Steven Kotler - How the State of Flow Transforms Your Wellbeing

28:00It gets you dopamine. What does goal-directed behavior get you? It gets you dopamine. So it doesn't actually matter what the psychological term we put on the cover is. Neurobiologically, the reward is literally the same chemicals bonding to the same receptors in the same part of the brain, lighting up the same functional network. That's an identical, that's identical, right? In neurobiological terms, that's essentially an identical process. So it was a ridiculous debate. And for those of us who like even had, I didn't really speak neurobiology that well in the nineties. I was, you know, I was learning the field then, but even this was obvious to me.

28:37That was a weird tangent. Again, let's go back to you, you know, it's really interesting because we actually, once again, you're bringing up the topic of clay as a good thing for you, which is demonized by the modern world, right? So the idea of the industrial revolution sort of telling you to do exactly the same thing that you're told over and over and over to make more shoes so that they can make more profits going into what, you know, I actually think is now dying out a little bit, the whole concept of gamification that we started to see by the turn of the century and trying to, you know, to get people to sort of simulate a game so that they can get into flow while at work, but obviously didn't really work that well because you're simulating a game.

29:22You're not really addressing the individual's triggers for flow. And this was always one of the things that Jane's work on gamification, right? That I always, I always want to have this conversation, which is it's always gamers who are arguing for gamification and for gamers, it's perfect. You know what I mean? And, and, and so I will also tell you, I once every two years gamify my life, but whenever I want to make a big change, I create a point system and I incentive Peter taught me years ago. The amount is right. You get what you incentivize. I learned that lesson from Peter very, very well years ago.

30:03And so I realized that I could create a point system where like, if I doubled out on my primary flow activity, I get five points and blah, blah, blah. And I can, so I can figure out a good week is a hundred points or that sort of stuff. And I did it for a while. Sometimes I'll train people in how to do it depending. And we do it on my peak performance agent class. I actually think we did finally train people in this, but I can do it for two months. It's incredibly motivating for two months, right? Just to make it change. But like once the change is locked in, I'm out of the game. And other than like full game, full time gamers that I think is everybody's experienced.

30:40Yeah. Because it's not the game anymore then. Right, exactly. Let's go to aging because you mentioned it a couple of times. I mentioned it in the, in the introduction, you 42 year old looking man, what other tips? So I actually have to agree with you on two things you mentioned so far. One is use it, right? So whatever you use continues to be young. And that idea of the diversification, which in my mind I thought was sort of like, because it gives you a chance to live passionately about life, but obviously there is also another, you know, sort of a, a neural benefit to it, which is it creates more reserve sort of, right?

31:20What else? I mean, physically, mentally. Yeah. Let's, let's start, let's stay on the physical side for a second. Um, cause this is really clear by the way, this is not, this is not a secret. The WHO publishes guidelines along these, along these ways, ways now. So we know that all the skills we used to think we lose over time are use it or lose it skills, which means you have to train them. Now, and Peter and I actually totally agree on this. You can perform as you're very, very late in life, but you actually have to start training for old age, sort of like, I don't want to say professional athlete, because I know a lot of professional athletes and I actually know how much they're training, but you have to train at least as hard as a very serious amateur athlete to put it that way.

32:06What the research shows is you need about 150 to 300 minutes of vigorous exercise a week. You need roughly like two or three cardio days that minute time. You need a couple of additional strength training days a week, and you need to train balance, agility and flexibility a couple times a week as well. So there are very sort of like, we know the numbers and how long you have to train things for and various things to get the results you want. And you have to train them all at once also, which is where a lot of like, where do people go wrong? They do things like as they age, for example, they start adopting, oh, I don't, I'm not going to ski anymore.

32:52I'm like, I'm not going to do this anymore. I could, I could break. Instead, I'm going to go run on a treadmill. And that's, it's a disaster for a lot of different reasons. I mean, I could go into a million of them, but it's a really bad plan. And you're making your heart a little more efficient. And maybe, you know, in the beginning, you're training up your lungs. If you're doing sprint training along the VO max training along the way, you'll maintain it. But as a general rule, like you need strength training, you need the iron is your friend. i'll give you a weird stat that most people don't know i'll let you guess what do you think is the single most important physical correlate for longevity and for quality of lifespan and longevity um i'd say muscle mass which probably means okay you are you're right be more specific I would say heavy lifting probably.

33:49It's thigh muscle mass. Oh yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Thigh muscle mass inversely correlates with mortality. So the stronger our thighs are, the longer we live. And there's a bunch of different reasons. And it's not, it's also the stronger our thighs are, the more we preserve cognitive function, not just cognitive function. So there's a bunch of reasons why, but let me give you one that you're not thinking about that most people don't think about. So your brain runs on essentially calcium, right? Potassium, calcium, sodium. Where do you think those substances are stored in the body? Liver. Bones.

34:32No way. Calcium is obviously bones, yeah. Right? So what happens to bone density over time? It decreases. Correct. What the cutting edge of peak performance aging right now is the relationship between bone density and bone health and cognitive function, because the bones are the mineral storehouses for the body and the brain. And the brain uses 20 % of our energy. And that includes things like calcium and whatever. So it's got a big operating budget. And some of that operating budget is coming out of our bones, which fade over time. But if you lift heavy, you preserve bone mass over time. One of the things in our country that I emphasized a little bit, and there's an argument, there are people argue back and forth on the effectiveness of this, but I look for one of the secrets that we sort of train for at the Flow Research Collective, because everybody we train is busy, right?

