Eradicating Flow Killers in Your Place of Work

Desperately Seeking the Flow State
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The Flow State is the key to high performance.

In Flow, you are in an extraordinary state of being where you are able to process information extremely fast and act without conscious thought. Intuition takes the lead and the act of learning is more like an act of ‘absorption’ as your normal, critical thinking is superseded by the ability to automatically adjust to what is important.

Effective professionals of every kind have learned to live, and lead, in Flow.
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​“The number one management metric you need to know? Flow State Percentage.
Interruptions that move us out of Flow State increase R&D cycle times and costs dramatically.”
        Forbes

​Can You Go With the Flow?

​Sadly, as we look around, it appears that the vast majority of people have been dumbed down; dare I say it, even robbed!

Modern life seems to demand that we live and work far from the extraordinary levels of life we know are possible.
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Flow-killers are all around us - as abundant as rotten leaves in November. They’re like thieves intent on stealing the richest pickings and seducing us into fifty shades of dullness, when life should be a continual explosion of joyful colour.

For too many of us our brains are overflowing with cognitive clutter that diverts our energies towards empty entertainment and mindless distractions; things that mentally trip us up or box us in – preventing us from doing what we love and love what we’re doing.

Yet those who have found the formula, who experience the Flow State on a regular basis, seem to have discovered a higher level of meaning in their lives and find these moments so rewarding they’ll go to great lengths to re-engineer their lives to stay there as long as possible.
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Extreme Sports athletes are an obvious example of this, and whilst it’s easy to see their addiction to the rush they feel, we mere mortals can also do much to set ourselves up for regular moments of exhilaration – moments in which we not only perform our best but also inject health and happiness into both our brains and bodies.

You really can find your own path to Flow and set things up so that you regularly activate this remarkable state and find much greater fulfilment in your daily life.

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Problems with People

​Countless issues arise in the classroom and corporate world due to a lack of meaningful engagement with the tasks at hand.
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All too frequently managers and teachers complain about issues with their workforce or students when it may be that the task itself or the environment they work in is actually a significant factor they need to consider.

Too many employees appear to suffer from a:

• Lack of motivation
• Lack of focus
• Lack of engagement
• Visible unhappiness
• Lack of team cohesion
• Slowness to learn
• Low level of performance
• Sense of unfulfilled potential
• Disruptive and even destructive tendency
  

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Companies facing a workforce that displays these traits will undoubtedly have a high staff turnover - and yet, with a little bit of thought, things can be re-engineered to guide people into many more hours of Flow at work.
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Whilst too many managers will want to lay the blame at the feet of the workforce themselves, wouldn’t everything be better if they were given more fulfilling work to do? And what would happen if we completely changed the environment we were working in? 

Eradicating Flow Killers

​So why does Flow seem so elusive? Why do we naturally find ourselves caught up in the urgent demands of life instead of caught up in the ecstatic, autotelic highs?

We should become equally aware of the factors that kill the chance to get into Flow.

Because the truth is, the enemies of Flow are all around us. They come not as solitary assassins but as battalions of brutes bent on beating us into a life of reaction and pull us away from periods of planned, pleasurable productivity.
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Flow is sucked out of life by:

• ​A lack of purpose and specific goals - something to aim for
• A lack of challenge - where there is demand for us to rise to the moment
• A lack of focus and direction - too many distractions and interruptions
• A lack of actual ability - which leads to anxiety, frustration and stress
• Disempowering judgements – a lack of self-belief, expressed through continual (though often only semi-conscious) negative thoughts
• A lack of general flow across multiple areas of your life - to find Flow in one specific task if helps a lot if you’ve already learned to develop Flow in other areas.

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​It’s clear that we need to intentionally set up both our mental and physical environment if we’re to make time and space for more Flow in our lives. So, review the above list and take a moment now to remove the Flow killers so that you can produce your very best work.
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Look out for EXTREME ME

This post has been taken from the pages of Pad's forthcoming book in the TEAM ME series, called EXTREME ME - Unleashing Flow States for a Peak Performance Life