instead, we focus on just the environment around us and the destination which is where the real challenge lies. The same premise must be applied here. When writing, forget about what words you should use or the structure of the sentence and document as a whole. Your mind already has enough knowledge on writing and thus you end up re-iterating old information, boring your mind and preventing flow. Dealing with individual words is too easy, desiring completion of the entire document is too much to handle.
Rather you should focus on the simple goal of conveying a message. That is the real destination you want to reach. Simply start writing what comes to mind and let your unconcious deal with the minute task of putting it all together. Your primary challenge is moving the information from your head into the real world. There is no reason to strain your mind with what should be done effortlessly, rely on your instincts to get you where you want to be.
Eliminate any thoughts telling you your efforts are not good enough or not up to standard. The most important thing is to keep moving at all times, any imperfections can be fixed up along the way. You are in this state to be challenged and to build your skills. How can you expect to do that if you stick to what’s comfortable and are afraid of failure? Your mind is smart and will push you to do what it deems possible. Do not be the architect of your own failure — follow your gut and see where it takes you.
Keep following your inner cursor. You will notice it jumping around at times to completely different parts of the document. Maybe you’ll want to restructure something or you come up with the perfect way to phrase a sentence you’ve written earlier. Allow yourself to let this happen; that is your mind solving a challenge in real time. You want all your actions to flow like water — stopping them dead in their tracks directly opposes that.
Eventually you will reach a point where you become one with the task. The delay between finding a challenge and completing it will be tiny. You just know what needs to happen next and are more than happy to make it happen. You have now reached a flow state.
— Tips —
Flow state thrives on mindfullness. It’s vital for allowing you to go with the flow (pun intended) and following your true desires, leading you to the challenges that will truly transform you. You want your mind pointing to the closest task in real time. You can either achieve this with meditation or listening to music. For the latter, choose music or songs that you vibe with and let them play naturally. You don’t want to be thinking about the music itself, you want it to serve as a “pulse”. Lyrics will trip you up when you are trying to generate words of your own hence why it’s best to use this for automatic tasks only.
Think of yourself as a general. You’re looking at the battlefield from an eagle’s point of view. Don’t concern yourself with the tiny actions like how your soldiers should move their bodies or use weapons — don’t micromanage. Your goal is to defeat the enemy and your army is aware of that, they have the necessary training. You just need to provide the overarching direction, steering them where their efforts are required. Shift your entire mental landscape to what is novel, everything else will happen automatically.
Hope you learnt something new :)
Let me know what you think in the comments or share your experiences
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