35:31It's the commonality among all the people we train, everybody's so busy. So I look for what I call multi-tool solutions. Don't give me a problem that's going to solve one. Life is too short and I move too fast to solve problems one at a time. I need a solution that's going to solve like 11 things at once for me to even consider it. So I'll give you an example. An infrared sauna as a recovery tool is a great multi-tool solution. Meditation - Why is that? So for flow, flow is a very high performance state. And one of the things that we learned about flow back in the 90s is it's not a binary you're not in the zone or out of the zone it's a cycle it's a four-stage cycle you named the you named the front end of the cycle earlier when you talked about struggle that's the first phase of the flow cycle the struggle phase you're loading the brain with information so you can perform it automatically right with less cognitive interference then there's a release phase we sort of take your mind off the problem flow state itself and there's a recovery phase those are really high energy state so if you're going to be getting into If you want to use this stuff at work on a daily basis, you have to recover on a daily basis from that flow state.

36:45And if you're adding in some of the peak performance aging stuff that we're talking about where you're actually going to have to start really training a little bit harder also, then you have to double down on recovery. So there are a bunch of passive recovery tools and active recovery tools. passive recovery, which is what most people do, which is TV and a beer is a disaster. It actually blocks recovery. There's a million, we can go into the details here, but like it blocks recovery. That is bad. Let's, and let's move on to like, what is good? Well, long restorative walks in nature, breath work or meditation, Epsom salt baths, restorative yoga.

37:26And I love infrared saunas. Why? Three reasons. One, I could do it for like 40 minutes at the end of my day. It automatically lowers cortisol levels. So unlike a lot of the other recovery things out there, infrared saunas, being a sauna in general, it flushes cortisol out of your system. So it automatically makes you less stressed, which I think is great. Two, I do breath work in the sauna. So, right. I do, I do my breath work in the sauna and I do two kinds of breath work. One, I do kind of the more rigorous Wim Hof style, that sort of breathing exercises because there's copious data besides resetting your nervous system that you can enhance cardiovascular function and lung function athletically by doing breath work in a sauna.

38:21So it's one of the better ways. I don't train cardio as hard as I train other things. And one of the reasons is because I can cut into that by doing breath work in the sauna. I also, so back to flow triggers for a second and back to stacking protocols, right? Multi-tool solutions. Creativity is a flow trigger. Flow amplifies creativity. It was a feedback system. So creativity itself. And we know this because pattern recognition, linking ideas together, produces dopamine. And dopamine works as a trigger, right? So we know this. One of the mistakes that people really make in the modern world is specialization.

39:02And the reason is, if you're specialized, specialized, specialized, specialized, specialized, you're not, yeah, you might be learning new stuff about your specialty, but there's not huge, like you're learning stuff that's right next door to the stuff you already learned. You're not having those like big aha moments of revelation. But if you really want to amplify flow and prepare your body for flow, you have to feed the pattern recognition system. And the very best way to do it is read about 20 to 30 pages of nonfiction a day, usually outside your skill set. So you want to read something that you're curious about, right?

39:40But it's outside your skill set because there's nothing. Outside your skill set is a really funny statement because we have pattern recognition systems for brains. So once you read something that's outside your skill set, your brain, because it does pattern recognition, is going to find the links. So anything outside your skill set, it doesn't stay outside your skill set. Of course, you're breaking it in, right, into your skill set. But because it's far away, you've got real conditions. It's a big leap, big connections, lots of dopamine, priming the brain for flow. So I like to do all those things inside an infrared sauna.

40:15And I, you know, like a 40 minute sauna, I can read for 20, 25 minutes. I can do my, and I can do my breath work for the day and I can do a recovery protocol. And with breath work and focus, final thing is flow is a focusing skill. It's not quite the same way of focusing the brain you do use in mindfulness, but it's, it's a focusing skill. And the more flow you get, the more flow you get, the more focus you get, the more flow you get. So by training the brain on mindfulness, on meditation, on these kinds of prings, you're making yourself more flow prone over time. So this is a multi-tool solution.

40:47Saunas are great because I'm training up the pattern recognition. I'm training focus. I'm calming down, losing cortisol. I'm using mindfulness and breath work to also calm down my nervous system. This makes it easier to get into the challenge skills balance and stay in that flow zone. We talked about earlier, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So remember when I said you need to do about six things every day and seven things every week? One of the things you need to do every day is have an active recovery strategy in place. So how much of your time do they dedicate to all of this, Stephen? I mean, it's not really much.

41:20It's not. It's actually, I would say it's an hour. It's about an hour a day, maybe a little bit more. You have to. So one of the things, let me give you another example, because a lot of the things that you have to do every day, you're going to do other, you're going to, it's more about how to do them rather like things you're going to do normally and how to do them. So I'll give you an example. If you can, you want to start your day with a 90 minute block of uninterrupted concentration. That 90 minutes is the brain has built in focus slots that are 90 minutes long. Like we go through a REM cycle that's about 90 minutes long.

41:54We have a focus waking cycle that's the same length. And the research shows that you want to start. Well, you want to start your work session in line with your body clock. Right. So I'm an extreme lark. I start working at four o 'clock in the morning because that's when I'm at my best. Most people are normal and they, you know, eight, nine o 'clock is when they start working. And that's when they're the best. My wife's a night owl. She doesn't wake up till four o 'clock in the afternoon. And that's when she starts. So you want to, if you can work your, this 90 minute section in accordance with your, your actual circadian rhythms.

42:25Cause again, get your biology work for you rather than against you. It's really hard to fight your circadian rhythms in this way, but start your day with a 90 minute block or start your work session with a 90-minute block of uninterrupted conversation, what you do in that block is completely up to you, right? I write because that's my most important thing. A hundred percent. Right. And if you get that done for a day, I've won my day. So that's, of course, what I'm going to do first, right? Managers usually want to strategize. I'm going to have all these meetings and all these conversations during the day.

