There are a lot of people out there who are unhappy in their work. The bemoan that they have missed their purpose, that nobody understands how creative they are, that their talents are overlooked. Now, there certainly are people in shitty jobs, where there is minuscule chance of satisfaction, promotion or joy. But I suspect that at least half the people who hate their jobs have one thing in common: they’re not very good at it. Pay attention – this could be you. For a while, it was certainly me.

Now, I’m not saying you’re lazy. You could be doing a lot of things, you might just not be doing them very well.

Apart from Deep Work, Cal Newport wrote another important book: So Good They Can’t Ignore You. Whilst you may initially think of this as a book about success, it is really about a more important issue – life satisfaction. He makes the very important point that following your passion is often a terrible idea, especially when that passion is an idealized version of something you are not actually very good at. This is why you should not quit your job as a civil engineer to open a Crossfit box.

When you think about it, when do you find something fulfilling and enjoyable? If you like chess, you may spend time occasionally playing a friend at about the same level, or sparring against a computer at a low setting. But if you could only play Grandmasters, your enthusiasm would quickly wane, because your ass would be kicked up and down the board, continually. (I recently found this out when I played a new chess program on my computer with Stockfish set to the highest level. It was carnage.) You would be so outclassed that you probably wouldn’t even achieve any real progress.

On the other hand, the things you are really good at usually turn out to be pretty fun, but only if you do them at the right level. Playing chess against your three-year-old will get boring fast (unless she’s some kind of prodigy). Playing against someone slightly better than you is much better, and the occasional win keeps you coming back for more. But staying at that level is not satisfying, especially when you see the magnificent games other people are playing…

What I’m saying is that your job could get more enjoyable by you getting better at it. Don’t try to be the best there’s ever been: that’s an external and discouraging focus. Pick small challenges. Improve in little ways (this is where flow’s challenge/skills balance comes in). I increased my own job satisfaction by, for instance, learning to type properly and quickly, and by learning enough coding to automate some onerous tasks that I had to repeat again and again. People start noticing your increased proficiency, you start taking some pride in your work, and little by little, satisfaction increases. Small wins accumulate. Soon, you’re ready for bigger shifts…

On the other hand, sometimes you’re not successful at what you’re doing because you’re doing completely the wrong thing. That is a much more complex topic, which we will leave for later.

This lesson took me years to learn, and I still sometimes fail to apply it, even though it is soooo simple. When I am well into a problem or project and I get stuck, I can get stuck for days or weeks. It is as if the problem is challenging my entire worth as a human being. The days seem a little darker. I obsess over it. I think about it when I’m going to bed. I wake up with it squatting like some evil gnome in my head.

Of course, there is no flow in this state. The ego is super-involved, and you feel like you’re in a fight. Creativity suffers. I tend to try the same solutions over and over, with perhaps small variations, expecting them to magically start working. They don’t. I am miserable, but at the same time I can’t tear myself away.

What you need at this point is a hard reset. It feels like a supreme act of will, but you have to abandon that problem. Ask yourself if there is any way you can get around it. I have been stuck on problems that were totally unnecessary – by simply shifting my goals I could let go of them altogether. Supposing this isn’t the case, you still need to get far away from the demon that is living in your brain now. Don’t take an hour’s break, take a week. Go get some sun. Have a stiff drink. Then, go work on another, unrelated problem, someplace else. If you don’t shift location and give your mind something else to wrestle with, you will be thinking about the old problem before you know it.

I’m not saying the solution is going to magically appear, though it might. I’m just saying that more conscious thought is not the answer here. You have to create space. The best way to do this is to get into flow on something else. Even if nothing else, you’ll feel better.

Sometimes, we place too many conditions on states like flow. We have categorized flow triggers, looked at circumstances which create flow, and studied recovery and maintenance routines. Might we not just be making too much of this?

For instance, we know that exercise, good sleep and changes of scenery contribute to flow. So, we might start thinking that, without optimizing these things, our flow would suffer. Maybe it does, but some of the world’s greatest achievements did not occur in optimal circumstances. We should remember that most of history’s great art and science was not created by a bunch of biohackers, and we should be wary of those who promise us techniques to conquer the world, when they themselves have not contributed much. I am worried that by being so obsessed with how we can do things optimally, we sometimes don’t realize that the best thing is just to cut the bullshit and do them.

Face it, Einstein did not study books on flow in order to come up with his revolutionary theories. He didn’t even do keto. He ate pastries and smoked a pipe, and slept late. So, rather than trying to optimize your life for flow, just get to the work, and sort out the details later.