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Hey Good People,

Let's talk about one of flow's most potent triggers.

It's called the "challenge/skill ratio".

You've probably heard of it.

The idea behind this trigger is that attention is most engaged (i.e., in the now) when there's a very specific relationship between the difficulty of a task and our ability to perform that task.

If the challenge is too great, fear swamps the system

If the challenge is too easy, we stop paying attention.

Flow appears near the emotional midpoint between boredom and anxiety, in what scientists call the flow channel - the spot where the task is hard enough to make us stretch but not hard enough to make us snap.

How hard is that?

Answers vary, but the general thinking is about 4 percent.

That's it. That's the sweet spot.

If you want to trigger flow, the challenge should be 4 percent greater than the skills.

In technical terms, the sweet spot is the end result of what's known as the Yerkes-Dobson law - the fact that increased stress leads to increased performance up to a certain intensity, beyond which performance levels off or declines.

In real-world terms, it's not much at all.

In most situations, we blow by 4 percent without even noticing.

But this is not the case in extreme sports. In the big waves, big rivers, and big-mountains, a half degree of difficulty can mean the difference between home for dinner and never home again.

Under these conditions, the desire for improvement keeps athletes from understepping, and the need for survival from overstepping.

This sweet spot keeps attention locked in the present.

When the challenge is firmly within the boundaries of known skills - meaning I've done it before and am fairly certain I can do so again - the outcome is predetermined.

We're interested, not riveted.

But when we don't know what's going to happen next, we pay more attention to the next.

Uncertainty is our rocket ride into the now. It's also for this reason that uncertainty causes the brain to release dopamine. A lot of dopamine.

When anything can happen, survival could be at stake. Dopamine heightens attention and pattern recognition - two things that are absolutely essential to dealing with the unknown.

Of course, being dopamine, this is all exceptionally pleasurable.

Or, as Stanford neurologist Robert Sapolsky likes to say: "maybe (meaning uncertainty) is addictive like nothing else out there."

And maybe is also the only road to impossible.

This is why the challenge/skill ratio is so important.

If we want to achieve the kinds of accelerated performance we're seeing in action and adventure sports, then it's 4 percent plus 4 percent plus 4 percent, day after day, week after week, months into years into careers.

This is the road to real magic.

Follow this path long enough, and not only does impossible becomes possible, it becomes what's next - like eating breakfast, like another a day at the office.

Rooting for you,

Steven Kotler

P.S. If you'd like to harness the full power of flow, consider applying for Zero to Dangerous, our peak performance training.

There are three main elements to Zero to Dangerous.

One on one coaching with our PhD level peak performance coaches, a curriculum of cutting edge peak performance tools, and lifetime access to group coaching.

-> Apply For Zero to Dangerous Here Now

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"If one does not know to which port one is sailing, no wind is favorable." - Seneca

That's right London King, we're talking about clarity today.

More specifically how to deal with a lack of clarity.

Also known as uncertainty.

Uncertainty creeps in everywhere, all the time.

We're uncertain about what task to do next or how to spend the rest of the day.

We're uncertain about what the next six months should look like in our business or professional life.

Ultimately, all too many of us are pretty damn uncertain about the direction we want our lives to take.

The issue is that this uncertainty paralyzes us and blocks us from flow.

Being clear on where you want to go, and exactly how you're going to get there, is incredibly important for flow.

Without clear goals, we can't direct our attention.

We get stuck in analysis mode.

The prefrontal cortex-the part of our brain that drives complex cognitive behavior like decision making-is overactive.

The brain is busier trying to determine what direction to go than it is actually moving forward in any given direction.

The good news is, this is very solvable.

You don't need to map out your destiny in great detail to harness the benefits of clarity.

You just need to pick a direction and move.

The key point here is that when it comes to achieving peak performance, it's better to move forward in the wrong direction than to stay static and avoid moving forward at all.

At the Flow Research Collective, we teach clarity as a triple threat clarity stack.

It involves setting goals at three levels-your Massively Transformative Purpose, your High-Hard Goals, and your Clear Goals.

Step 1: Pick A Massively Transformative Purpose:

This is your north star.

