Good afternoon. Good evening to wherever you are in the world. My name is Alexander Flees. And today, today we are going to spend 14 minutes together exploring a flow state, a state where you not only feel your best, but you also perform your best.And before we, before we, before we dive in, I would like to take a minute to set a tone for this session. So let me share this image with you. I trust that many of you have seen the fedex logo multiple times before. But now as you're having a look again, I have a question for you. Can you see an arrow in the sign? Can you see an arrow? Some of you will? But usually when I ask this question, there's always at least one person who is really frustrated because they can't see this arrow, Simone, it seems like it's you have another look and that's the moment when I share this image and the reaction is usually, oh yeah, it's that how come I've never seen it?

And this is something I want you to keep in mind throughout the session as we today, I'll be sharing a lot of concepts in relation to a flow state. Some of them will be completely new, but it's quite likely that you will also be familiar with some of the ideas that I'm going to share with you today. But if you are curious enough to choose to approach a session with an open mind, I promise you will see you've never seen before like this arrow things that seem obvious, right? And that's my intention for a session to help you challenge your thinking a bit, challenge your thinking by introducing you to new concepts as well as helping you see the concepts you're already familiar with, with fresh eyes. And speaking of the session itself, we are going to kick off with a vital session with a vital question. Why a flow state? Why would you even choose to commit or spend 40 minutes of your precious time learning about a flow state? Why? And once we have the answer to this question, then we are going to, we are going to clarify, what is a flow state? I've noticed that it has become a bit of a buzzword in the last couple of years.

It's one of those catchphrases floating around organizations and while some people kind of sort of maybe know what it means. Do you know what it means specifically? Today, we're going to clarify all the confusion and then we're going to move to the most important part of the session, which is how to achieve a flow state. And we're going to look at the factors that can help you enter a state of flow factors that will help you persist in this medical state as well as how you can choose the tasks, jobs, activities, projects that will help you that are suitable for a state of flow. With all these things in mind, we're going to spend quite a bit of time together and I don't want to sound like a stranger. Hence, I will take a minute or two to introduce myself and my work. So my name is Alexandra flees and please call me Alex. My mother is the only person who call me Alexandra and I run a boutique coaching practice and myself and my team, we're on a mission to help leaders both in the organic, both in the corporate and entrepreneurial settings, catalyze change. And what I mean by catalyzing change is very much achieving your goals, whatever they are, whether they are on the individual level, team level, organizational level, global level you choose.

But importantly, it is we're all about achieving those goals in a sustainable way, in a way where the where yourself as the agent of change do not burn out in a process. Now, what does it mean in practical terms? Right, because catalyzing change is a big word, what does it mean in practical terms, in practical terms? It means achieving your goals professionally while reclaiming space and freedom in your personal life period. And the performance one, my performance coaching practice where I run sessions.

One on one is just one activity that I'm involved in. Apart from that, I also do consulting work and research work. But for everything I do, I have one big picture which is to help people create careers, create businesses, create lives, but that feel as good as they look. And what I mean by that is that I see so many individuals with impressive resumes, you know, being dressed in a flawless way, having beautiful apartments, handsome or beautiful partners, yet they are miserable. And my intention for everything I do, including the session is to help you provide you with some tools that you can use to actually create an experience that looks good and feels good. And the flow state is a big part of this complex puzzle. And but why a flow state y A flow state? Why, why, why you see I came to this question around seven years ago and I was in my previous career as a consultant and I ended up in a very interesting place, very frustrating place, namely, it felt like I was constantly doing more, constantly pushing harder, always going an extra, more up, an extra mile, always doing more.

And that was not the frustrating part. By the way, the frustrating part was that my results were slow, so or inconsistent. And it got to a point where genuinely I couldn't push any harder. There was, there was no way for me to work to work longer hours. And that's when I became interested in the whole performance coaching as well as productivity. And a couple of years later during it was I think it was my, my coaching training when I came across one stat, one number that changed the way I started seeing productivity, especially productivity in the workplace. And this is the number, the average. So the number that I saw that time and it hasn't changed since then is that the average knowledge worker is productive for less than three hours a day. The average night worker is productive of less than three hours a day. And you know, every single time I say this number aloud, I find it painful because what I see in the behind this number is the insane amount of potential that is currently being wasted. I see an enormous amount of opportunities that we are currently leaving on the table. And I also see, but what I also see is that every single of you myself included, we can do much more. We can achieve much more than we know what is coming up for you.

