Books That Make You Think - Stolen Focus Part 3: Do you have enough time for flow?

Welcome to this week's Books That Make You Think. I'm still talking about Johann Hari's Stolen Focus, but his is actually our last weekly session thinking about Johann Hari's Stolen Focus. 

This week, I'm particularly thinking about the chapter that he wrote on the crippling of our flow state. Flow state is something that I became aware of in my undergraduate study, and I've actually thought about a lot for myself, because I find that my ability to hyperfocus on a task and pay exclusive attention to that one thing that I'm doing is probably my superpower in running my business. And I talked a bit about that on the podcast episode About my Brain and Entrepreneurship. But what was really interesting in Johann Hari's book, is he talks about the fact that in our lives today, we have much less opportunity to experience pure flow state. And that's because in order to achieve that feeling of flow, where you're 100% focused on that one thing, and time kind of evaporates around you, you don't notice the passage of time because you're so focused, you need to be mono tasking, and that's not something that we're allowed to do very often in our society at the moment. So it's really interesting from both a clinical and a business perspective, I think, because there's a lot of evidence that if you don't experience enough flow state in your life, you never feel like you master anything, you never get that feeling of achievement and pride in something that you have completed. And we know from models like CBT, and ACT, and most clinical models, particularly for working with depression, people who are struggling with low mood, they all involve helping people to experience more mastery in their life, or to do more of the things that matter to them. And actually, if they've not got opportunity for flow states, then they're unlikely to be able to do that, or to get much satisfaction out of it when they do attempt to do that. So I think that's really important from a clinical perspective. But there's also this kind of productivity element to it as well, if you're not allowing yourself to experience flow state, how are you going to do your best work? And how are you going to get the reward that you need in order to feel motivated to continue to work on a big project like a book, or even a blog campaign, for example, if you're not allowing yourself long periods of time to immerse in that project. And I find this really interesting, because when I talk to my coaching clients, who are psychologists and therapists trying to build their businesses, often when they're feeling a bit negative, and we look at what they've done over the last week, they've done lots of little tasks on little bitty projects and they've not allowed themselves any time to really dive into a project that interests them and excites them. And I think we all recognise that feeling of feeling fragmented and stretched thin, and like we're not really doing any deep work. So I thought it'd be helpful for us to think about what we need in order to achieve flow state, so we can think about how to get more of that into our lives and the lives of our clients too.

So Johann Hari uses Mihaly's definition of flow state. And his definition says that you need three things to be in place in order to achieve flow state.

• Firstly you need to be mono tasking. You can't achieve flow state if you're trying to do more than two things at once. Only one thing at a time.
• You have to be doing something that is meaningful to you. So it has to connect with some of your core values, things that you want more of in your life.
• It has to be at the edge of your abilities, but not beyond them. He gives the example of a climbing wall, that you know, you or I wouldn't be able to achieve a flow state if we were faced with Kilimanjaro, but we might be able to if we're faced with a slightly challenging climbing wall. So it's in a different place for everybody, but it has to kind of be at the edge of your abilities.

So you have to create those three conditions in order to be able to achieve a flow state. And I just wondered if we could ask ourselves how often we do that when we're running our businesses? If you want to be the best psychologist or therapist  that you can be in your business, if you want to achieve a big goal like creating an online course, or writing a book, then realistically you need to be carving out time for flow state. And that means making sure that you're mono tasking. I think that that is the bit that's difficult for most of us. I think carving out time where I am not distracted, where I don't have Gmail sending me notifications, I don't have WhatsApp, I don't have a child, or two or three, demanding my attention, that's the challenging bit for me and actually, to make that happen, I will need to put it in my diary that this is a significant block of time, I'm not going to allow any distractions, I'm only going to work on this one project. And for me, at the moment, I'm creating the final couple of lessons for the roadmap for a successful online course, which it's live at the moment, but the final module will drop in a few weeks time. So I am putting the finishing touches to some of those lessons. And actually, I reckon I'd be much more productive if I use these principles and gave myself a couple of hours each week, where I am just working on that one task, it's very meaningful to me, it's something that speaks to my values, and it is at the edge of my abilities because I know I can teach an online course, I've done it before, but this is a new subject for me and it's really exciting, but also a little bit scary. So I think I can easily fulfil those three criteria if I put in my diary ‘I shall not be disturbed’ for these two hour blocks. So that's what I'm going to do personally. 

But I'm also thinking that our clinical clients probably need a bit of guidance on how to make this happen for them. This is probably something that we could support people with in our clinical work. Because how often have you sat down and done, you know, if you're working the CBT framework, something like behavioural activation, or if you're working in ACT, we do monitoring of meaningful activities. And people seem to really struggle to actually make it happen. I think for me, thinking okay we need these three criteria to be in place before you can get the most out of these activities, at least a few times in your week, I think that's something I'm going to add into the way that I teach about doing what matters to you. I think I'm going to add in opportunity to experience flow state in my coaching work and in my therapy work with clinical clients too. Because I think if we don't have it, our mental health is likely to suffer. There's plenty of evidence that if you never feel like you're mastering anything, your mood is going to tank. But also, I think on the coaching and business side of things, it's pretty impossible to run a business that's close to your values, if you're not having this experience of flow. 

So those are two big takeaways for me, and I hope that it's helpful for you as well to kind of ponder on your experience the flow state, and whether you feel like you have enough of it in your life, or if not, and I suspect most of us don't have enough of it, how you might want to get a bit more. 

So that concludes our series thinking about Johann Hari's Stolen Focus. Next week, I will be bringing a new book to the Books That Make You Think slot, but I'd love to know what you think on all of these topics. My intention with these sessions is to open up a conversation and to think deeply for change, about some of these big issues that Johann Hari has brought up and the other authors are bringing up in their work. Because so often, we get a soundbite on social media, maybe a quote, or something similar, and we never really get to investigate these topics and the implications they have for us, our clients and our businesses and our marketing in much depth. But really, there's so much that we can learn from applying this stuff in multiple different ways. So I hope that this has been interesting for you. Please do let me know your thoughts. Leave me comments, and just join in the conversation. I think it's a really fascinating topic, and I could talk about Johann Hari's book for the rest of my days, probably, but I'm limiting myself to just a month on each book, so we will have a new book next week. So I'd love to hear from you. I'm @RosieGilderthorp if you're on Instagram, give me a follow and a comment. If you're listening on the podcast, then please do come and talk to me over on Instagram, I'd really love to hear what you're thinking.

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Mentioned in this episode:

Psychology Business Schoo