42:58These are my goals. This is what I'm aiming for. That's their best use of that 90-minute block and maybe a phone call or two. kind of thing but like whatever it is um so when you ask a question like how much time does it take well it's less about the time it takes and more about how i'm exactly using the time that i have and you know in a high flow way right and that 90 minute block of concentration you have to like to be smart about you gotta have conversations with your wife with your spouses with your bosses with your friends, like, leave me alone. Flow, you know, in most studies, amplifies creativity about 500 % above baseline.

43:36You're going to get my time back. You give me 90 minutes in flow and I'm going to do so much more work. You're going to get more of me later, not less. Just leave me alone for 90 minutes. That's all I ask, right? Like it's again, really common sensical and people freak out. I'm like, what are you talking about? According to the McKinsey studies on productivity, you're 500 % more productive in flow. In two hours in flow, you can do essentially eight hours worth of days worth of work. Like, you know, that's absurd. Would you believe me if I tell you that most of my breakups post my first marriage were a result of not being given that 90 minutes?

44:16Like I would simply tell the woman in my life, all I ask is don't touch me until I finish writing. Just give me until 11 a.m., please. like I want to make my coffee slowly I want to sit down and do whatever you know is running in my head I want to put it on paper and then I'll be yours for the rest of the day please and yeah when that fails I would go like huh not working doesn't matter how incredible you are I just need my 90 minutes yeah by the way Mo I have to tell you this is no different than when I work with organizations you know what I mean when I work with organizations a couple of things that I you know that i tell people is is the first thing i always say is if you can't hang a sign on your office door that says off i'm blowing exactly you can't do this work right so like you have to have your company you have to work in an environment where you can have these conversations out loud yes it goes against i mean you know we started our conversation this morning with like things that silicon valley did wrong right open office plans disasters all the like instant messaging slack channel i'm gonna ping you 3 000 times an hour like what like i mean what did nobody bother to talk to a psychologist or did you just when you had the conversation with the psychologist was your entire conversation well how can we make the most money right either you you're ignorant and you didn't bother to have the conversation, or you're knowledgeable and you're evil.

45:53Correct. Yeah, it is actually quite interesting when you think about it, because a lot of the design of the corporate world is really all centered around how do we appeal to the extroverts who are truly revving all the time to make the most money, right? When in reality, I think most people don't realize that very often the most successful out there, the ones that are actually making a difference, they're not the ones that work the most hours. They're not the ones that are extroverted at all. And they are by definition in need of some me time to be able to just do things, right? Otherwise they're just talking, talking, talking.

46:36And it's quite interesting when you look at how that becomes almost the example that we follow. It's like, you should be like this guy who's always out partying when the truth is that's not always the most productive. No, it's again, like, you know, in a sense, there's a kind of very dominant extroverted salesperson who seems to be, and there's a sort of like hyper aggressive Wall Street finance attitude, right? Those two things, this is where I started the conversation and I said, I think Jeff Bezos broke Silicon Valley And I'm not meaning to diss Jeff. I'm actually just saying he brought Wall Street.

47:19He came from Wall Street. He came from Wall Street, brought Wall Street values to Silicon Valley. Whether or not Jeff had the ethical maturity to handle those values, most of the rest of Silicon Valley did not. So you import Wall Street competitiveness into a broke-y culture, as far as I'm concerned, in really weird ways. But that's a different story. but uh this is uh the point i wanted to make uh a second ago was the other thing i tell people you made it you made this point about my life but i wanted to say this from the the organizational side is when you work with companies right it's not just that flow should be the center of your personal life for that stuff you got to make it the center of your organization that you got to make driving your people in because you have to also understand all the benefits you get from it i'll give you a couple things that we hear about all the time in the corporate environment you can't create a high flow culture without psychological safety.

48:14So something corporations spend a lot of time on right now, baked into flow. So a lot of the things that we're talking about flow, because it's optimal performance, there's certain conditions for it underneath it, right? Like what we want in good organizations come by making flow the center of your organization. But if you're not driving your employees into flow on a regular basis, chances are your turnover rates are extremely high, first of all, especially in today's modern environment where loyalty is not like people aren't loyal to companies anymore. They just jump around and that's fine. You know what I mean?

48:52That's exciting and interesting. I don't necessarily know if that's a bad or a good thing. I don't have a judgment there, but I just know it's part of the environment. Employee retention, a lot of it is about flow, right? And you want to work with a team that is great at getting nothing is more fun this is why startups are so damn addictive right on your way to a product launch in a startup company it's group flow non-stop it's like every time you show up at work you're dropping back into group flow because that's what it takes to get a startup to launch and um you know i i'll laugh but i'll joke with peter the amandas who you know I've started 16, 17 companies at this point.

49:34Peter's like 27, 20. I actually think it's in his 30s at this point. There's a bunch of longevity companies. It was 27 and then he started a bunch of longevity companies. There's I think a couple of companies that he started COVID doing something with AI and healthcare that I'm not totally aware of. But anyways, that's an addiction to flow. That's the flow you're getting. Right. I always tease Peter about this. I'm like, Peter, you love getting it to launch. And then you're like, on to the next project. I'm like, you're the only dude in the world who thought you could run an asteroid mining company in the background.