When I say that three hours a day, imagine you go to work, you work for eight hours, if not more yet, you manage to stay productive for three hours a day. It's shocking. And when I share this number, there are usually two camps of people, two kind of reactions. On the one hand, you always get people who are surprised and say like, really, it's only three hours. How come if you are team surprise, then just bypass. But on the other hand, there is, there's a lot of people who actually receive the stat with a sense of acknowledgment. It is what it is. It's true. I don't see myself being productive for, I'm usually productive for more than at best for hours, even if you're, if you don't consider yourself to be the average worker, so are a team of surprise team acknowledgment. Either way, once you get some time to digest and absorb this Monica IC A acknowledgment, beautiful and especially for you Monica. If you feel like you're acknowledging that, that you're understanding where I'm coming from. Usually this realization is followed by a sense of frustration and the sense of frustration is expressed in one simple phrase. It's not my fault. And is this how you're feeling right now?

Thinking about your schedule packed with back to back meetings, thinking about your company policy where you need where everyone has access to a calendar. About 10 projects that you're currently working on, two of them are urgent to be done by the end of this week. On top of that, there are other things happening and in the corner you can just see a new email notification. I get it. I get it and you're right. It's not entirely your fault. The modern workplace is designed to seal your attention every single turn. It's actually estimated that we are interrupted every 11 minutes shocking. But now if this is, if this is where you're coming from, that it is not your fault, it can be a challenging perspective because then if you don't, if you, if that's what you think that you automatically implies that it automatically implies that there is nothing you can do about it.

And in order to change anything, you need to have a sense of responsibility. And what I'm noticing whenever I, whenever I talk about productivity in particular is that people often want to jump in and, and start thinking about the ways they can improve the ways they can optimize their performance, the ways they can enhance. And I think it's a beautiful way to do it. But when you think about optimizing, improving, enhancing on a subconscious level, you're acknowledging that the situation that you are in right now is not ideal and yes, true, maybe it's not ideal. But let me give you a different way of looking at it a way that will offer you more, more of a calm approach. How about damage limitation? Not necessarily, but we're not aiming here to, you know, to be the best performer ever. We're not aiming for perfection, for perfection. We want to damage that. We want to limit the damage that's already being done. There's so much time that you're already already wasting. There's so many opportunities there are leaving on the table. What can you do to minimize this damage?

So the question is not really how you can improve. The question is, what are you tolerating? What are you putting up with? What is that one thing that would, what is a difference, that would make the difference? And it doesn't need to be anything huge. It can be tiny can be one simple thing that you eliminate. And this way you can unlock what half an hour of your time, a day, an hour. And if your baseline is three hours, if you are not another hour, well, you will be able to achieve what, 30% more I understand. So I just got consumed by, by a chat. And this is actually a perfect example of a destruction. You see, I kind of now I lost my train of thought because I was trying to see um what is the difference that will make a deeper degree? What is this is the perfect example of the structures? Now, I lost my train of thought and I need to have a, I need to go back to, I need to go back to my flow state. OK. What I was talking about, I was talking about the difference. That makes the difference. So yes. So how about we look at it as a limit as a damage limitation instead of seeking perfectionism. When you look at when you look at it this way, it offers you more room to grieve.

Um If it resonates, do let me know in the comments below which option do you prefer? Which is, which is the perspective you prefer? Is it about optimization of damage limitation? And with everything I'm going to share with you today, there's no right, there's no wrong. Whatever works for you, you go out, you play with the ideas I'm sharing with you and you adjust to your circumstances. But now no matter which option you want to explore, no matter which perspective you want to explore. There are so many people online sharing strategies on how to become more productive, more effective, more efficient and they trust all those strategies, hacks tips, they all work. But if you were to ask me to give you one framework that will give you the highest I this will be a flow state. And you see the reason for it is very simple, a flow state is the framework that does not only allow it to be more productive, but it also creates perfect environment for you to become more creative, for you to do your blue ocean thinking for you to come up with new ideas. And those are the things that you really do value in a tech word, right? In addition to that, it actually gives you this kind of backbone for absorbing and digesting ideas.

So it's not only about productivity, productivity is just one aspect of it, you true, you can achieve more in less time. But on top of that, the quality of the ideas you're coming up with and the speed in which you can absorb them and then implement them. It's much, much quicker and that would even push, push it further. It's not only about your performance, it's actually about the way you feel about yourself, the way how satisfied you are with your job, with your career, with yourself. And this is where a bit of science comes into play. Because actually when you're in a state of flow, there are a lot of chemical changes, neo chemical changes that sorry, there are a lot of changes in your neo chemistry that do happen as a result, your system gets flooded with a happy few hormones. And when you feel good, you're naturally more motivated to push through the task. So now you know the benefits, but what is, what is a state of flow? Unfortunately, there is no one official definition of this magical state. But the way I encourage you to think about it is or perhaps the way to see it to see it is an optimal mental state, a state where you are fully focused on what you are doing.

You are just that nothing else matters, no chats, no emails, you are just with the task at hand. And because you're so focused, you're so immersed, you are so engaged, you are ultimately operating at your subconscious level. And when this happens, there's no inhibition, it feels effortless.

