For flow, we need three levels of goals. At least, this is the interpretation. Flow is a complex state, and I doubt the same prescriptions hold for everybody. I agree that these could be handy though, so I am going to start piecing together the high-level ones, then set smaller ones that I can start pursuing today.

First: the mission. What is a life goal, that I would forsake the disciplined pursuit of all other goals for? This needs to be meaningful, and has to excite a deeper part of you. Just wanting to make as much money as possible just won’t do it. This is the one which you want to look back on your death bed upon and smile, and feel that it was a life worth living. At the same time, I want it to be attainable, lest I be overwhelmed by the magnitude. For instance, intending to reverse climate change is way too intimidating. At some point the sheer magnitude of it will make you give up and drive you to lying on the couch eating pizza. There can be a great relief in giving up an impossible goal.

Simultaneously, your goal can’t be too attainable. It will need to be at the outer edge of human possibility. Thus, if you want to save the planet, committing to getting everybody on your street to recycle is probably not enough.

At this point, I can’t say that I have a single purpose I can write down, that will get me out of bed in the morning. I have done the exercises in The Art of Impossible, and wrote down a few options, and none of them gets me going in the way I want to. Maybe we are wired in different ways, and should take that into account when setting our goals and purposes. As I have repeatedly pointed out, I like to think in terms of the process rather than the end-goal.

Perhaps I need to design a life, rather than focus on one specific goal. At the same time, I need something to help me go on when I am tired and knocked down.

The focus on contribution, on something bigger, is necessary for me. When doing something for yourself, you can more easily get discouraged and throw in the towel. When you self-worth is low, you will not put in the effort for yourself. If you are focusing on others, you might just be inspired to go that extra mile, even when you are tired and feeling like shit. Not that I am recommending martyrdom – taking care of ourselves will be a big part of this process.

I find myself being called to the keyboard. There are few things that would entice me from an open fire, grilling some meat and having a beer, and yet I want to get back to writing. I have definitely found my “how”. What you need to do with your life is the thing that keeps you awake thinking about – in a good way.

The process is the thing. Achieving goals is great, but you must have realized by now that the thrill lasts a very, ver short time. But without the goals, the process itself loses its shine. The process is most of your life; actually achieving goals is minuscule, time-wise. So make sure the process satisfies. Do not expect goals to bring you happiness, and do not celebrate them too much. They are merely signposts in your development.

I did not make any plans or set goals for yesterday, because my day was fully determined. One long meeting in the morning, and an afternoon of taking the cat to the in-laws (a whole tale on its own). The whole weekend to be spent there, which means I expected essentially nothing to get done until Monday. But today, I just had to sit down and write a little, because I have ideas for this book and need to get them down. This is a very good indication that I have nailed the “how”.

This also gives me a good flow trigger on days when it is hard to get into it. The trouble is that I want to continue writing, so take half an hour of writing to get into the zone, then transition to my scheduled priorities.

Since I do not have much time so sit and work this weekend, it is a good time to take care of some things that do not necessarily require super-focused attention, but can benefit from diffuse thinking. Right now, the most important thing for me is to get clear on my goals for this experiment. Thus far, my intentions are kind of vague, and I do not have clear signposts for progress. Here is where it gets a little tricky. I cannot simply write down all the things I need to accomplish – that is just not how research works. If I want to learn to ski double black diamond slopes, my course would be much clearer. It is easy to formulate very abstract goals, but they need to be concrete enough to be inspiring, and enable gamification.

Gamification is going to be mission-critical here. Without it, I might just end up, as I have done so many times before, trying to get myself to sit in my study/office for longer. That is a sucky game, as I am sure many of you know already. Some pursuits are much more amenable to gamification – like improving your skiing. Since skiing is already a game, the basics are right there. You have clear feedback mechanisms, and clear ways of winning. Not so with an office job, or research.

Certainly, some jobs have clear goals, but they are often not inspiring. Therefore, you need to find a way to make them so. In doing research, it is very difficult to signpost progress in advance. You don’t know where the work will lead, and committing to results beforehand often means that you spend your time trying to enforce your will on reality. Trust me, reality will win.

The type of goal I have to set will then again have to focus on the “how” rather than the “what”. I don’t know what exactly I want to accomplish, but I do know how. (There are a few goals that can be made more concrete.) I know that if I am able to spend three 90-minute sessions a day in deep work, being in flow most of the time, I will produce good results. I know that if I get better at learning new stuff, my work will be better. I also know that the more I enjoy my work, the easier all this will get and the faster I will progress, and the easier I will drop into flow. And when I get to the point where my flow arises quickly, I will be able to work only two sessions a day, trusting my subconscious to come up with the answers the rest of the day when I am out mountain biking. To do so, I will also need to be able to attain mental states which allow answers from the deep recesses of my mind to come through, without the typical interference of my analytical mind.