50:11But you see, I mean, look who's talking. And I mean, both of us. I know. I not being the Silicon Valley sort of mindset, I start so many businesses. I don't call them companies, right? I actually call them products, which are really - Yeah, the product products or projects or. Yeah, yeah. It's like, so in philosophy, you know, they have problems, right? Like what they're really saying is I work on the hard problem of consciousness or like I work on epistemology or whatever, but like, I like the humility. Like, yeah, I'm working on the problem of consciousness, but they really matter. Like the past 70 years, this is all I've done.

50:48But it's the, you know, so it's a problem. Exactly. But it is. when you call it an addiction to flow. And I have to admit in the last couple of years, I really, it started to really hit me very clearly because you sort of gain skills along your path, right? So to be chief, chief business officer of Google X, you have to learn business skills, discipline skills, and so on. But it really hit me very hard because at the end of the day, I'm just a creative person, right? I just want to make things. That's all I want. Like whatever things, you know, if you leave me alone, you know, I'll build a fish tank or like a, if you really tie me down in a, in a tiny little cell and say, you can't move, but one finger, I'll try to scratch the wall and just draw something on it.

51:33Okay. And the idea is in a very interesting way, I actually think I'm addicted. I want to be, to keep making things. When you say addicted to flow, that's actually quite interesting because that is. Oh no, this is, yeah, I'm using a, so Chicks at me, I pointed this out decades ago. It might actually be in the book Flow. I don't think it is. I think it's one of his other books, but from right around the same era, we're talking about the early 90s. He said, so first of all, Flow Cocktails, five of the most addictive pleasure neurochemicals. I think it's the only state where we have dopamine and serotonin both in the blood the same yeah you're totally right and it's not so more researches we know you get dopamine at the front end serotonin to the back and like the afterglow flow is serotonin those chemicals tend to work in opposition right when dopamine goes up goes down and vice versa there is some data and we are actually in the process we're about six to eight months away from being done with this but we've we found a way to track neurochemicals in the brain in real time over long stretches of time that will give us hopefully this, this data.

52:47Yeah. We sort of, we found a way to repurpose some COVID tests and use them to find neurochemistry levels and it's working really well. And we're going to use it. The first two we're starting with our serotonin and dopamine and the first tests are basically tracking those levels over time. I mean, like as people move in and out of flow, subtract flow and then track that those neurochemical levels. And it's going to tell us the answer to what you just raised. But anyways, so yes, you're right. You get these five, these five neurochemicals. They're the most addictive chemicals on earth. This is like, you know, I mean, we talk about gambling addiction or sex addiction and whatever.

53:25And you're really talking about like a little bit of norepinephrine and a little bit of dopamine. Flow is like those two chemicals plus three others, maybe four talking about group flow. It's crazy in terms of its addictive power, but what Chik sent me high said years ago, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, the godfather of flow, pointed out that flow is unlike other addictions. It's addictive as hell. It's unlike other addictions because all other addictions lead backwards. And flow, because it's an addiction to improving on your channel, using your skills to the utmost and getting better, extending yourself, it's an addiction that leads forward.

54:02But it doesn't change the fact that it's still an addiction. And there's a dark side of flow, right? We see this all the time. We deal with retiring professional athletes or retiring special forces. Or, by the way, people who have moved from, I was running startups to now I'm running a sort of more mainstream company. I never do that. For a lot. One of the reasons is you get locked out of flow, right? And so then it's the dark side of flow. And I mean, you know, I want to say I've broken a lot of bones in my life and I want to say at least 50 % of them have been because I'm doing something stupid because I'm suffering through the dark side of flow.

54:43And I've decided that I'm going to use high risk, right? High physical risk is a flow trigger. Thinking that if I just do this dumb thing, I'll be in flow on the other side, forgetting that there's like a 5 % chance I'm going to end up in the hospital. Because if you do that enough over time, you're, you know, I've been to the hospital a lot. It's funny because again, you know, when we met, I'm the exact opposite. I never ski bungee jumping. No way. Like roller coasters, just because my daughter likes them, but otherwise I wouldn't come near them. I just don't get that concept at all. It's not a trigger for me at all.

55:21I cannot explain it because it's been there. it one has been there my whole life and two like i've always been drawn to like riding my skateboard you know can i ride it down this hill or like can we can i you know jump my bike over this thing as a little little kid simultaneously i was bullied in school and when you're bullied and when you're bullied when you're young one of the things you always want to do is find ways to assert your bravery improve yourself again and again and again and so like i think from like the time I started studying martial arts to the time I started taking action sports very seriously.

55:59Some of it was unwired this way. Some of it was very flowy. And some of it is like, you know, I'm making up for the sins of allowing myself to be bullied as a small child. That's so interesting. And so it triggers martial arts and other forms of physical superiority, sort of? No, so my problem with being bullied was not about the bully. I don't get in flying. Like people are people, whatever is going to happen. My problem is that I didn't like the reaction I had on the inside and how it made me feel. I didn't like feeling fear. I didn't like, so in any situation where I would feel fear, one of the things being bullied taught me is go right at the fear.

56:41Because the feeling I want to feel is on the other side of that. And when you're being bullied, the only way to get right at that fear is to learn how to fight. right when you're drawn to action sports as i was my whole life um you have to go do the thing that scares you the most over and over and over again lared hamilton and i used to talk about this all the time larry will say that if you're not doing something every day that really scares you you're probably not living hard enough and that's layered though i will say that i think that possibly is true whether it's intellectual or physical risk i think that may be true almost every day for me where, you know, I'm taking a kind of a creative risk or an intellectual risk or a physical risk that scares me.