It's an effortless effort. You might be working with something quite challenging, but it doesn't feel this way. Very importantly, you can easily recognize the state of flow. When you are calm, composed and confident, there's a sense of clarity. You're not overly alert, you are not overly energetic, you are just there, focus on the task. And apart from that, you also been timeless, you feel timeless, five hours, feels like five minutes. I trust you all experiences, experience it before this probably happened accidentally.

But apart from timelessness, you also, you kind of lose sense of self. You forget about worries, concerns problems, even physical pain. The only thing that matters is the task at hand. And you see as I was hearing myself, as I, as I heard myself, yes, sharing what, how the how the flow state feels like I had this fault. Wow, it sounds fancy. And if this is how you feel it is what you're thinking right now. I want you to know that truly the cause of the flow. It's not fancy at all. It's actually a very simple, very, very simple framework behind it. And that being said, I think it's time to get into it. So let me introduce you to the golden rule a flow. So the first thing you need to consider when you are considered, what the first thing you need to think of when you're considering flow states. Are you ready? So the golden rule of flow state is the challenge skill ratio, the challenge skill ratio. And I understand that some of you you might have what happened here. No, sorry, I received a notification. I don't want to join another session. Thank you. I'll prefer to stay with my session. Ok cool, great. We are back. So um I know that probably some of you are disappointed because you were expecting like a complex sophisticated equation looking into different factors.

But truly a starting point is this ratio is this relationship between the difficulty of a task you're performing, the difficulty of a product you're working on and the skill, the skill you have to perform it. And now, as you can see on the image there is this white stripe cold flow. This is what we call the flow channel of tunnel. And you essentially want to find a task, a project, a challenge, an activity that matches your level of skill. But by matching, I mean exceeds ex uh by matching, I mean exceeding. So what you want to do, you want to find a chart that slightly stretches you but tiny bit if you, if you like numbers as I do, I'm a scientist by training, it is 4%. So you have to stretch yourself by 4%. And what happens is that when you stretch yourself tiny bit, that's when you are in the best position to be in a state of flow. But you don't want to stretch yourself too much because the moment you actually stretch, because the moment you actually stretch yourself too much, right? You automatically become anxious, nervous, worried, overly alert. And that's when your performance drops off. So what you do want and sorry, just, just let, let me take a step back by the same token, if the challenge is too easy, well, you will find it boring and you will lose interest.

What you want is to find that perfect balance, balance ratio, whatever whatever term resonate better review. So the, so the rule here is really to find, why is it not moving? Hello? Beautiful. So that, so the goal here is to find the sweet spot, the sweet spot. So find a challenge that is hard enough for you to stretch yourself, but it's not hard enough for you to snap, stretch, not snap. And this is a beautiful graph over here where you can see eight different states. This was created by a father of low state. And over here you have eight states depending on where you are in relation to the challenge, the difficulty as well as your skill set. So as you can see where we want to be with flows with the flow state. Is that yellow part in the upper right corner? That's where you take advantage of the both where you essentially benefit from the focus as well as feeling good about the progress you're making, you make the both of you make the most. You make the best of both worlds that was mouthful. But you see what I see, what I see. What I see quite often when it comes to ambitious individuals, is then ended up in the arousal state where you are focused, but you're also very alert and I understand why a lot of you might end up in this state is a state where you still get pretty good results.

But the problem is that when you are in the state of arousal, it feels like bloody hard work. It feels like you need to push, you need to work hard. It feels like a chore. And if you're a go getter, you can push through. But then what is the alternative? You have, you have an alternative to even perform better and feel smart and feel much better, perform better and feel better. And in addition to that, when you're in that arousal state, when the charge is too high, the danger is that you're only one step away from the anxiety zone and the anxiety zone is not a friendly place. It is usually where your monkey brain takes over where you become when you start overthinking, second guessing, future tripping, catastrophizing, ruminating. I think we all know how it goes. So again, the goal here is to find a balance between or to, to find or to master this ratio to find the balance between the chart of a task you're performing and the skills you need to perform it. The question is what does it mean specifically why this ratio is so important? What are you thinking? Why this ratio is so important? The reason why the ratio is so powerful because it allows you to lock your attention in the present moment, it allows you to stay present.

That's what it is all about. Focus is the key. So it's not truly about the ratio itself. It's more actually about the focus. That's what it is about. That's what it's all about. If you are following that, if you're, if you could just look at this graph again, if the challenge is too high, you become anxious and when you become anxious, well, it certainly takes you away from the present moment and you end up in this future, tripping, ruminating catastrophizing mindset.

By the same token, if the challenge is too easy, well, you would just, you will lose interest. The only way for you to stay present. For the only way for you to keep your attention locked in the present moment is to find a task that is hard enough for you to stretch yourself, but not hard for you, but not hard enough for you to snap. It's all about a focus and well, there's just one simple problem with it. One tiny problem. Well, it's not tiny actually, it is tiny. There's a tiny problem that is very popular, namely, we live in a world where we are over stimulated. We're all, it's a word which is always busy, crazy, crazy, busy Cortisol fueled where we're always on. And it is not enough for us to find this balance where we can lock our focus in. We actually need to be very conscious about protecting our balance put differently. We actually do everything we can to make sure that once we find this focus, we say that and there's a beautiful quote which I like a lot, which says, but the focus to have focus, we need to escape, to have focus. And my interpretation of it is that in order for you to protect your focus, you need to stop thinking about adding more things that would help you protect more fo protect your focus. Instead, you need to choose what you are not going to do.

