Boost Productivity and Focus with Flow State Methods with Dr. Sue Jackson

Published Oct 11, 2024, 2:08 PM

In this engaging episode, we unlock the secrets of the 'flow state' with Dr. Sue Jackson, a renowned expert in performance psychology and bestselling author. Discover how this peak state of focus and productivity, often experienced by elite athletes and artists, can be harnessed by anyone to improve daily life, work, and even exam preparation. Dr. Jackson explains flow, its nine dimensions, and how attentional control plays a crucial role in accessing this optimal state. We will also discuss the personality types, professions most prone to experiencing flow, and learn the key differences between flow, 'being in the zone,' and deep work, along with why flow isn’t a constant state.

Packed with practical insights, this conversation offers actionable strategies to balance challenge and skill, overcome flow-blockers, and integrate flow into educational settings. Whether you're aiming to boost productivity, enhance learning, or find more joy in everyday activities, this episode provides a holistic guide to tapping into the power of flow.

Key Topics:

  • Flow State: Definition and Characteristics

  • The Nine Dimensions of Flow

  • Attentional Control and its Relationship to Flow

  • Flow State in Various Life Areas Beyond Sport

  • Personality Types and Professions Prone to Flow States

  • Differences Between Flow, 'Being in the Zone', and Deep Work

  • Integrating Flow into Educational Settings and Exam Preparation

Memorable Quotes:

  • “we take ourselves out of our comfort zone by stretching, uh, boundaries, maybe stretching the challenge a little bit higher than what we might be entirely comfortable with.”

  • “without that ability to pay attention to refocus attention, you know, flow is not gonna happen”

  • “it's about training our ability to be able to know where our attention is and to bring it back and again”

  • “the culmination of having these other eight factors all happening together is that we have what's known as an autotelic experience, which means. intrinsically rewarding or enjoyable”

  • “So if we can learn to trust ourselves in a situation that it's safe for us to remain in, unlike your example there, then we can shift from anxiety.”

  • “high level performance, it's very much about the trust. Yeah, whereas at the lower levels, it might be you simply don't have the skills and you've got to develop them.”

  • “if you're going to be involved in a task and you don't, your phone isn't part of that task, then having it on silent makes sense. Otherwise there will be distractions.”

  • “it's, uh, incorrect to, to sort of think that there's just a switch that we can turn on”

  • “we can experience flow in everyday life. And it comes down to that balance of challenges and skills”

Actionable Takeaways:

  • To achieve flow, engage in activities that stretch your abilities but are still within your capabilities.

  • Establish specific objectives for your tasks and find ways to get quick feedback on your progress to enhance your flow experience.

  • Develop your ability to focus and maintain concentration, as this is crucial for entering and staying in a flow state.

  • Learn to recognise when you're in flow and when negative self-talk or distractions are pulling you out of it.

  • Don't limit your flow experiences to sports or work; seek opportunities for flow in different aspects of your life, such as hobbies or creative pursuits.

  • Minimise distractions and establish conditions that support deep focus and engagement in your chosen activities.

  • Integrate flow principles into studying by breaking down revision into manageable chunks, setting clear goals, and creating a distraction-free study environment to enhance learning and exam preparation.

Resources Mentioned:


Connect with Dr. Sue Jackson:
Learn more about Dr Sue Jackson 
Dr Sue Jackson on LinkedIn
Dr Sue Jackson on Facebook

Connect with Paul Taylor:
Learn more about Paul Taylor
Paul Taylor on LinkedIn
https://www.linkedin.com/in/paultaylor1971/
Paul Taylor on Instagram
Paul Taylor on YouTube

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We all have the ability to access flow. It's not an easy state to be able to access. It's quite difficult to access flow. However, it is accessible and that we can get better at it through training our psychological skills.

Doctor Sue Jackson, welcome to the podcast.

Thank you very much Paul for having me on your show.

It is an absolute pleasure, and it's a real pleasure to actually talk about what we're going to talk about, which is all about flow state. But you refer to yourself as a performance psychologist, which I love because it crosses across different domains. Is kind of focused not on problems, but on about being really good or going from good to great. So just give our listeners a little bit of a high level tour of your experience, professional experience, academic. So I call you, I put you firmly in the bracket of procademic p academic.

Oh that's a nice term too. I hope that one takes some traction, or maybe it already has.

I meete it up, and I call myself a practice somebody who takes all the academic research and then practically applies it to people to help them breath their lives. Right.

Yeah, yeah, Well, I mean, that's quite close to what I do, Paul. So, I began life as an academic and worked in universities in Australia after returning from North America, where I did my master's and PhD in sports psychology at that time. And a lot of what we now call performance psychology is drawn from sports psychology, and obviously because sports psychology is about helping high performers be able to go to the next level, be the best they can be, and so it's that application to anyone who's seeking to be the best they can be, no matter who that is or what the context is. And so I transitioned out of an academic role to a practitioner role in performance psychology in two thousand and seven, and that's the space that I've been working in. And also I'm an author. I like to write, and I guess that's kind of what drew me into the academic world. Really was enjoying writing, enjoying that analytical process of research, but primarily like being able to make a difference. So that's why I am now practicing as a what do you call it, a p academic.