57:20I don't want to scare myself. I don't want to really scare myself, right? Because then I'm over my skis and I'm taking on too much, but I want a little bit of it all the time, you know, in everything I do. So interesting. So for our listeners, Stephen, so, you know, if someone is new to the concept of flow, You know, someone who just spent a bit of their life doing things, you know, because they have to do them. They don't have that experience of sort of leaving the world and being in total flow, you know, a few times a week. What would be the first tips and advice? What should one start with?

58:00Yeah, so it's funny because we actually, we talked about three. I'm going to talk about maybe five things. let me just start really practically with the stuff we've already covered so first thing place to easiest place to start double down your primary flow activity most of us have put it aside do we find out what that is well i like okay so what i tell people is if you don't know what that is let me back up for a second let me i like to explain why things work in the body before i give people advice. So I want to, I want to start there. We were talking earlier about how flow produces these big, five big neurochemicals or six big neurochemicals.

58:42So quick shorthand for how does learning and memory work in the brain? Yeah. The more neurochemicals that show up during the experience, the better chance that experience gets saved for later. Neurochemicals are essentially multi-tools in the brain. They do lots of different things. One of the big things they do is they tag experiences. Really important, save for later, right? So we tend to remember flow states is my point. And certainly we, so if you think about ages 10 to 20 or ages zero to 10, and you were to think about your favorite memories, some of them are going to be like tied to somebody you love perhaps, or events, my birthday, my, right.

59:27But if they're not tied that That way you're remembering flow states. So one, think about just go through your life 10 years at a time and think about what are my big memories? What do they have in common? Was I outside? Was I inside? Was I taking risks? Was I not taking risks? What were the conditions? Was I alone? Was I with other people? So you don't know what your primary flow activity is. Look at these flowy memories you have, right? And look at the commonalities. And chances are that those commonalities are going to add up into an activity where you actually think about it. You're like, oh, I forgot this.

1:00:02I'd only done it maybe 15 times, but every time I did it, God, that was amazing. I need to do more of this. Right. That's how most people know what I'm talking about when I say primary and fellow activity. And, you know, you knew right away. You were like writing. It didn't you didn't even think about that. Most people tend to that's most people's reaction. But if they don't, this is one way of figuring it out. So that's the obvious thing. Start with your primary flow activity. And then I always tell people, start with three flow triggers. Start with one complete concentration, that 90 minute block we talked about.

1:00:35Wall off, start your work day. And you don't, if 90 minutes is intimidating, because some people it's terrifying. The idea of like, I'm going to focus and not talk and be by myself for 90 minutes. Like it's terrifying to some people. So they have to start with 20 minutes at a time or a half an hour at a time and build themselves up. But like we have a built-in slot for focusing for 90 minutes. So what people find often as they start doing this is they will naturally move to that 90 minute block a lot faster. Like people are like, oh my God, there's no way this will ever work for me. And they start with like 25 minutes a day and within a week or two, they're at 90 minutes because the 25 minutes is so delicious and so works so well that like they get it now.

1:01:21And right. So that's one. Two, we talked about the challenge skills balance. So you want to stretch, but not snap. You want to. So what does this mean emotionally? It means that you want to be just outside your comfort zone, right? Not overwhelmed, not totally. that's too much you're producing too much cortisol and norepinephrine your block flow but underwhelm boredom not enough nor norepinephrine and cortisol your block flow in between is this sweet spot and it's just sort of outside your comfort zone so for shy meek risk averse folks you got to get a little comfortable being uncomfortable flip side type a hard chargers who will take on these huge challenges simply for the thrill of it this is especially true with people.

1:02:08We see it a lot in Silicon Valley because we see it a lot with people with ADHD and ADD where they take on these huge challenges because it helps them focus. And I'm not saying don't take on those huge challenges. It's actually really good from a motivational science perspective. Huge challenges are great for motivation. You have to chunk it down though so what's right in front of you is like, if the huge challenge is like 50 % greater than your skills, you want to chunk it down so what's in front of you is like 4 % or 5 % greater than your skills. For the day, that's what you're doing now. The whole challenge is enormous.

1:02:38So that's the second thing you want to do. You want to double down your primary flow activity, start carving out periods of uninterrupted concentration for your highest flow work. And then as you approach that work, you want to be just outside your comfort zone. And the final thing I will tell people is, so this is really silly, but this is most people tend to be a little burned out and this is so this is also a great burnout cure it also works as a flow hack so clear goals are a flow hack okay or a flow trigger now let me spend a little bit of time on what i mean by clear goals because people hear clear goals especially in western cultures and the immediate focus is on the goal right they immediately hear the goal part and they skip the clear part.

1:03:33And I emphasis is actually on clarity. So flow follows focus. Our focus stays on the task at hand and we know what it is that we're doing. And we know what it is that we're doing next. I tell people you want to start your day or end your day by making, I end my day or I start my day. The first thing I do is I make a clear goal list for the day. This is my to-do list for the day. And even if it's on my calendar, I write it out by hand and I do this for a bunch of reasons. I said that flow states have triggers and these triggers, Marshall attention. Most of the ways we've been talking about it triggers that do this by driving dopamine and or epinephrine, these focusing chemicals.

1:04:14One of the other things that flow triggers do is they lower cognitive load kind of loads all the shit you're thinking about at any one time. It's everything rattling around. Right. Right. It's the reason. So efficiency experts will often tell you in Marie Kondo, like start by cleaning your office. Why should, if you want more productivity, start by cleaning your office. Why is that? Why could that possibly work? It's because it lowers cognitive load. It frees up RAM. And if you free up energy in the brain, the brain automatically repurposes that energy for paying attention to the task at hand.