I often see that when we talk about productivity, you might be tempted to set up new process, create new schedules, buy a new planner, maybe have a team meeting what it is. Take a minute. And first of all, ask yourself what are the things that you that you are going to stop doing? And there are three ideas that I have for you. Again, I'm sharing ideas, you take them or you leave them. But what I suggest, take them, test them and then decide for yourself. The first one is simplifying s simplifying by eliminating automating or delegating. Whenever you look at your, at your task list, ask yourself this question. What is really important here? What are the tasks that are really that do really matter? What are the tasks that, that help me move forward? And all the tasks that are not really important should be either eliminated, delegated, automated or delegated if you can of course. But this, but by even doing those, but by taking those three simple steps, you will, you will probably experience enormous benefits when it comes to protecting your focus, protecting yourself from all the destruction that you have in the world. Because then you will have less projects, less tasks and you will, and you will be able, you'll be in a position where you can divert all the f all the attention into things that, that truly do matter.

Another way to look at it is to think about your focus and a flow state through a prism of energy. I always say that you should be managing your energy, not your time. And I'm very passionate about this particular topic so much. They even created a tool to identify your energy leads because truthfully you can have all the time in the world. But if you're exhausted, tired, overwhelmed, disrupted, stressed, anxious, you're not going to get anywhere on the flip side. If you're, if you're in a position where your mind is sharp and energized, you will spend much less, you will spend less time performing tasks and will also get better results. So it's about energy. Not time, time is an illusion. Let's play with the energy, energy separately.

And lastly ruthless prioritization. Well, I'm a ruthless prioritize. You don't need to be ruthless in the way you do it, but at least consider becoming a prioritize. Do you know what your priorities are, are? Do you know what are the top three things you're working on this week?

Any heart? Right? And if you really want to become a ruthless prioritize as well, then this is your motto. If it's not a hell yeah, it's a hell no. As I said, take it, run with it, test it and see how it works for you. But those are just general rules. What does it mean in practical terms? What can you do here are a few ideas. The first one is to become a unit. Tusker guys, multitasking is truly the art of screwing up several things at once. Your brain, our brain, it doesn't do, it doesn't work that well when you have so many tasks at hand, especially if you're, if you're operating in an overly in an over, if you're already in an overly stimulated world, if you truly want to focus on something, if you want to complete it, well, focus on one thing at a time.

This will make a huge difference. I promise the next thing is eliminating or minimizing clutter and by clutter, I mean, external clutter. Yes. All the unnecessary meetings that you probably don't even need to attend. Yes. All the projects that you don't really should be contributing to this type of, to those type of, to, to those type of projects, eliminate everything, but it's not serving your progress. But then when I think about it now you see, it's not only about those big things, it's also about the tiny things like as I said here on this presentation, how many tabs do you have opened right now? The 1020? What it, how, how does your office look like? Does it look like a shopping mall? How many empty cups do you have on your site? It starts with those tiny things going back to the to the approach of minimizing the damage, start small. What are the things that I can do to minimize the clutter around me? Doesn't need to be as grandiose as eliminating all the meetings that are unnecessary. This may take time. But let's start with the environment that we have around us, right? The next thing is becoming a war of internal destructions. And I will put this topic to a side because that's a separate conversation to have. But I want you to become aware of the inner chatter, particularly perfectionism, second guessing and overthinking.

Those are probably the three main things that get in the way of your productivity, productivity focus and the flow state and the last one is active recovery. And this one is a very interesting one because I would like to really highlight active recovery, not recovery, active recovery.

Because truly, if you're a knowledge worker, you need some time, you need time for your brain to reset, you need some time for your brain to recover. Yet. What I see in the vast majority of cases and this is particular, this particularly, this applies particularly to a lunch break if you happen to take one. But if you do the average person grab something to eat and then spend an hour, 40 minutes, half an hour, either checking Instagram or watching Netflix. And the way I see it is that you literally replace one energy depleting activity with another. So no wonder that you, that your energy goes down in the even in the afternoon. Well, it doesn't feel it doesn't feel like you are doing difficult work when you're checking Instagram. But for your brain, it's still work. So the golden rule here is to avoid technology, avoid visual technology when you're taking breaks when you're trying to recover. And the reason for it because I don't want to come across the person who is against technology, especially that we are, you know, women in tech. So it will be a bit controversial to say this.