Pracademic academic performance psychologist. Let's talk about flow stit. So you've written, you've written a book, an Amazon bestseller, no less, well done. I tip my hat to you all about experiencing flow. So let's just start from the start. A lot of people will have heard of flow, but I see it misused a lot around the internet. And I see people consultants talking about being in a permanent state of flow.

Oh okay, well, good luck to them. I don't know what they're on.

That's exactly what I was thinking. So, so you worked with the great man himself. And I'll give a terrible pronunciation, mehs met me high? Who can you correct me on that?

The me high was great? And me high translates to Mike. So he's known by what was known by Mike. He passed in twenty twenty one at the good age of eighty seven. And so Mike Chick sent me high. So the last name is Chick sent me high.

Okay, cool. So talk to us. So you had the pleasure of working with him for a bit of time, Can you give us a really good definition of what flow stee it is?

Oh?

I hope so. And I think that, as you said, many people are familiar with flow, but I also grew that there's probably different definitions or ideas about it bouncing around. And so one of the reasons for writing my recently released book Experiencing Flow is to try to help people to understand what flow is. So basically, flow is a set when you're totally focused on the task at hand. So that's the most simple experience of it. And it occurs when you're in a challenging situation and you have the skills and you trust those skills to be able to meet the challenge. So you basically take yourself out of your comfort zone, which I'm sure you'd be happy to hear me call that word. And so, yeah, we take ourselves out of our comfort zone by stretching boundaries, maybe stretching the challenge a little bit higher than what we might be entirely comfortable with. And that combined with skills to match that challenge, that is kind of like the first and main precondition to be able to experience this state when you get totally engaged in what you're doing.

Yeah, and this is where I see it bastardized because people on the internet talk about being inflousde it all day long and being influsty when you're relaxed. But challenge is critical to it, isn't it?

Absolutely? Challenge is critical, and that's always been a component of Mike. I'm going to use the word Mike to refer to Mike Chicks and Me High because that's a lot more accessible for people. And Mike always was referring to a level of challenge being present. As to what that level of challenge is, you know, we're talking about a subjective experience, So basically it does come down to one's perceptions. So the same person or two people can perceive the same objective challenge quite differently, right, And so it really comes down to how you perceive the challenge and then also how you perceive your skills, your capabilities. Have you got what it takes to meet that challenge? So you need to get that balance, right, Yeah.

And I think this plays into the whole idea of challenge or threat, which I talk a lot about in terms of I'm not sure if you're familiar with the hardiness literature a little bit, yeah, yeah, And so this idea that there can be a potentially stressful slash challenging situation. One person may view it as a challenge and the other person may view it as a threat. We know if that person views it as a threat, it has a different impact on the cardiovascular system and negative impact and it activates cortisol, whereas if they view it as a challenge, it actually has a positive impact on the cardiovascular system and activiates the fight or flight response, the more adaptive part. But I think what a lot of people don't get about the challengeing threat. You know, it's just like, oh, it's going to be a mindset, just have a positive mindset, this is Is this a challenge? In order to you to really view as a challenge, you have to be confident that you have the skills to meet it, right, absolutely, So that's kind of flow there, really, isn't it. I mean, are those elements come into it? Are there any any other elements about being any flow step? And then on the back of that, can it be both physical and mental, emotional, psych sach psychological or are there any particular constraints around it?

Okay, So just to take one step back when you're talking about challenge or threat, if anybody has seen the model of subjective experience that is used to illustrate flow and where flow is positioned in terms of subjective experience. And that model is in my book and it's also available in other sources. But basically, if you think of a pigraph, and there's like eight channels in this paragraph, so you've got challenges on one access and skills on the other access. So flow is that channel where both your challenges and your skills are being extended. And then if you were to go to the left of that and you get to a state of arousal and then from there to a state of anxiety. So you know, it's very similar in terms of what you're calling threat. It's very close. It's fine tune right like so like it would be a challenge one moment and then the next moment is a threat. And it does come down very much to our perceptions but also to our psychological skills and how well we're able to sort of notice where our focus is and bring it back if it's not in the right place.

So I'm really becoming more and more interested in attention and an attentional control was involved in a debthly study all around high performance cognition and all of the experts in the study we were all asked to re it trainable cognitive primaries that on Japan High Performance Cognition, and every single person agreed that the most important part of performance under pressure was attentional control. How does that play in to flow? I mean you hinted at it a little bit.

There, Yeah, well, I mean if the very most simple definition of flow is when you've got your total attention on the task that you're doing at the present time, now, that is something that's hard for most of us to sustain.

Particularly these days.

Right, particularly these days exactly, And that is why mindfulness has become so important in life these days, is because we're dealing with so much that is a potential distraction or a real distraction. And so being able to train our attentional skills through mindfulness I think is really critical in terms of being able to have an awareness of where our attention is like as you would be very familiar poul like through mindfulness, with develop greater awareness of where our attention is so like without developing some sort of psychological skill, be it mindfulness, be it breathing something along the lines that helps develop our awareness, then we start to notice so actually my attention isn't on task. But also mindfulness obviously gives us the skill set to bring that attention back back to the present moment. So it's I think, and in my book, I spend quite a bit of time discussing how mindfulness can be a pathway to flow, and for me, it is a really relevant pathway to flow. And without that ability to pay attention and to refocus attention, you know, flow is not going to happen.