An aspirational, infinite endpoint that you want your life to be pointed at.

Dig into a mission or a cause that you're passionate about and pick something that resonates.

Don't dither. Again-better the wrong thing than no-thing.

Having an overarching goal that you're passionate about will drive norepinephrine and dopamine into your system.

These are two of the brain's most powerful neurochemicals for focus.

Remember, more focus equals more flow.

Step 2: Set Some High Hard Goals:

These goals are long-term, but not infinite.

They should be specific and measurable. Think big and set them to be between 1 and 3 years out.

Ideally, these high hard goals all converge into your Massively Transformative Purpose.

Let's say, for example, that my Massively Transformative Purpose is to protect animals, plants, and ecosystems.

A high hard goal may be to write a book on environmental awareness in three years and to launch a conference on animal rights in one year.

Now the key is that I map these out somewhere that I can clearly see them, and then start pointing my daily activities at achieving these big goals.

Step 3: Set Daily Clear Goals:

When it comes to getting in to flow, this type of goal setting is the most crucial.

Every day you should derive clear goals from your 1-3 year out high hard goals.

These are the hyper-specific action steps, to be completed daily that will inch you toward your high-hard goals (which will ultimately realize your Massively Transformative Purpose).

You can never be too clear with your clear goals.

Excessive detail is encouraged.

The clearer you are about what a task involves, the less you have to engage in high level prefrontal cortex dominant activities and the more easily you'll be able to slip deep into flow.

So go ahead, grab a pen and paper and try out this stack.

Pick a Massively Transformative Purpose. Lock in some 1-3 year high hard goals. Then decide on exactly what you're going to do today to start inching forward.

You can course correct on route. For now, just lock in on a direction and move.

Tomorrow I'll be showing you how to dodge burnout. Stay tuned.

Rooting for you,

Steven Kotler & The Flow Research Collective Team

P.S. If you consider yourself a high performer but are in the midst of a career transition or are craving more direction, consider applying for Zero to Dangerous.

It's our flagship peak performance training and you'll work one on one with a PhD level psychologist to help you get crystal clear on where you're going in the short, medium, and long term.

You can apply right here.

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London King,

My team and I here at the Flow Research Collective are psyched that you've been reading my emails on how to overcome the ten flow blockers.

Have they been helpful?

Feel free to hit reply here and let me and my team know.

I've got ten more peak performance tips for you to help you navigate uncertainty, mitigate stress and get into flow!

Each of these ten upcoming emails break all the info marketing sales-y rules.

In other words they're detailed, scientific, valuable and aren't focused on selling!

If you're up for receiving these emails over the next 10 days, here's a sneak peak of the subject line for each one.

Optimizing Your Brain For Flow
Setting Goals The Scientific Way
Hacking Reading
The 4 Steps To Become A Corporate Athlete
How To Use Spite As Motivation
A Stupid Simple Memory Hack
Alerting Your Perception For Creativity
How To Bring Group Flow Into Your Organization
5 Tools To Accelerated Learning
Eliminating Friction For Superfluidity

If you're not up for receiving these peak performance tips, no biggie.

We totally respect that. Just hit unsubscribe below.

Either way, I'll catch you soon and I'm grateful to have you as part of the Collective.

Peace,

Steven Kotler & The Flow Research Collective

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London King, wanna know the critical mistake that's capping the performance of so many entrepreneurs and executives today?

Failing to live and work as a corporate athlete.

Here's the thing:

The average professional athlete spends the majority of their time training.

Only a small percentage of their time-several hours a day, at most-is spent actually competing.

On the other hand, the typical executive, entrepreneur or business leader, devotes almost no time to training.

Yet the expectation is that you have to perform on demand ten, 12, 14 hours a day or more.

Athletes enjoy several months of off-season.

Most executives are fortunate to get three or four weeks of vacation a year.

The career of the average professional athlete spans seven years.

The average executive can expect to work 40 to 50 years.

And this is a problem-the failure of executives and entrepreneurs to train and then recover effectively caps our performance.

And this failure, stems from a misunderstanding of one crucial idea:

The number of hours in a day is fixed but the quantity and quality of energy available is variable.

Energy is the lever point for performance.