Another note to self: collaboration and group flow will be key.

In writing about this, some clarity is beginning to emerge. It’s not perfect yet, but I can see a way forward. My aim is not to come up with a perfect system before I start, but to allow it to evolve as I go along. I mean, if I already had the answers, this experiment would not be necessary. The first thing is to gain momentum by having some early successes, as well as feedback to allow me to improve quickly.

Damn. A very bad night’s sleep, and overslept this morning. My brain is foggy and dull, but I am determined to hit my targets. To clear up this fog, I need to put in my morning training, or suffer all day. I’m going to be a bit behind my schedule, but that’s the great thing about a generous schedule: I can catch up.

I am not in bad shape, but I think if I aim to hit flow states consistently, I am going to have to go up a level. The thing I neglect most is endurance training (all the other things I do make you feel better, quicker). This needs to step up to at least 2 hours a week of swimming and running. I usually have little time during the week for this, but hopefully being in the zone more often will create more time.

First 90-minute session done. Probably not as good as yesterday’s, but that was to be expected, since I am not fully immersed in this part of the work yet. No nootropics today. Before the second session, I am going to use some CBD oil to see if it has an effect on my state of mind. Right now, I need calm and deep focus to understand the physics of what is going on here, and a high analytic capability. I am adding some magnesium and l-theanine, which should boost calm energy and counteract some of the coffee I have been drinking. Also, I need tea. For my break, I am going to get some sun and air (remember the “cathedral effect”) and check the cricket scores. I should probably think of adding some movement to my breaks, like some quick yoga postures. This should be standardized, so I don’t have to expend any extra mental resources wondering what I am going to do.

A good sign of the next session is that I am really into the work, and I know exactly where to kick off. Progress is incremental, but it is progress nonetheless.

Note: start reading “Effortless” by Greg McKeown again, taking notes of the most important concepts in my journal.

Effortless

Second session: I felt like I was really stretching it here, and looked at the time more (which should be a no-no!). I did good work though, and was able to write up an extremely simplified model for what I am trying to do. There is definitely a jumping-off point for the next session. At the end of the session, it was clear that I needed a break (and lunch). But pushing the sessions this way is good focus practice, and helps train mental fitness to maintain cognitive load for longer. Three out of the four tasks for the day completed, including the two that absolutely had to be done. Time for a good, long rest.

Even when you stop working, your brain does not.

A note about flow and mindset. I think that, psychologically, you must be prepared to enter flow, but insisting on it won’t work. There must also be a positive component: you must believe it can be done, and you should look forward to the process, or at least not fear and resent it.

It always takes more time than you think.

If flow is your main aim, the rest of your life should be supporting it. Something to think about when planning your day.

I should take a moment and address what the grand goal of this journal is. I am not doing this so that I can work harder. Steve Kotler may get up at 4 am, but I’m not going to. I did an experiment previously in getting up at 5 am for a few months, and even though I was hugely productive, I was kind-of miserable. No, the goal here is to work less. I love working well, make no mistake, and I cannot imagine my life without it. But I believe that truly working at your best requires you to work deeper, but less. I do not intend to work for more than three 90-minute sessions a day, and would preferably like to stick with no more than two. The flow state, you have to remember, is resource intensive. You need to recover. There are two reasons I don’t push much longer than ninety minutes: one is so that I don’t tire myself out too much to recover before the next session, and the other is to create some restriction, in order to create just the right amount of pressure to trigger flow. If I can finish my most important and intense work in three hours a day, I have the rest of the time to read, to exercise, to go for meandering walks (vital for problem solving), and to enrich my life in other ways, such as increasing my learning skills and playing guitar.

The idea is not that I work for three hours and then plop on the couch and eat pizza. There is a place for that, to be sure, and I’m sure it is going to happen sometimes. I want to become more successful in my work by triggering flow and Deep Work states, while also creating the time for a more fulfillment in all other areas of my life. I want to go mountain biking in the woods of British Columbia, not spend my whole day at my desk.

This raises the qusetion of rest and recovery, which I am bad at. Improving this is crucially important to my pursuit of Flow. To be completely honest, my prefered method of recovery at the and of the day is to pour myself a Scotch and sit outside, whilst scheduling the next day’s activities (which reminds me – I’m going to need to talk about scheduling, a lot).