Yeah, absolutely, because you know, we can think in this model, because I can picture the flow is in the top right, then you go left to have a risal, and then you have anxiety. And that can be when thought creep into your mind. Right, negative self talk keeps into your mind, and you can all of a sudden snap out of a flue stee it and back into through arizal and into threat pretty pretty quickly. But that self awareness is really critical, isn't it of where my attention actually is.

Yeah, self awareness, And then I think an ability to be okay with what you're talking about, which is those like self doubts that come into our experience and be able to not give them too much power, like in our mind, not give them too much space. And one of the things that there are actually nine dimensions a flow, but I'm sure we'll touch on them. But one of the things that makes flow as enjoyable an experience as it is is that during flow we let go of self consciousness. So we drop that sense of is this okay? Am I okay? What are they thinking of me? And because it's really hard to not be self conscious in the lives that we live, it's a lovely experience that we can then look back on and say, oh, wow, that was great. I wasn't so caught up in my own head during that time. And the reason that we're not self conscious in flow is it comes back to that key component is that you're totally focused on the task at hand. So if you are actually one hundred percent focused on the task at hand, you can't simultaneously have some percent also on worry about yourself. It's just doesn't add up, right, And so it's about training our ability to be able to know where our attention is and to bring it back again and again.

Yeah, if we could just create a button that people could press where they could drop self consciousness, the world would be so much of a better place, wouldn't it, And people's lives would be so much better because so many people spend so much time living in their heads. So in Japanese psychology, which my vice practitioner of, they say, the most important thing that you're in control of in your life is the flashlight of your attention. I like that and I love that because whatever you pay attention to, you bringing commits sales to it. Absolutely that's the key thing. So gaining control of that flashlight, I think not only really critical for flows to it, but I think it's really critical for our overall well being.

And I think, all right, you're like how happy we are? For sure? You know because for most of us narcissists excluded perhaps being caught being caught up in our own heads and thinking about ourselves. It's pretty negative, right. It doesn't take long for us to be reminded about some reason why we're not good enough, we're not this enough, yeah, and so on, and that's just a downward spiral. And so you know, that's one of the greatest challenges, isn't it to be able to let go of that? But like that analogy about that flash flight of your attention, So like if you were to think about having that flash flight of attention totally on whatever it is you're engaged in. You could think of that as being like a flow state, right, because you're totally engaged in what's in front of you or what you've decided to focus your attention on.

Hi different. I see as you were talking about that. I was gardening last weekend and I just find myself. I was putting out weeds and I was just fascinated by the resilience of the weeds, and I different weeds have got different routes, and I caught myself in actually flows to it, gardening right, So flows to it. You know a lot of people think, I think a natural thing that comes to mind is sport, right, And I think anybody who's done sport will be aware of that loss of self consciousness. You know, the high demands, high challenge, but also you've got the skills to meet it, and pain at time just melts a little bit. But I presume that you can be influenced it in so many different areas of your life.

Yes, And sport was actually the area that I was initially most interested in looking at it because I was studying for my masters and then my PhD in sports psychology, and I stumbled across the concept of flow and immediately there was a language for those times when as an athlete myself, I had been totally engaged in what I was doing and generally performed to my highest level in whatever that activity was, and remember it as being special, like, no matter what the outcome actually was, it was that experience of being in flow. And as I said, when I read the first book on flow that I did, which was called Beyond boardom and Anxiety, was like, Oh, there's actually this thing, there's this concept, there's psychologists studying this. And in this first book Beyond boardom and Anxiety. As well as athletes, Mike Chicks at me High, he studied chess players, He studied physicians, dancers, and he studied surgeons and so very different activities, and there was this consistency of experience, consistency of reported subjective experience, even though what a chess player is doing is different to a surgeon mid procedure. When we're looking at, well, what is it like when you're totally involved in what you're doing, the characteristics do tend to have some consistency across different types of activities and settings.

Okay, now I sort of deraeled you a little bit. Let's not go back and talk about the nine different dimensions of flow. So one of them was dropping self consciousness, was it?

Uh huh yep? So total focus on the task at hand is another one. We've also covered a challenging activity, So that's that challenge skill balance. It's not just a challenging activity, but that there's this balance between challenges and skills. You've got clear goals about what you are doing in the situation, and you get immediate feedback as you're going. That helps you to stay on task and just to pause. There a moment in terms of why is sports so conducive to flow, Well, if we just think about sport has graded levels of challenge that we can always place ourselves into an appropriate level of challenge for our present skill set, and so we can extend ourselves a little bit but not too much. So we've got that challenge to your balance. And in sport that's just something that there's really no limits, right, we can just keep challenging ourselves. As we see in the greatest athletes in whatever sport, they are always pushing the boundaries. Like the recent Olympics, for example, in Paris, we saw so many examples of that anyway, So we've got your challenge to your balance in sport. You've also got clear goals in sport. Like it's because each sport has its own set of rules, its own set of expectations about what you do within that sport, it is very clear. Like you've got clarity as you're going along, and because you're moving your body, you're getting feedback from many sources, including from your body, about how you're going. So this idea of having a challenging activity greater levels of challenge, an activity where there are clear goals and you're getting feedback is one of the reasons that sport is very conducive to flow. Having said that, there are other activities that you could probably say would also have those three what are called preconditions to flow.