But the thing that you want to be aware of is that all those beautiful things, all those beautiful tools like Instagram, Facebook youtube Netflix, they do offer, they all do offer you instant gratification and that's what really messed up with us. Because if you have a choice of checking something on your iphone or doing your work or doing something productive, that will pay that, that you will, it will bring you the results in one year time. Then you will obviously will go for your, for your, for your iphone because it offers you this instant gratification. Just something to be aware of. We are not going to take, we're not going to go any deeper on this. So now where where are we with time? Oh my God. Ok. I think I need to speed up if anyone, if anyone knows if I can take more than 40 minutes, do let me know please. Um because if you have any questions, I would like to take five minutes at least towards the end anyhow. Now what we know at this point is that you need to focus on the ratio between the challenge and the skill. We also know that the reason why this ratio works so well is because it helps you protect your focus. We also know that that actually locking in the focus is not enough. You need to make sure that you protect yourself from all the destructions of the world so that you stay present in the moment.

But now the question is, can I be in a state of flow with every single activity. Well, the answer is no, there are certain tasks, there are certain activities that it will be very difficult for you to enter a state of law. Nevertheless, the goal here is to maximize the amount of time you spend in this blissful state. Because over here, because even if you manage to, let's say spend extra 10 minutes in the flow state, the results you will be able to see with that in terms of your productivity, innovation learning would be enormous. So what makes a good flow activity? This is something that you may want to consider either when you set tasks for yourself, when you set tasks for your team or, or anyone that you work with. The first point here is to think about the complexity. That's something that we already touched upon, right? We said that the challenge needs to be difficult enough and difficulty is one thing, but complexity is another. And when we think about complexity, it always starts with clear goals. That's a paradox, right? How come talking about clear goals? If, if the goal, the overall goal is to make the challenge more complex. Yes, the challenge needs to be complex, but the goal needs to be clear. And what I'm noticing is that everyone knows that everyone knows that you should have that you should set smart goals.

But now be honest with yourself, do you set smart goals on a daily basis? Do you? I don't, for instance, yesterday, I blocked two time, two hours of my time to work on the deck. This was a useless goal. What, where do they want to be? At the end of that experience? I wanted to actually finalize the copy and the design. You see that the language is very powerful here, working on consulting and finalizing individual aspects of it is a completely different game. So that's something you want to consider. But in addition to those clear goals, let's put them to a side. You want to make sure that the challenge itself, it has elements of novelty, unpredictability. Some that involves a bit of risk taking, something that you know, you need to put something on the line. It might be, as I mentioned here, creative risk taking might be social risk taking. Maybe there is a sense of fear of judgment of rejection of criticism. The goal here or the aim here is to find something that gives you a tiny bit amount of this risk taking feeling because that's what evokes uncertainty and uncertainty in micro doses is extremely motivating. It's extremely motivating. Not to mention that your brain releases dopamine has you feel good. But again, going back to that graph, we stretch not snap for central, you won't find, you want to find something that will be novel, something that will be unpredictable.

Something that will require some risk taking but not too much and lastly personal control over the outcome. Well, not lastly, to be entirely honest with you, there are so many triggers. If I remember Corky, you were more than 20. But for the purpose of this conversation, I selected probably eight or 10. So when it comes to personal control over the outcome, this is particularly important. When you're working in a group, you want to make sure that every single person claims personal control and responsibility over their part of the work. Because if you, if you don't, if you lack personal responsibility, there's, there's a lack of fear of judgment, fear of disappointment.

And again, in small doses, such a fear, it's very motivating. So that's, that's all when it comes to complexity. I think that intuitively, you know what it means for a challenge to be complex, right? You want to stretch yourself that tiny bit. The next thing you want to consider. Oh, here we have it. When you choose the task is finding, finding a task, finding a project that gives you interest reward, put differently a task that makes you feel good. Give you the task that gives you a sense of satisfaction. You wake up in the morning and you are truly excited about it. And I would say it, unfortunately, the vast majority of people have no idea what are the things they're interested in. They have no idea what they are uniquely good at. Forget personal and professional values. And that's again a different conversation. If there's something that you're interested in. We can, we can, we can put something in our calendar and have a chat about it. But really what you want to remember here is that you need to find something that you're interested in and it doesn't need to be as big as having a vision, being passionate about it. Something that you uh an area that you already mustered and won awards for. No, it doesn't need to be that big that advanced. Truthfully, it starts of curiosity. So when you look at the list that I've listed that I've, that I've put here, it's actually a ladder of interesting motivation. It's part of curiosity.

Tell me what are topics, what are areas you've been curious about recently? What are the topics you've been interested in? That's what th those are the activities that you truly want to select for your flows fate or? Well, if there is a topic that you're interested in, you want to design a task around it. And there's also something very important when you delegate tasks to your team, asking them, what are you interested in? What are you curious about? And you see a beautiful thing here is that even if you're chasing that mastery and the vision, it always starts with curiosity. If you're curious about something sooner or later, it will become your passion. And then when you're passionate about it for a longer period of time, you will want to have a purpose at the moment you have a purpose and it is big and bright. You want to have autonomy over it and then you're on the right way to mastery, but you don't need that passion. You don't need that vision, that mastery level to actually get started to pick something you're curious about that being said, if you have something you're passionate about, if you do have something that you have a big Rams vision for wonderful, good for you.