That one session of Deep Work I had this morning is all I’m going to get done for the day. The rest of the day I have to sell my car and pack up my study. Time to make some hard decisions, knowing that everything I keep is something that will be cluttering up my new home. Even though it was only one session, I managed to touch flow and make progress. I don’t expect every session to go that well, but I am expecting the number of sessions that involve flow to increase, on average. Before I leave off for the day, I must consider what to do tomorrow:

• Kick off the day with 3 rounds of my calisthenics routine, then whatever I want to work on (handstands, kettlebells and pull-ups, probably).
• Meditate for 45 minutes, focusing on yogic breathwork.
• Two 90-minutes sessions continuing the work of today.Write down exactly what I need to learn and execute on.
• Put in 45 minutes of Tai Chi.

There are many other things to do, of course, like answering emails and booking accommodation. The above are the things that should be one my list, that take effort and focus. Although I want to do all of them, the two research sessions and the meditation are my main priorities. Everything else is gravy. In the times in-between these, it would be good for me to pay some mind to how I recover between sessions.

Finally, let me speak further to the grand goal of this journal. I mentioned that I have only been snowboarding a couple of times. The first time, somewhere in Alberta (Sunshine, I think), I showed up as a complete newbie. I took a lesson from the local Australian and went on the slope. I was extremely lucky. There was deep, fresh powder everywhere. Just the kind of thing to bolster confidence – you could fall down at speed and laugh about it. It was amazing, and I built up enough confidence to carve out a few turns against the sides and not crash. That night, I was more tired than I had ever been and passed out at eight. My last thought was, “Why the hell does anyone ever bother doing anything else?”

I have been hunting for that feeling again ever since. I know that my destiny is intertwined with the practice of science and mathematics, and that will stay my main focus. I just want to get that feeling again. Is this possible? Can anyone ever have as much fun at work as on the snow? I’m going to find out.

Before I further explore the idea of purpose and method, I will say a brief word about goals. Just “getting to work” is not good enough. To hit that Flow, we need to have an outcome, and make the upcoming task just hard enough to stretch yourself whilst still appearing possible. Therefore, I commit to a 90-minute work session, with the larger aims of experiencing some flow and training my focus, during which I will try to find the error in some simulations I have run by examining the mathematics behing the quasi-static approximation to Maxwell’s equations (being very specific here). To train my focus, I will remove distractions from my work area (not entirely possible, because the place is a mess, since, as I said, I am moving to another country), and keep a log of everything that distracts me from my work. To prepare, I am listening to a binaural track meant to enhance focus, and took some Noopept, Oxiracetam and Piracetam. To satisfy my need to write, I will record whatever insights I have in a working document which will form the basis of a paper later. I find it very valuable to have something to show at the end of a session, even if it is just an accounting of my mistakes. The greatest motivator is making progress toward a worthwhile goal, and the greatest demotivator is being stagnant. Now, what that worthwhile goal is, we still have to address. Right now, I just need to get going!

(Some time later.) Right. First session done. A little to my surprise, I kicked much ass. Even though I did not feel at my best this morning, I got off to a great start and solved the main problem quite quickly. It should be noted that this is not my first session thinking about the problem; I have been looking at it for a few days, and this morning the solution arrived right on time. (Solving problems without thinking is something I want to address in this blog, as well). To be completely honest, this was not proper deep work at the start, since I had to leave the phone close by for an important call from my wife. Did I enter flow? Perhaps not the whole time, but there were parts of the session where answers and insights came to me quickly and naturally. More relevant even, was the fact that I really enjoyed it. Even after my timer went off, I continued typing up thoughts, and more insights came to me on how to continue the work.

What worked for me? Having an attainable goal that still seemed like a stretch was important. But what really catapulted me into the zone was solving that problem early in the session, which gave me a ton of encouragement and momentum. Did the drugs help? Not sure. In my experience, they sometimes work and sometimes don’t, and it’s hard to control when. What I can confidently say is that they do not make up for poor diet, lack of sleep and no exercise. Those should be prioritised over nootropics.

I also made sure to end my session with a clear entry point to the next one. That way, I can be sure that my goal for the next session is already formulated, and my subconscious mind can start working on it while I have lunch.

The first aspect of Flow that we need to address is purpose. If I am going to be putting in all this work, there had better be some fundamental need that it satisfies. This has to be something for yourself though, since external motivators are weak and paltry things. However, I would argue that there is something that needs to come before purpose. I have spent many hours defining my purpose, but have yet to come up with something that will inspire me on days like today. Simon Sinek told us to “Start With Why”, but I am suggesting that you start with “How”.