So they are preconditions. They're challenging and the skill balance, the clearer goals, and the immediate feedback. Okay cool. And then there's there was four more that we did.

Yes, okay, So we've got as a result of the title focus on the task. You have a characteristic called action awareness merging, and that's where you and the activity that you're doing, or you and the task tend to meld into one. And that is also related to this loss of self consciousness. And so like a cyclist might describe the bike as an extension of their body, they're just one machine moving in the same direction. A musician might describe the instrument as an extension of their hands, say, and that it's all the sense of oneness. So that's another characteristic. We've got a sense of control in flow, so we people like to feel in control. Having said that, control is a slightly different state in this channel model of subjective experience to flow, but it's the sense of like you drop, worry about failing.

Jeez, how important is that in sports psychology, right.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah. So that's another one is sense of control. Time transformation, which is an interesting one I think of all of the nine dimensions. It's this sense of time passes differently when you are engaged in something. It can be a conversation, it can be a sports activity, it can be playing your musical instrument, it can be attending a concept, whatever it is. When you have this experience of flow during it, the sense of time often seems to pass differently. And again it comes back to this simple one of you're paying attention to the so you're not sort of okay, so what time is it now? How much longer have I got? Again? Comes back to attention. And then the last of the nine characteristics poul is called autotellic experience, which is really the culmination of having these other eight factors all happening together, is that we have what's known as an autotellic experience, which means intrinsically rewarding or enjoyable, as in we enjoy it, you know. And we may not enjoy it at the time, as in we might not have awareness at the time that oh, wow, this is really enjoyable, but when we look back on it, we definitely perceive it as an enjoyable experience.

Yeah, very interesting, and that time transformation. I just bookmarked a research people this morning which I'm going to go back where they have identified neurons in the brillin that are responsible for the concept of time. And wouldn't it be interesting to see if in flow states those neurons are quiet and down.

Wow, that would be really exciting. Yeah, it's just a specific neurons.

Specific neurons. I'll flick in the research paper whenever we're done, because I think that might be an area you might be interested in exploring, because people will understand that that time just kind of changes, right, And as you were going through all that stuff, you know, what popped into my head was when I was doing flying training back in the military nineteen ninety eight I think it was, and we're doing advanced flying training in helicopters. I was doing anti submarine warfare. And what you do in the flying training is you do created flights and each one and you do a simulator and then you go out and do a real thing where you you know, the first one is so simple. You go out there, there's a submarine on the surface hat and you see the submarine. It goes on water and it goes in a straight line, and then we've got to track it. And then the culmination of this is what's called a thirsty war, which I don't know if it still happens, but every thirsty off the coast of the UK, NATO would run exercises where it was war games and there was a whole heap of ships and helicopters and submarines involved in this war gaming. And I remember we were really caught behind on weather and we were to do our third flight, and everything was just backing up. So they said, like, we're just going to go out and do a thirsty war. You guys know this is going to be challenging. And we took off and went out there and I remember we joined and it was pandemonium. There was two radios in my ears, there was all.

These contacts on the radars.

We're trying to get in. It's dark, the pilots are hassling me, and I had a complete brain implosion. It is the first, probably and only ever complete melt down that I have had, and the instructor had to take me out of the seat and he did it, and then we went back and they debrief that. It turns out the guy and the other helicopter, Simon, had the exact same experience, right, He had a complete melt down. And then about three weeks later, or maybe four weeks later, woman did another Thirsty War and we both did really well, and time went like that, and that was because we had increased our skill level in between, right. But it was exactly what you're saying that if the challenge is too high for your skills, you go out, and I went in about nine seconds all the way into anxiety slash Brian implosion. Right, But then weeks few weeks pass, and you know, you increase your skills, and that's what they do. You know, that greated complexity on each flight and stepping into that so that you increase your skill level. So it's just a little bit of an example that popped into my head that kind of explained everything. All of the elements of flow were in that.

And so when you're experiencing what you called a brain implosion and like really high levels of anxiety, you had to like step out of that situation, right. It wasn't possible that you could bring your anxiety level down sufficiently to continue. And also in that type of scenario that just probably isn't safe.

So yes, that's what it was a complete safety thing.

And it was because it was dark, it was clouding, the piets needed to know where the other helicopters were, and I was just I just how to complete another meltdown, the one and only I think complete brain implosion that I've had in my life, right, And it was just well, I guess the pressure of the situation as well.

Right, So it's not like sport you can just tap out.

A little bit, but yeah, true.

Yeah, and that leads me into I there are any particular personality types or professions that tend to lend themselves more towards flow steps.