But I wouldn't be a good coach if I didn't challenge you on that, it's your passion, your vision, your mastery. Where does it fall? Are you in a zone of genius or in a zone of excellence? This is the framework framework coined by Hendrix where the terms the book he wrote is called a Big Leap. If you haven't read it, please do, it will change your life. But going back to that distinction between the zone of excellence, the zone of genius, you truly want to make sure that you are not stuck in a zone of excellence, which is a very comfortable place. You're good at what you're doing. You're earning pretty good money from it and you're praised for it. You're acknow for it, but it's not your own of genius. I'll leave you with this concept, take it or leave it. But if you decide to take it, it will change your life. So let's, let's summarize all the things that we, that we talked about today, we know it's about the ratio, the ratio protects the ratio locks in your focus. This allows you to sorry. It's all about the ratio. Let me start from the beginning. It's all about the ratio between the skill and the challenge. The reason for it is because it locks in your attention in the present, but it's not enough to lock it in. You also want to protect it from all the distractions externally and internally. You also.

Now at this point should know what are the tasks that, what are the criteria that you want to use to select a task or select an activity that would be suitable for a flow state? We think about complexity and we think about interesting reward. Now, let's imagine that you've done it all, you have a task, it matches all the criteria you got, you're ready. What do you do? What do you do? The first thing you want to consider is working with your biological peak time. We all have biological peak time. Mine is in the morning and I suspect that the vast majority of you are the most productive early in the morning as well. So you want to work with your biology, not against it. So once you know what your peak time is, make sure to block all the instructions during that period of time, that's your holy time. Once you've done that, you may want to consider either exercising in the morning or taking a cold shower, having a hope a cold shower. And that's a bit of a controversial one, but I'll go with it. Um, in the past I used to say that exercise is the best way to put yourself in a state of alertness. But now I'm very aware that not all of you are either willing or some of you may not, may not even have time to exercise in the morning.

And honestly, a cold shower is the quickest and the most effective way for you to put yourself in a state of alertness. If you haven't done it before, try it but do it slowly because it can be, it's a stressor, it's a stressor, but you see it's a stressor and it's actually a good thing because over a period of time, your body becomes more resilient because you're conditioned to stress. But yeah, good to give it a try. I do think that a cold shower is very powerful. And if you're interested in this method, it's the, it's the Wim hof method of exposure of exposing yourself to cold. Shall you be interested in the torture methods? And then the moment it gets to work, you want to minimize all the clutter idly remove it. We already touched upon it. So I'm not going to go into the detail. But the only thing I would like to touch upon is the internal destruction is the internal de clutter. If it's the point where you're already at work or you already start, started working. It's probably too late for meditation. So what I would say, take a journal, take a notebook and simply write down everything that's in your mind.

All the frustration, all the, all the, all the ideas, all the worries, all the whatever is happening, whatever, whatever your mind is racing about and then once it's on a piece of paper, just close it put aside, you will address it later. The only thing you want to focus on is the task and truthfully if your, if your mind is rising, you won't be able to do it. So it's a good experience. It's a good exercise actually to try and get out and put it all on a piece of paper, black and white. Um Yeah, so that's all for minimizing clutter. Now, there are a couple more things that you can do. They're all optional. Don't feel like don't, don't feel the pressure to actually to actually to actually do any of them consume caffeine. Strategically, it's estimated that up to two cups of coffee. It does when you drink up to two cups of coffee. In fact, you can experience some benefits in regards to your focus and concentration. Not even some in some case in certain people who experience gigantic benefits, but it is only up to a certain point. If you drink too much coffee, you will easily become anxious and it will be very difficult for you to enter a state of flow. So it's always about understanding how your body works and keeping things in balance. Coffee can, can help.

But if you do too much, it will make you anxious and it will be very, very difficult, you'll be overly alert. Hence, it will be very difficult for you to stay present. And that song that I'm guilty as charged because I love coffee and I have a tendency to overdose. And when I overdose, there's no magic that the next thing that quite a few people enjoy doing is listening to music. But there are two things you should consider. Firstly, it needs to be a repetitive type of music. Perhaps techno, it's classical music works as well. And once you select the type of music you want to listen to, you want to put one song on repeat. And that's very important. If you, if it's a playlist, your brain will sell it as a distraction. Instead of paying attention to the task at hand, you'll be paying attention to the songs. So if you're, if you decide to use the music, remember about it being repetitive and putting the song, one song on repeat. And the last thing I wanted to remember about is staying hydrated. Sounds obvious, but it's not that obvious when you get yourself in a state of flow. When that, when you know exactly what you're working on, there's some risk taking involved some unpredictability, you are passionate about it.