This took me a long time to discover. It’s what gets me going on a day like this. I used to identify myself as a scientific researcher, but something never completely gelled. Then I started examining what I did on the days when I was low, like today; things I did without effort, that seemed natural. That thing, for me, was writing. I would write in my journal, and at some point start feeling good and be able to get to work. Then I realized that my scientific papers were just writing, though of a very specific kind. When I found it hard to get going, I would start typing a paper (even if the ideas were still ill formed) or write about something I know, trying to present it in a unique way. Before you knew it, I was effortlessly working. Writing about those things made me interested in them, and I slipped into a state where I wanted to do more. In this blog, we will still explore the “how” much more deeply.

No matter how lofty and inspiring your purpose, attempting it without having your “how” in place will lead to failure, or at least to the thing being a hell of a lot harder than it should be.

Utilizing the how, by writing this journal, I am now closer to the state I want to be in. By writing about it, I am now keen on experimenting with flow states and techniques. What is more, it has made me accountable, since I intend on this being a truly honest record. Which means I need to get to work.

I could have picked a better day to start this. I trained hard the past two days (physically), and had a ton of paperwork. This means my body is tired and my mind is sluggish. Usually, the quickest way out of this is to have an intense, but short, training session in the sun, first thing in the morning. But my entire body is screaming at me to rest, and I am going to listen to it. I have Tai Chi training later in the day, which will at least help me get in some movement.

To make things worse, I had to start the day with a meeting. There is nothing more mind-numbing, and I usually have an intellectual hangover after one. There is difficult work to do today, and getting the mental revolutions high enough to kick it off seems impossible.

Which means that this is actually the perfect day to start this. If you can have a good day under these conditions, you can always have a good day. How do I define that? Simple: I want to look back at my day and experience satisfaction. I want to feel that my time was well spent, not just in terms of hours of work, but that I made progress on something important. What I absolutely do not want is that feeling that the day was a waste, and that I should do better tomorrow. Instead, tomorrow should excite me. I want to be eager to get to the work again.

Perhaps I should sketch where I am right now. I am an academic that has just quit his job (of twenty years) to move to a new industry in a new country (Canada). I am stressed out and intimidated. I have to pack up or give away everything I own, I have to finish up at my job to allow my successor an easy entry, and I have to become an expert in a new field.

Enter Steve Kotler. You may already know his work, if you are interested in flow and optimizing human performance. Yesterday I bought his new book, “Gnar Country”, which I have unashamedly stolen this format from. Why? So many books tell you what is good for you, but neglect to mention the struggle the author went through to reach their conclusions. I have the same issue with most academic papers: they are presented as beautiful, polished pieces of research but, having written some myself, I know they completely neglect the ten thousand blind alleys you had to stumble into before finding the solution. “Gnar Country” explicitly documents Kotler’s journey to becoming a park skier, including the successes but also the falls, the blood and the torn rotator cuffs.

The art of impossible

Gnar Country

The dominant theme, as in “The Art of Impossible”, is the flow state, that elusive condition where humans are at their best. Psychology, neurology and physiology align to turn you into the best you can be. It is satisfying and productive, and it makes life worth living. Kotler does an amazing job of describing his search and attainment of the state, but the problem is that I don’t ski. (I have snowboarded a few times, but that was years ago, and I was horizontal for most of that.) What I am is a knowledge worker, stuck in my study for most of the day, having to come up with new science.

Of course, there are parallels. The same principles apply. All of these are well documented in “The Art of Impossible”. My mission in writing this journal is to show how to apply those principles to someone like me, stuck in an office.

Kotler is not the only influence on this blog, though. Cal Newport has written extensively on doing meaningful work well, and although flow is not his main focus, it is clearly omnipresent. His work is also very relevant to me, since he is himself an academic. Can I somehow bring all of these concepts together, in a way which will provide some guidance by exposing my day-to-day attempts? No matter how inept and painful to watch it may turn out to be.

Deep Work

I do not intend to provide a full introduction to flow and Deep Work here. First of all, because the authors mentioned do a superb job of that, and secondly because I want the finer points of these concepts to be revealed by example, as I try to implement them.

This then, is supposed to be an almost real-time account of my search for flow, in an area which many of you can relate to (as opposed to professional climbers and surfers). I will try not to disguise the blind alleys and the foolish experiments. Let’s see what actually works.