That's a really great question. Chicks and me High actually talked about and wrote about the autotellic personality, which is exactly that. It's a type of person that is more likely to be able to experience flow. And some of the qualities that make someone autotellic is that they tend to seek out challenge, and they tend to be intrinsically motivated towards most of the things that they're doing. And rather than definitely you know, we've always got some intrinsic, some extrinsic reasons behind what we're doing, but this sense of a high level of intrinsic motivation, challenge seeking, high level of resilience, and good skills at being able to pay attention, and then what might referred to an autotelic personality as the people of flow. Actually, I think that's a really nice term, like the people of flow. Yeah, these people are more likely to be able to experience flow in whatever it is they're doing. Now, having said that, everything that we've talked about in terms of flow and what makes up flow. It's all trainable so we can become more autotellic. It's not just there's this gene for autotellic personality. You've either got it or you don't. Like Chicks and me, High would say that we all have the ability to access flow. He would also say it's not an easy state to be able to access. It's quite difficult to access flow. However, it is accessible and that we can get better at it through training our psychological skills, which is then where my work is based is about what sort of psychological skills are we going to help you with? And that is very much an individual question. I think like there are certain standard things like attention. We've talked about quite a bit here. You know, attention is always important. We can always improve. Most of us can improve our ability to pay attention. But some people would be more praying to self consciousness, so you might spend more time in that space, like helping somebody, somebody maybe praying for anxiety and helping them manage that. And it's not about trying to get rid of anxiety, because you know that's that's like a losing game anyway, But your anxiety is close to flow if you think about this model that I'm describing. So if we can learn to trust ourselves in a situation that it's safe for us to remain in unlike your example there, then we can shift from anxiety into flow.

Sorry, so just on that, and I love that you said, but not getting rid of anxiety, because I hate that expression getting rid of anxiety. But how much of that am helping some of the anxiety to experience fluisty? It involves increasing their skill level or their perception of their skill level.

Yeah, Like are you saying, is it either or or like it?

Well, that's a kind of a continuum, really, isn't it, Because sometimes they have the skills, but they don't perceive that they have it.

That's exactly the case. And so like the higher the challenge that ones involved in, generally you've got skills that are helping you to be able to be in that challenging zone, whatever that challenging zone is. And therefore, actually the higher we go in terms of elite performance in whatever domain, those performers tend to have great skills. They tend to have pretty outstanding levels of skills however, doubt comes in. That's a human characteristic, is that for most of us, doubt's going to come in, And so it is. I think at the higher levels of performance that we're talking about high level performers, it's very much about the trust in the skills, whereas at the lower levels it might be you simply don't have the skills, then you've got to develop them, y.

Yeah, yeah for sure. And how much does discomfort tolerance or distress tolerance play into this?

Yeah, well, I think that's an area you can probably talk to pretty well right with your work. And I think it's being comfortable with being uncomfortable, which is kind of like a skill in anxiety management. Is just that it's learning to be comfortable with these changes in physiology that are happening that come with heightened arousal, and not like putting a whole bunch of negative, unhelpful labels on those, but just like recognizing my heart's beating fast, or my palms are sweaty here, or you know, and being okay with that, and then you know, if you are in that anxiety channel, then learning to be okay with that as well. And another skill or psychological approach that I bring into my work is acceptance and commitment therapy, which.

Ah yeah, protestion and I love I love Okay, I love it because it's action focused, right, it is.

It's action focused. And also that that first word acceptance, that's like a way of managing anxiety is to accept it. So to answer your question, accepting the discomfort, it doesn't mean that you want it. It doesn't mean that you're going to like go and seek it out, but like if it's showing up, just being able to be Oh okay, So this is my experience right now. What am I going to do in light of that? And that's where your attention skills come in. Well, what am I going to do in light of that? Well, I'm going to choose to focus on this because this matters to me.

So yeah, absolutely, I'll tell you if I was tizarre of the language universe, I would ban the word anxiety and replace it with over arisal.

Oh yeah for sure. Yeah. Yeah. Well, as you know from what I've described with the flow model or the model of subjective experience, you know, there's flow and then there's arousal, and then there's anxiety, and then there's worrying and so you know, yeah, arousal is can be a neutral state to be in. It could be perceived as a neutral state to be in, and it's only when we start putting the labels on it that then it's like, oh, no, I don't want to be here, I feel terrible.

And we medicalize it as well. Right, that's absolutely anyway, that's a whole nother podcast. So tell me this. Is there a difference between flow state and what people report as being in the zone or this concept of deep work? Are they just both alternative words for flow state?

Yeah? Really interesting? Well, being in the zone is a colloquial term for flow, I think yeah, And I think that that term has been around a long time, particularly in sport, but in other domains, you know, being in the zone is probably not that meaningful. But definitely in sport that's a term that's used that athletes and coaches talk about, and I think that they may well be talking about flow in terms of deep work and cow Newport's work there. Yeah, so deep work is a state of total focus on the task at hand, and it's not my concept, so I couldn't say whether it's flow. I think it could be flow, but I don't know that.