1:04:49So a clear goals list, knowing what you're going to do today in order of importance, starting with your hardest task, which was where you're going to put your 90 minute flow activity and going, you know, to deepest and everything that goes, I always say a couple of things that are important here. I'm going to go, I'm going to go a little bit in depth on what I mean by clear goals. Cause if you get it right, it's an amazing tool. So all it is, is a daily to-do list. You want to write it out by hand because there is a very tight link between the brain and how the brain works and how our hands move and in biocognition and typing on your computer won't get this done.

1:05:24So even my, I have a calendar. I use the same thing everybody else has used, but I start my day by opening up a little notebook, piece of paper right here, listing everything I'm going to do today. If it takes energy, it goes on the list. That's the important thing, right? It's not just these are all the work tests. No, no, no. If I have to have a tough conversation with my wife, it's going to be draining and it's going to cost me energy and I have a limited energy budget. I'm a human being and I have a limited energy budget, or if I got to walk my dog or go to the gym, of course, these things have to go on the list because they're going to take energy.

1:05:58So the other thing that I tell people is start with your hardest task first and everything that's going to take energy and most importantly, run the following experiment, figure out how many things you can do in a day and still be excellent at all of them. And that's how many go on your list. So over the next couple of weeks, track how many things you do in a day and see how many you can be great at. Right. I, as a general rule, starting with, I always write for three to four hours every day. Right. And then I always hike my dog immediately afterwards. So like, I know like those things, like that's the first five hours of every day of my, of my life.

1:06:39Right. It's four hours from my like high flow activity and, and, you know, followed by a little bit exercise, get into nature, clear my head. There's a bunch of reasons why I do that. Again, it's a multi-tool. We'll just stop there. But those are my clear goals. You know what I mean? I can start ordering my life that way. And finally, with clear goals, some people like to start in the morning. If I have my druthers, it's the last thing I do before I leave my office. So I draw, Draw, we talked about drawing, that'll sort of like calm me down, reset my system, and then I'll make my clear goal list for the next day.

1:07:18It takes about two minutes. That's the other thing. When I said there's six to seven things you've got to do every day, one of them is write a clear goals list for the next morning. One of them is do something to tune your nervous system up. That could be a gratitude practice, which again takes five minutes. It could be a mindfulness practice, which for stress work is 11 minutes a day. or regular exercise, which is like for, if you're doing it for your nervous system, it's like 20 minutes. So you can pick which one you want. And if you're, if you're short on time, it's the gratitude practice, because you can manicure your nervous system in five minutes a day with a gratitude practice.

1:07:53And then you have your clear goals list, which lowers cognitive load. So I've given you like these two 10 minute practices. If for example, you're dealing with burnout. The simplest cure for burnout in where we always start people is primary flow activity one, clear goals list every day, active recovery protocol in place at the end of the day. And then if you really need another tool, daily gratitude practice. But usually those four things prior to you can step away from work for like 72 hours is enough to sort of start to reset to be a system and move them away from burnout back to normal. Incredible.

1:08:35You know what's going to happen next time I meet you? I'm going to look younger than you. That's what you just did there. I'm looking forward to it. Is that a challenge? Are you betting? It is. In fact, this is going to be one of these great bets. I will bet you$5. Oh, man. Man, I've been dared in public. No, but it is actually, it's, so you see the main difference, honestly, Stephen, which I really admire about you is that first of all, you make it so simple, but you're unwavering about it. You see my, my challenge is, I know that these are important things for me, but then, yeah, one day I'll skip this one day.

1:09:18So let me know. This is a, this is, it's a great point. It's a great point. And I want to, I want to, let me spend a minute on it. And sorry to interrupt you, but the, I noticed this with a lot of people and, So I talk about this in my book, Now Our Country on Peak Performance Aging. So this is how I do this. I work for the boss. I don't get to control my own life. I work for the boss. Who's the boss? The boss is the version of myself that writes up the to-do list because he has my long-term best interest at heart because the version of myself in the moment today, right here, right now, no, no.

1:09:57I am like everybody else. I want the quick high. I want the easy fix. I don't want to work as hard. I am wired just like everybody else. There's nothing extraordinary going on. The only thing is I have made a decision that I've made two decisions. One, in deciding that I work for the boss, if it goes on the to-do list, it gets done no matter what. I don't give myself the option. And two, when I say I'm going to do something and I say it out loud or I write it down, I know something foundational about human behavior and human performance. And this is one of the most important things I'm going to say today, which is I tell myself I'm going to do something on a to-do list or out loud and I do it or I die.

1:10:41And one of the main reasons I do it is the brain pays attention, a lot of attention to our behavior. right so one of the things the brain always wants to know is how's your follow-through right yeah exactly it's testing you right if you if what brain wants to know because i if it goes on a to-do list i have to do it my brain will get me give me the energy i need to be up for the fight but if my brain knows that when i say i'm going to do it well 50 percent of the time i mean actually i'm not going to do it my brain will not actually get up for the hard challenge this is the same difference. You see a very similar version of this exact same effect in the differences between fixed and growth mindsets.

1:11:24Everybody talks about this, right? What's the big neurobiological difference between a fixed and a growth mindset? When you make an error with a fixed mindset, your brain doesn't bother to learn from the error because it doesn't believe you can learn from an error. So why waste the energy? And if you have a growth mindset, when you make an error, your brain is like, well, why didn't make that error? How do we do it better next time? Oh, this is, we're just going to build off that and you learn. So it's the exact same thing. If your brain knows that when you put something on a to-do list that you lie to yourself, right?