You are very curious about the topic and, and you were in the soul, you forget about your senses. You don't feel hunger same applies to first and your brain is made out, made out. It consists of water. The majority consist of water in what? 75% I think. Yes, 75%. So you actually want to stay hydrated throughout the day, especially not throughout the day. Well, you want to stay hydrated of course, throughout the day. But now I am referring to a state of flow. OK? So that's pretty much it guys, you're in, you are in a flow state. If you, if you manage to find that ratio between challenge and the skill where you're focused present in the moment and you block all the instructions and you pick a task that is complex. But at the same time, it gives you an interesting motivation and satisfaction from performing it. You're in, enjoy it, enjoy it, go and two beautiful things in the world because the world needs it. Not to mention, the two will feel amazing at the end of it. And I'm of an opinion that everything that we talked about today, there are other things that are relatively perhaps basic is the wrong word. Those are the things that you need to know for the time being if you haven't experienced flow state consciously before. But when you come to a point where you want to start planning your day or even your work, your, your workflow or even your product line around the state of flow.

You want to know that there are actually four stages and this is something that we are not going to talk about today. If you're interested, do let me know and I'll, I'll send you more information on this particular topic. And those stages are struggle stage where you literally overload your brain of information to a point of frustration. Often called in the Tech Worth research. Then you've got the release stage. When you take your brain, when you take your mind off the task, cons consequently, you enter the the stage of flow and then you have a recovery stage. But again, this is not something you need to be paying attention at this point in time, unless that's something that you are truly interested in and you can see that it will benefit you and your team. That's it for today. So I would like to, I would like to finish with a beautiful poem. My favorite poem which goes this way, come to the edge. He said, we can't, we are afraid they responded, come to the edge. He said, we can't, we'll fall. They responded, come to the edge. He said, and so they came and he pushed them and they flew. So ladies gentlemen, come to the edge, use this flow state fly. That's all I have to say. If you have any questions.

Do let me know and, and I'll be more than happy to answer them now. So Ariel, the question here is about, yes, I'm more than happy to share the slides. Can you please email me? And I'll be more than happy to send it over. And uh in regards to the resources I would recommend, do let me know which aspect of it you are the most interested in and then I'll be able to recommend the resources that are specific to your case. Because for instance, if you're struggling with the with the part of finding what you're curious about, that will be very different to struggling to understand how to design your workflow around the flow state. So let me know and I'll be more than happy to, here's my email address on this slide, I'll type it here and you will see that Laurie, I see that you ask a question. Let me type this first as you know, I'm not good at multitasking. Here we go. OK, Laurie, what are you saying? How does a personal risk incentive look like for core work tasks that don't carry inherent risk? Mhm Risk incentive. Yeah. So what I'm assuming here that what you're asking about is what is at risk when I for instance, prepare a presentation like this seemingly not much. But when you think about it from my perspective, for instance, there's actually a lot online for starters.

If I say things that are not true. This puts my reputation at risk in addition to that. If I make certain mistakes, you will think that I'm not professional. There is a risk of judgment, a risk of criticism, rejection. So there's actually a lot of risk involved and there's also a chance that maybe some of my clients already watching it. And if I make, if I make myself, if I look like an idiot, what they would think about me. So I think that there are, those are, those are the things that you want to consider. If I don't, I'm not sure if I answered your question. Uh If I did, please let me know because you're right. Things such as creating this deck, they don't really carry inherent risk. But when you dig digger, when you dip, when you dig deeper, you realize that they do, what else was here? Something else I missed. Um I'm very happy that it was not what you expected. So, what did you expect? And I'm glad that you find it, that you find a concept of flow and interesting concept, as I said, go play with it. See, see how it works for you. And yes, the deep work. Absolutely by, by car. It's by Car Newport, a fantastic book. I do agree. Claudia, what is your favorite part of that book? What is, what is the biggest takeaway for you?

You know, all let me share, let me stop sharing my screen because I feel like I would much more prefer seeing you whoopsy. Where does it come? How do I do that? OK. Here we have it. How many hours a day is responsible to be in a flow state for starters? Up to two hours? I would aim to be, I aim to be in a flow state anywhere between 60 to 90 minutes. And I would usually do it first thing in the morning. But what you would realize is that Aisha, are you, are you, are you working for yourself? Are you an entrepreneur or are you in a corporate world? Because the thing that you need to consider at this point is also the freelancer, right? So you have control over your, your own schedule. So if this is the case, you will probably be able to enter the flow state more frequently and do it for longer period of periods of time. Because whenever you work in an organization, you also need to consider the organizational systems and frameworks. And that's usually when people get to struggle because if you happen to have a meeting every single day at 10 a.m. there's nothing you can do about it. But if you are, if you are in in full control of your schedule, then you could probably aim for more than that. Uh But what I would suggest is breaking it down into separate sessions.