I think it's necessarily all right because, as you said, some of the key things, the key elements challenge and skill balance, because you can be doing deep work that either you don't have the skill for or is quite easy, but you're just focused.

Right, true, Yeah, that's true.

I think it's probably contextual.

Right, Yeah, No, that makes sense.

And I guess that's where those prerequisites, was it, the challenge and skill balance, the clear goals and immediate feedback.

Yes, that's exactly right.

So they're the ones that differentiate from these others stay its potentially.

And from mindfulness as well.

Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, okay, cool, that makes sense. So tell me, with your time working with me or make what were the biggest lessons that you liked?

And this is something that I go into writing the start of my book, and a big motivation to write Experiencing Flow was to honor the work of Mike Chicks at me High and to try to help to build awareness of it through whatever ways I can in my own small way to help people to understand what flow is. And I think Mike embodied the work that he was engaged in, you know, having spent time with him, we wrote a book together called Flowing Sports in nineteen ninety nine because we both shared a passion for sport, and he was encouraging of my master's and PhD work in that area. So Mike was always curious. There was never a bad question, a silly question. Was always asking questions and seeking to become the best version of himself. And I think in my book are going a little bit to his background, having grown up in wartime and having experienced the chaos and the uncertainty of that. That was probably one of the influencers in his life, and also just the time in which he grew up in. There's an environment in which we growing up in and living in. But Mike, Yeah, Mike embodied somebody who was always looking to understand more and to want others to share and understand through his writings what this concept of flow was. So he's written many books, and I really encourage anyone that's at all interested in what we're talking about here to check out any or all of his different books that he's written. So he's written in the work of business, he's written in the field of creativity, and he's written in the world, in the realm of evolving self so he's very much into complexity and growth in complexity. He's written about flowing daily life and so, like Mike was an extraordinary thinker, and I feel very grateful to have had an opportunity to have learned from him.

Yeah, it's a bit of a legend, is he really? So tell me this, what are so you work about a lot of individuals around helping them and organizations helping them to get into flu stit. What are some of the common barriers that you see with individuals and with teams and you can take those in any order you want.

I think we've touched on some of those barriers. One is distractability. Another is self doubts and that in a critic and that's that tendency to get caught up in ourselves, which is so easy to do, you know, when things aren't going well. So in terms of like barriers, I think also like the type of society we live in where technology is so much key to everything we do, and other people have written about this is like we're training ourselves and the lives that we have, and all of the technology in front of us is actually training distractability a lot of the time versus paying attention to one thing for a sustained amount of time. And so I think that you know, those are some key challenges in terms of teams I have looked at and there are researchers that are specific looking at flowing teams. Jeff Founder out in the Netherlands is one of those people. And what I've found when I've interviewed athletes, whether they're in team sports or individual sports, is that difference with the team aspect of whether the team can get into flow or you can get to flow in that team situation is how well is that is the team playing because it's no longer just you, So it comes down to team performance more much more variables. But also the communications. Something that comes up is like what's the type of communications, what's the nature of communications, because that's a source of feedback, right, So keeping those positive and task focused will help a group or a team to be able to maybe tap into flow.

And you know one of the biggest ones challenge not stress challenge.

Yes, yes, exactly that perceptions.

Yeah, and then so look, look, I think you've hinted at some of them that what individuals can do to kind of enhance flow in their lives, whether it's in the workplace or at home. I think one thing that would pretty bloody obvious is put your guard down, mobile phone away. I think that's going to be a prerequisite unless year you get into I don't think it's possible to get into flow stead when your doomscrolling, right, I don't know.

Having said that, like, gaming is an area that you know, some people will experiencing flowing, and it has been studied. Because it's more of a controlled or potentially more of a controlled environment, you can control more variables. But I think, yeah, deciding if if you're going to be involved in a task and you don't your phone isn't part of that task, then having it on silent makes sense. Yeah, absolutely, because otherwise there will be distractions.

Yeah. There's a really cool study called brain drain and that I often start my talks with, and it showed that if if your mobile phone is sitting on the table upside down on silent, it reduces your working memory capacity and your fluid intelligence by at least ten percent. Really, yeah, it's very cool. So that just people think that just having it on the desk upside down, it's still a bloody attention thief.

Right, because you know what the phone's associated with them.

So yeah, correct, So a bit of an that's very interesting, definite enemy of flow. Something just popped into my head.

Other particular Brian states or signatures like Has this been investigated in functional MRI scanners or any other type of tech imaging technology.

Yes, there has been some research in that area. It's not the easiest area of research, as you can imagine, because.

Yes, and if you've ever been in an MRI scanner, you know they're not particularly conducive to flow, star to flow.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, So as technology, like we've we've kind of been giving technology a bad rap. But as technology continues to improve and we get better, more accurate in situe ways of looking at what's going on in the brain while people are engaged in their activity, we will come to understand what's happening more. But you know, obvious things like reduced levels of beta brain weigh frequency, you know, less activity in the default brain network, some physiological measurements of like ease and fluidity in terms of that synchronization between brain and body that occurs when we're in flow and so on. So yes, it is being looked at, and I think it's a it's a very exciting area for future research.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And are people when they're in flow do they have to be in alpha Brian way of steer? Its? So can you be in little better and still be in flow? Because you know that that challenge would seem to suggest, are they arise? Well, maybe that's the demarcation between where arisal turns into flow.