1:11:53And you don't often complete your items on your to-do list, your brain goes, look, well, I've got a limited energy budget. Why am I going to bother creating all this motivational energy for something you're not going to do anyways? I'm burning calories. I don't need to burn. I'm not going to do that. Interesting. So it's basically optimizing based on your pattern recognition of your behavior in the past better recognition on behavior and it's understanding the brain is foundational the brain is a it always wants to predict what is going to happen next and it's an efficiency engine right 20 percent of your your your energy goes into your brain so first order of business is how do i save energy second order of business is what the f*** is going to happen next exactly so i have can meet it with the exact amount of resources, but not one calorie more.

1:12:41So I don't waste energy, right? That's the foundational thing the brain is trying to do at every moment of every day. So when they talk about brains as predictive coding engines and hierarchical coding and all the, all those compute Bayesian computer terms that we talk about with in terms of brain dynamics these days, that's what it's trying to do. It's trying to predict what's going to happen next. So I can have the energy I need to meet the challenge without anything. And if you understand that that's where the brain starts, a pattern recognition system at its core that is doing exactly what I just said, you can start to optimize for a lot of stuff just based on, oh, this is what my brain is trying to do in this situation.

1:13:22So like, this is how, right? Like you're not fighting against yourself. Yeah. But Mo, I think you hit on something that I want to go back to for a second because it ties all this together. A lot of what I'm saying is common sense, as pointed out, and it's not all that weird. What makes it tricky is exactly what you pointed out, which is it's so common that we don't sort of treat it like life or death, right? Like nobody thinks to themselves, oh man, I put 10 items on my to-do list today. I've got eight done. You know, boy, am I really setting a bad precedent for future behavior by not, by skipping two of them, right?

1:14:01You think, oh, I did a pretty good job today. I'm tired and I'm going to skip these last two things. And let's go home. And that's about all we think of. We don't realize we're training our brain to, one, not trust ourselves. Because now if you don't do this, you've got to think about it. Who are you lying to? You're only lying to yourself. You're giving your brain a reason not to trust you. Oh, it goes on the to-do list, but you don't do it. Your brain pays attention. This is the same reason affirmations fail and gratitude works. We have a built-in bullshit detector, right? If you stand in the mirror and go, I am a millionaire, I'm a millionaire, I'm a millionaire, your brain's going, dude, you work at Walmart.

1:14:41What the fuck are you talking about, right? That's not motivating. That's demotivating. You're going in the other direction. If you do gratitude, I am so happy and grateful that, you know, my legs work this morning. Well, your brain goes, well, you know what? That is true. and that is actually a good reason to be happy and grateful. And your brain goes, oh, look, maybe the world's a slightly better place than I thought. And that has a lot of impact on our neurobiology, but it's based on truth. The difference between affirmation and gratitude is that we have a built-in bullshit detector. And we all know this.

1:15:14I don't have to tell you you've got a built-in bullshit detector. You know you've come up. But we don't think that our bullshit detector applies to ourself. And first and foremost, it applies to ourself. it's not about navigating the social world and then trying to figure out is she lying to me or what i mean that's a benefit but it's about navigating our relationship to ourself because that comes first that's such an amazing way of putting it you know there is there's this simple repeating stuff that you don't believe is true and thinking that it will become i mean fake it till you make it, I think is the worst thing that humanity has ever created.

1:15:52It's like, make it so that you don't have to fake it is my view of the world, right? Well, this is, I'll give you an inverse, but this is really funny. I have all these discussions with people who like, they'll stand up and they'll be like, but I suffer from imposter syndrome and blah, blah. I hear this a lot, like the victimizer. And I always tell people, I'm like, you're not suffering from imposter syndrome. You feel like a imposter because you're an imposter. when you actually deserve are the thing that you're trying to claim you are you're gonna stop feeling that way you've got a built-in bullshit detector for a brain your brain knows when you're lying to yourself when you get up on stage and try to present yourself as the world's leading authority of something and you've managed to convince everybody who was hiring you and everybody in the room it's true but you're standing up there and you know you know what actual expertise looks like and you're pretending to be that expertise your brain knows that's fake it till you make it right but like i always laugh at this how do i get rid of imposter system expertise exactly it's like find out what it is that you're an imposter on and learn it yeah yeah yeah yeah i can i can see that working i mean like i like it drives me crazy i'm like come on we like this is not like you may not like the answer because it means you have to work hard But like, we know this answer, right?

1:17:10Yeah, it is. However, I mean, I have to say, you have to have the compassion for how many things are being thrown into people's minds every day, that it's becoming really confusing when in reality, I actually have to say, the only thing is you are in charge of your fate. It's as simple as that, right? Yeah, some external events will happen in your life that you cannot control. Even then, beyond the external event, you're in charge of your fate. If you write down a list of things to do and don't do it, don't blame anyone. Don't tell yourself that this is the world against you. Yeah, it might be against you today and you got caught up in commute today, but you're in charge of tomorrow.

1:17:52You can really work on it. You can change it. You know, if you feel like an imposter, stop being an imposter and be an expert. It's really very straightforward. I agree. So I think about it, I often think about it from the inverse of what you're saying which is a realization I think I want to say I had probably my early 30s and it really it's so obvious and it's the inverse of what you just said but it was the realization that my life I don't know how it is but I think a lot of us grow up with this idea that like one day I'm going to be an adult and it's going to be different or one right like something like that and I like mine was the realization that my life is going to be nothing more or less than I make it.

1:18:35And every time I'm saying yes or no, right, I'm making that life. If I choose to spend an hour watching television versus I choose to spend an hour teaching myself how to do something, like I am making those choices, those little choices of what do I do with an extra hour a day? Right? Those are the things that add up into quality of life and accomplishments and those sorts of things. And this is one of the hardest, there's a couple of things that are really hard about training people in peak performance from a conceptual level. And I think one of the hardest things to get people to understand is that peak performance works like compound interest, right?