So you take some time in the morning sometime in the afternoon or in the evening, depending what is your biological peak time? Did it answer your question? Some deep work takeaways, energy management focus on working to get to that deep work state practice makes it better. It's a limited resource. Go on the technology, social media diet and so much more. Fantastic. I I very much like the last, the last thing you mentioned going on a technology media, social media diet. I'm a big fan of social media detox. Um I think it's the best idea actually. Um Funny enough, I used to be very active on Instagram with, especially with my work and it was January this year when I decided that I would take a break and initially the break was supposed to last three months and now what? It's June, June. Yeah, it's June and I still haven't opened an Instagram app and I'm so happy about it guys. Honestly, it's just, it's changed my life not to mention that I'm actually creating better results for myself and for my clients because I don't get distracted with. I don't want to offend anyone but trivial nonsense. What else do we have here? Apologies. Give me a sec. OK. What do we have here? I get. OK. So there is asking how do you personally at risk to more day to day tasks?

How can you make those task tasks more novel? How can you challenge yourself to perform them differently? Let's say if you're creating a pitch deck for your client. If you're a freelancer and I was suspected, if you do it the same way over and over again, it will get very boring. How could, how could you do it differently? What could you change about the process itself? Maybe be more courageous in the way you put your proposal together. How about creating a new offer? How about changing your pricing structure is an element of novelty that will keep you engaged. So that's, that's what I would suggest by the same token. Perhaps so far, you've been using one software to create your proposals. How about changing it? How about choosing something more advanced that will require more skills and you are mentioning, sorry, you're men, excuse me, Dori, you're in a corporate world, you're not a freelancer but in a corporate world. Are you in a position in? Are you in a management work? Are you, do you have a team? Are you managing people? Because often times what I would say, if this is the case that you have someone you can look up to is actually arranging a meeting and having a conversation about what are you currently have on your plate?

And how could you challenge yourself with those tasks? I understand that it can be very difficult but it can be very difficult when it comes to finding that those elements that will put you, that you put you on the line, especially in the, especially that in the corporate world, there's this inclination to stay safe. But if you have a candid conversation with either your manager or with your, with the revenue with, hr I'm sure they will be able to, to help you do just that. And if you happen to be in a leadership position, then hey, you can challenge yourself, come up with a new initiative, um keep surprising yourself and definitely automation or delegation. That's, that's a big part. And also eliminating what is not necessary, truthfully eliminating what's not necessary.

Claudia, you get into flow nearly 100% of the time when you're coaching. Yes, II, I think I feel the same and I feel that the power of actually entering a state of flow when you're coaching is because you are staying present in the moment, right? It's just, there's no destruction you need to stay present with, with the person you are, you, you are coaching, hence natural, you're in a state of flow. Um And I imagine you're very passionate about your work and you truly have a vision for yourself and the very task of coaching can be challenging. So all the, all the thing you, you're hitting all the criteria, yes, 100% when you are in a flow while coaching totally absorbed. Definitely. So that's what you want to find. And even if you're in corporate world, there are things you can do about it. There are certain tasks that you can take on simply to help yourself enter a state of flow. Unfortunately, I would need to know more details about you dory. If you're, if you would like to have a chat about it, feel free to email me and we can have a chat and see what you can do in your work when it comes to entering a flow state. OK.

If there are no more questions, I'll give you one minute and if there are no more questions, we'll have to say goodbye for today. I agree, Claudia 100%. So actually, just to facilitate your learning since we have a probably a minute ago, I want you to type one thing that you're taking away from the session, whatever it is small or big. One thing if you were to summarize your learnings in one word, in one phrase, what would it be? And following my own, my own advice, I'm going to sip on some water. What is the, what is one thing prepare carefully for optimal performance? Mhm Claudia, I don't know if you, if you would find it helpful, but I always think about a flow state as what happens prior to that. What happens throughout it and what happens as I leave the state? So when I think about preparation, I was going to break it down into three different stages. In this way, you can kind of, you can address different metrics at a different point. One thing at a time beautiful. I'm very glad Aisha. One thing at a time. Definitely, I'm sure it will. You will find, you will find a lot of comfort as well as a lot of improvement in actually performing one thing at a time. Things that may, that we may consider to be work like social media or work for the brain.

They all, unfortunately, maybe you can try going on a detox on a social media detox and I do recommend the book as well that Claudia Claudia put somewhere in a chat deep work. I think that if this is something you're struggling with, um this book will definitely open your eyes. OK, guys. Thank you so much. You're empowered. I wish you a beautiful rest of your morning, afternoon, evening, wherever you are. Um If there's anything I can help you with in regards to the flow state, feel free to email me, I'll be more than happy to answer all your questions and keep doing amazing work in the world. Just use the flow state. It will make it much, much easier for you. Thank you. Bye bye.