Yeah, interesting area and I probably can't provide you with a simple answer on that one, but I think that better excludes flow. But I guess it's where that and we've always got you know, different, we've got more than our for and better brain waves happening, and so you know the role of theater and gamma and so on. Like, it's not an area that I can can comment on specifically, but I think, as I said, as we get better at being able to tap into what's going on inside people's heads, we'll come to understand a bit more about that psychophysiology of flow. However, there was just just one thing that came to mine as I was talking there, is that Mike was always cautious about trying to pin flow down too much, you know, like to say it's this and it's not that because of his attitude, his curiosity, and his not wanting to sort of like be too black and white, and also he didn't want to oversimplify what is a very complex psychological state. And I think that that's probably one of the concerns in the popular media, is perhaps an oversimplification of what is quite a complex psychological state and not an easy state for people to get into.

Yeah, and these people who tell you can be in flow all day long are just complete another Charlattan's right.

Well, I think that i'd probably have to agree with you on that, pool Like, it's just like you can't run a marathon twenty four hours a day. Like it's about balance, it's about times of focus and times of restoration and recovery. It's just it's not sustainable even if it was possible, because you'd wear yourself out because of the high level of intensity. Yes, yes, that is involved, And I mean after a flower experience, you might be feeling tired because you've brought all of your resources to a very challenging activity.

I think that is a really good point, because it really is complete resource, certainly brand resource, and depending what you're doing, a lot of physical resources as well, particularly if it's sport right. So, you know, the idea that you can be in this huge periods of time I think is completely ridiculous and not have self awareness and all of that sort of stuff. It's preposterous.

It's also it's incorrect to sort of think that there's just a switch that we can turn on and we can like I've seen and written or I've not written about, but I've read people writing about hacking the flow state, like let's just find ways to hack into this, you know. Like for me, again, I'm not supportive of that. I'm more supportive of well, let's be And this is what I think I could speak from my care is like, let's become more psychologically complex selves by developing the skills necessary to be able to access flow in a challenging situation, versus find some way to just, oh, let's just hack into it, you know that. Just to me, it cheapens, It cheapens. What's a very rich experience.

Yeah, yeah, totally agree. Last few questions, it's year twelve for students, my daughters in the thrills of it right now, coming up to exams. You presumably integrating flow into educational settings is a great idea. Any thoughts on that, and then any little tips for any parents that might be less thing look at somebody in year twelve to help them get into that flow with their studies.

Yeah, I think what we're saying flow is about a challenging situation. So your year twelve exams, there you go. You've got your challenging situation tick. That's ticked. So have you got the skills at this point in time? Well, let's hope so, because you've applied yourself over your years of schooling. So now it's about trusting the skills that you do have. It's no time for self doubt. It's no time for well what haven't I gone over or what don't I understand? It's about focusing on what skills can you bring to a very high level of challenge and to provide you with the best performance that you can achieve and to help you to focus the best that you are able to in each of your exams. And you may or you may not find flow, but you'll certainly you'll do better than what you would if you decided to take a negative attitude and to doubt yourself. Right, So, in terms of education and flow, positive psychology has been an area that's had a lot of growth, and Chicks at Me High I actually had a lot to do with the resurgence of positive psychology.

He was Seigman, didn't he for Seligman and Kicks.

At Me High. Yeah, And they wrote a great paper in two thousand in American Psychologists where they outlined positive psychology and why it mattered and so on, and flow was situated as a central concept within their model of positive psychology. And so when positive psychology has been uptaken, and I do see that in educational settings that well being programs are being offered more by schools and so on. Some of those programs if they're well versed in what positive psychology is about, including the flow concept. And one of the leaders in this area in terms of schools within Australia was Geelong Grammar School. Oh yeah, yep, yeah, So Geelong Grammar School had a positive education or it's called positive education, but Operating Positive Psychology Principles has had a long standing positive education program and obviously has a lot of resources and decided to invest in the positive education space and they brought out Martin Seligman to spend some time at Gelong Grammar School and Mike Chicks and Me High also had some contribution, as did many leaders in the positive psychology space into what makes a good positive education program. And so Geelong Grammar School had a flagship and still does have a flagship positive education program that spurred on a lot of other schools to do likewise. And I just want to mention that one of the key players in that space is a cold league and good friend of mine by the name of John Hendry. And for many years he's retired now, but over fifty years spent in education, and he was passionate about flow and he was passionate about in his Director of student Welfare at Geelong Grammar School about incorporating flow into their positive education program. Also shout out to John.

Yeah cool, very cool. Last couple of questions, I presume there would be a link between flow states and positive mental health.

Yeah, for sure.

I think.

I think that that is something that goes hand in hand, right, because you're challenging yourself and so you're extending yourself. Mike uses this term growth in psychological complexity through floor experiences, So we are becoming more complex human beings through floor experiences. These experiences are almost always viewed as positive experiences being in flow, and so there's a lot of reasons why there are connections there between flow and positive mental health.