1:19:18It's a little bit today. It's a little bit tomorrow, right? But you do for a couple of years. And it does compound. It totally compounds. Because if you get into, I mean, you know this, If you start getting really good at flow, I'll give you an example from something spectacular. We all, everybody knows Richard Branson, but in Stealing Fire, right? There's a Richard Branson quote in Stealing Fire. What you were saying to Jamie Wheel, my co-writer and myself about this. And he was like, dude, two hours in flow, there is nothing I can't get done, right? What's the secret? And this is not just Branson.

1:19:48This is every successful person over time. This is Maslow, what Maslow figured out back in the fifties, right? He figured out that the only commonality among most successful people on the planet was that all figured out how to alter their consciousness and drop into flow and use it to generate their success. We've known this a long time, 70 years at this point, 80 years. I don't know when Maslow did that original research. I want to say 54, but I think that was when he published it. And I could be wrong because I'm not. Scott Barry Kaufman is the Maslow expert. I'm just friends yeah then you make it and it you do it like what that really means is just showing up and doing the same thing over and over and over again right like i'm gonna write every day irregard and i'm not gonna care how it makes me feel it could suck it could be great i don't want to ride the high too high i don't want to ride the low too low i don't want to take it too seriously because i'm going to edit it anyways later or whatever it is.

1:20:50You know what I mean? It means I'm going to go work out every day. I'm going to try to get 90 minutes of exercise in every day. I'm going to write for at least 90 minutes. There's a handful of these things. And it's just the only difference between I think myself and the next person or peak performers in general and the next person is we don't deviate. We figured this, right? We just, this is what it takes for. And some of it, I think it's sort of self-reservation because a lot of the peak performers I know are not the most emotionally high functioning people to begin with. They figured out one way they can live really efficiently and they do that.

1:21:35And they learn not to deviate because they don't have a ton of emotional control. And especially, you know, I come out of the world, you come up. I'm an artist. I'm a creative. You know what I mean? I used to watch creatives, I mean, like people who had more raw talent than I'll ever hope to have, right? But I used to watch them fail all the time. Like fail. People who would get, like artists, painters would get MoMA shows and be unable to do the paintings for the show, even though they were producing a painting a day for 10 years and suddenly like this happened, they can't do it. I kept watching people fail.

1:22:14And I realized that the difference between the ones who fail and the ones who succeed was literally like this checklist. The ones who succeed have a checklist that they're going to execute on every day, no matter what. And the ones who fail are the ones who are going to go, oh, life punched me in the mouth. I've got emotions. I'm not going to execute today. Instead, I'm going to drink or stay in bed or whatever. Like whatever. The difference was literally like who just gets up when they feel bad and executes on the checklist, knowing the checklist is going to make them feel better because they learned that lesson.

1:22:44The checklist originally comes up. I think most people, performers develop it as a way to manage their own emotions. They don't develop seeking for people. I often develop it for like, how do I deal with myself psychologically? And pre-performance is sort of the byproduct. That is so spot on. I mean, again, one of my habits since really I started studying. actually for university, not even working was that idea of, if it comes on the list, it will be done. That's it. And that's the whole idea. And, and, you know, yes, if really, if it's force majeure, which happens like what, three times a year, I'm going to do it the next day.

1:23:19Right. Exactly. Simple as that. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. I really like, it's not, it's so funny. And this was, this is, I don't know about you, Mo. I, and I look at today, I like, it took me a really long time to get my shit together. You know what I mean? Like I was sort of a bartender into my late twenties. I mean, I was a writer and things like that, but I was still like, I mean, as a bartender, so like, I don't think I, you know, I, there were not a lot of nights that ended sober. Let me just put it that way. Right. I didn't know you say those things in public. Keep going. I say all kinds of things in public.

1:23:53Yeah. Yeah. So like, it took me a really long time to sort of get there. But like, all I did along the way is, I mean, like I was a f***er on a lot of categories. but it didn't change the fact that I wrote every day. I worked out every day. I did a couple other things every day. And then I might like go do acid and go surfing. Right. But like the checklist got done before, you know, even before that stuff got done. And that's always been pretty constant. And mostly it was because it was emotional regulation. Yeah. I was trying to like manage my nervous system. Yeah. You're amazing, my man. I really, really, really, I mean, I can't thank you enough.

1:24:35This was so wonderful. So eyeopening, so full of energy and honestly, solid advice on so many levels. Honestly, Stephen, thank you so much. This was really wonderful. Well, always a delight to hang out with you. Yeah. I mean, honestly, for all of you guys listening, I didn't do this one for you. I did this one because it's just a pleasure to talk to Steven. It's always something new. It's always something energizing. I always come out actually with a checklist of things that I will end up doing. I hope you did the same. I hope you realized that a lot of what you can achieve in life is up to you.

1:25:12It's in your hands. Achieving a flow state is not only enabling you to perform at peak performance, but it's also aligning you with the person that you are in so many ways. It definitely is something that you should have on your list. I cannot recommend enough Stephen's work. Honestly, if you haven't read the books, read the books. If you want to join his training, Stephen's all over the internet, you'll always be able to find him and it won't be a waste of your time. I can absolutely guarantee you that. Thank you so much for giving me the opportunity to have those wonderful conversations with amazing people record them for you to join us and yeah i will always say that if you're running and revving so fast every day you're not really at your peak performance try to find a little bit of time to slow down a little bit of time to flow i love you all for listening and i will see you next time