1: This week, we’ve been doing a deep dive into peak performance. We must get into a flow state to perform at the highest levels.
We do so by engaging flow triggers, including autonomy, the curiosity-passion-purpose triad, complete concentration, the challenge-skills balance, clear goals, and immediate feedback.
All of these are internal flow triggers. They arise from within us.
However, there are also external flow triggers, Steven Kotler writes in his terrific book, The Art of Impossible: A Peak Performance Primer.
Being in flow is all about focus and concentration. What increases our ability to concentrate?
High consequences.
“High consequences are about threats lurking in our environment,” Steven writes. “This could be a CEO stepping into the boardroom, a soldier sneaking behind enemy lines, or a surfer paddling out into the ocean.
“In whatever case, danger is a built-in feature of the experience. And danger aids our cause. . . such as a skier on a really steep slope (a high-consequence environment) attempting to jump off a cliff (a way of amplifying the challenge-skills balance).”
High consequences are not just about taking physical risks.
“Social risks are a fantastic flow trigger,” Steven notes. Our “brain processes social danger with the same structures it processes physical danger, and for solid evolutionary reasons. Until recently, being part of a community is what kept us alive.
“Go back three hundred years, tick off your neighbors, end up banished or exiled—that was a capital punishment. No one survived on their own. So the brain treats social danger as mortal danger—because, until recently, that’s exactly what it was.”
Getting into flow requires us to take risks. “The athlete must be willing to risk physical harm, even loss of life, to enter this state,” says Harvard psychiatrist Ned Hallowell. “The artist must be willing to be scorned and despised by critics and the public and still push on.
“And the average person—you and me—must be willing to fail, look foolish, and fall flat on our faces should we wish to enter this state.”
2: A second external flow trigger is what Steven calls “a rich environment,” one that combines novelty, unpredictability, and complexity.
Flow follows focus, and once again, these factors force us to concentrate.
“Unpredictability means that we don’t know what happens next,” Steven writes. “Thus we pay extra attention to the next.
“Work done by Robert Sapolsky at Stanford shows that the dopamine spike produced by unpredictability, especially when coupled with novelty, comes very close in size to the spike produced by substances such as cocaine. It’s a nearly 700 percent boost in dopamine, which leads to a huge boost in focus, which tends to drive us right into flow.”
Complexity occurs when our brains are forced to expand their perceptual capabilities.
“For example, when we stand on the edge of the Grand Canyon and contemplate the question of geological time, or when we gaze up at the night sky and realize that a great many of those singular points of light are actually galaxies.
“This is the experience of awe, where we get so sucked in by the beauty and magnitude of what we’re contemplating that time slows down and the moment stretches on into infinity.”
If we want to get into flow, we simply need to increase the amount of novelty, complexity, and unpredictability in our life.
Which is what Steve Jobs did when he mapped out the offices at Pixar.
He “built a large atrium at the building’s center,” Steven writes. “He then put the mailboxes, cafeteria, meeting rooms, and, most famously, the only bathrooms in the place, right beside that atrium.
“This forced employees from all over the company to randomly bump into one another, massively increasing novelty, complexity, and unpredictability.
“This resulted in more flow, heightened creativity, and all those Oscars.”
Another powerful way to dial up novelty, complexity, and unpredictability is walks in nature. “This drives feel-good neurochemistry into our system,” Steven notes, “which also explains why a twenty-minute walk in the woods outperforms most of the antidepressants on the market.”
Another strategy is reading or working in a coffee shop in an unfamiliar part of town. Or both.
“Whenever I’m trying to learn a new subject,” Steven notes, “I always take my textbooks on the road. The novelty, complexity, and unpredictability of the new environment drives flow, and flow makes learning that subject much, much easier.”
3: The third external flow trigger is deep embodiment, “a type of expanded physical awareness,” Steven writes. “It means we pay the most attention to the task at hand when multiple senses are engaged in that task.”
We do this when we are actually participating in what’s happening versus just observing.
“This is one of the main reasons athletes have so much success getting into flow,” he observes. “Sport demands embodiment—it’s built into the environment.”
However, this concept applies to many different types of environments.
Decades ago, pioneering flow researcher Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and a colleague were looking for a high-flow educational environment.
Where did they find it? Montessori education.
“The Montessori method emphasizes both intrinsic motivation and learning through doing,” Steven writes. “In fact, for this latter reason, it’s often called ’embodied education.’
“Don’t just read about organic farming—go out and plant a garden. The planting engages multiple sensory systems at once—sight, sound, touch, smell—thus driving attention into the now and driving flow as a result.
“The boost in learning the state produces is one of the reasons Montessori-educated children tend to outperform other kids on just about every test imaginable.”
The bigger point, Steven tells us: “Get physical. Learn by doing. That’s what it takes to pull this trigger. Multiple senses demand all our focus, and that’s more than enough to drive us into the zone.”
More tomorrow!
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Reflection: How might I utilize high consequences, novelty, unpredictability, complexity, and deep embodiment to perform at my highest level?
Action: Discuss with a family member, friend, or peer.
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