Yeah, and I think there's probably a link there in stuff that you feel proud of. Right, So if you've been in flow ste it, you know there's generally I'm kind of prior to I achieved that that was high dumb demand, high skills, and for me, exactly for me, a life that you can be proud of is much better than a life of happiness, particularly as we tend to define it in the West. Are you familiar with the Japanese term of ikey guy.

I have heard of that term.

Do you think there's an overlap here between flow and ikey guy?

I have. I have heard people talk about that overlap. John Henry would be one of those people, and I probably am not well versed enough in it to comment, But if it's something that you think from what we've been talking about here, you see parallels between the two.

From what I know, and I interviewed professor Ken Mogi, Japanese guy who all about ikey guy, and I think there's definitely an overlap. It's probably like a then diagram because ikey guy is stuff that you can be completely immersed in that you kind of lose the concept of time. But you can have ikey guy that's not particularly challenging. So that's where I think there is that overlap, right, So can't said one of his ichy guys is making his cup of coffee in the morning and doing a ceremony around it and then sitting down with a piece of chocolates. Not particularly it's not particularly challenging. But other ikey guys, you know, particularly the centregeneurians growing their own vegetables and all of those sorts of things. But I think there would definitely be that overlap in the ven diagram, particularly if you throw challenging and then then I think there is lots of similarities.

Can I just come in on that too, Like we have talked a lot about challenge skill and High challenge and so on, but in terms of flowing daily life chicks and me. High has written about that something that we can achieve and his book Finding Flow, The Psychology of Engagement with Everyday Life, published in nineteen ninety seven, was all about that, and he and others have looked at flow in daily life settings, and it's about relative balance of challenges and skills. So yeah, it's not like a super high challenge necessarily, but you know you're describing that cup of coffee, you know, that act of making a cup of coffee. If you are bringing all of your attention to it and you're trying to make the best cup of coffee that you can, maybe you can experience a bit flowing.

Okay, all right, so it doesn't have to be high chat. That's interesting, right, because I always thought the challenge had to be quite.

Well generally, Yes, it is a about a high challenge. However, definitely if we can experience flow in everyday life and it comes down to that balance of challenges and skills, so that like if the challenge is just nowhere to be seen and we're super skilled, we won't experience flow, we'll experience bortum exactly.

Yeah. Cool, very last question, what gives you flow?

Sport has always been for me or moving my body. So as an older person who has had a wonderful time experiencing a number of different sports, now for me, it's about physical activity and it's about just keeping on moving and finding that sweet spot where the right level of challenge for an aging injured body can find something that's enjoyable and challenging and that you can develop your skills in. So definitely, movement, reading and writing again would be other areas for me that I would say that I've achieved flowing and can achieve flowing.

Very cool.

How about for yourself?

Yeah, look for me, pretty similar things actually, the sports stuff. I actually find podcast interviews that you get into a bit of flow, because absolutely no, there is a little bit of challenge in that you've got to follow the conversation, not what you're saying, and then think about the next questions and think about the audience interpretation and all of that. So so definitely I would say doing podcast stuff would be and writing a book for sure. And my bloody PhD.

During your PhD Yeah, yeah, Well, I think that you've demonstrated just a little bit of feedback because I think feedback, you know, can always be helpful, Like just an excellent level of attentional skills there, And so I can imagine that you do experience flow in your podcasting because I can see you've been taking some notes for example, and but just like staying very engaged and I think that you know, your ability to do that is probably a reason why you then say, well, this is one of those areas where I experienced flow, which is great, and you know, for somebody else it might be that listening to a podcast and what they're learning through that. You know, that could even be a floor experience, so like a lower level floor experience too. So yeah, it can be in any any activity as long as we're bringing skills to a challenge and we're finding a match there and we're then we're bringing all of our attentional resources to what we're doing.

Yeah, very cool. So this has been awesome. Thank you for clearing up some stuff. I've certainly learned a lot about a subject I knew a reasonable amount of vote, So that's that's a sign of your expertise. Where can people go to buy the book and find out more? Presumably you work one on one probably corporate stuff as well, So where could people go because I think a lot of leaders listening this go on, jeez, I need suit in my business to help with a bit of flow stit.

Well, thanks for My website is called Body and Mind Flow bodyomindflow dot com dot au. My book that was recently published is called Experiencing Flow and the subtitle is Life Beyond Boredom and Anxiety. And that's available through Amazon and recently recorded a audiobook, so certain it'll be available on audio platforms as well. And I have a small social media presence and people can locate that through my website as well. So yeah, body and Mind Flow, which kind of is hopefully illustrating my interests, I guess in terms of bringing things together, it's about that integration of body and minding whatever we're doing to hopefully experience.

Flow learally after my my own heart, I tell you that that body brain mind integration really critical.

I did notice we had some similarities in our website emails anyway.

Yeah, absolutely, so there's been awesome, Thank you very much. And yeah, people go and buy the book and get yourself in the flow and put your goddown mobile phone away. Thanks so