Elite performance is grounded in the skillful management and mobilization of energy.

Shout out to Tony Schwartz and Jim Loehr for their work with Harvard Business Review on this point.

This fundamental insight-and the drastically different approach to work and life that occurs as a result of integrating it-is the distinguishing trait of a corporate athlete.

You may be saying yourself:

"Well great, this sounds cool. I like the idea of treating myself like an athlete, but what they hell do I actually do?"

Turns out there are four steps to becoming a corporate athlete:

Leveraging oscillation
Deploying active recovery
Adopting a binary approach to work
Sysmetazing flow state

And my partner Rian Doris at the Flow Research Collective has actually built a mini training for you that teaches you how to apply these steps today.

By the end of the training, you'll be all set to recover properly, mitigate stress, uncertainty and overwhelm and spend a hell of a lot more time in flow, hurtling towards your goals.

--> Check out the presentation here.

Then hit reply to this email and let me know what you think!

Peace,

Steven Kotler

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London King, have you ever wondered what people mean when they say mindset?

The term is thrown around a lot.

According to Stanford psychologist, Dr. Carol Dweck:

"A mindset is a self-perception or "self-theory" that people hold about themselves".

Dweck differentiates between two types of mindsets, which you've likely heard about.

A "fixed mindset" assumes that one''s character, intelligence, and creative ability are static givens.

Factors that we can't change in any meaningful way.

Under a fixed mindset, success is just the byproduct of that inherent intelligence.

It's an assessment of how those "given" abilities measure up against an equally fixed standard.

Striving for success and avoiding failure at all costs become a way of maintaining this sense of being smart or skilled.

A "growth mindset," on the other hand, thrives on challenge and sees failure not as evidence of unintelligence but as an inevitability on the path to growth.

It's viewed as something that simply stretches our existing abilities.

Our behavior, wellbeing and overall success is driven by whether we hold a fixed or growth mindset.

So how do we begin to optimize our mindset?

Dr. Michael Gervais, clinical psychologist, high performance coach for the Seattle Seahawks and member of the Flow Research Collective advisory board talks about three different "kinds of mind".

First, there''s negative mind.

Self-criticism, worry, doubt and limiting thoughts that lead to constriction of your inner experience.

This is a kind of cognitive choking. Similar to a fixed mindset.

Second, you've got "positive mind". This is optimism, a place that creates space. Similar to a growth mindset.

Finally, there's "no mind".

This is flow. You're locked in, engrossed and engaged in the present moment, where thoughts fade away entirely.

Gervais' key point is that you can't jump from negative mind to no mind.

You can't go from self-critical doubt, and frustration and automatically get to no mind. It's not how it works.

However, "If we hang out in positive mind long enough," explains Gervais, which can counter intuitively be about self-talk that isn't always positive but simply calm and or neutral in tone, "we have a chance to slip into no mind or flow state, the most optimal state we can be in as humans."

So what's the point here?

Do your best to dodge negative, limiting thinking.

Get yourself to at least a neutral state of mind and then, the possibility of going past the mind entirely, and into flow, opens up.

In sum:

Growth Mindset/Positive Mind -> Calm & Neutral Self Talk -> Flow

Hope that's helpful!

Tomorrow we've got motivation, our final flow blocker.

Rooting for you,

Steven Kotler

P.S. If you feel like aspects of your current mindset are holding you back from unlocking elite performance, consider applying for Zero to Dangerous.

In Zero to Dangerous you'll work one on one with a Flow Research Collective peak performance psychologist to do the deep work required to dial in your mindset.

You can apply right here.

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London King, if you're anything like myself and the team at the Flow Research Collective, one of the biggest things you're constantly trying to learn.

Learning is an absolutely foundational aspect of peak performance.

If you can learn, and learn fast, you'll be unstoppable.

So today I'm going to help you out with that.

Here are five super simple but helpful tips for learning:

1. The Five Books of Stupid:

I think the actual number probably differs for everybody, but when I approach a new subject my rule of thumb is to allow myself five books worth of stupid.

That is, I pick five books on a subject and read them all just as a way of familiarizing myself with the terminology.

Truthfully, this is much of the battle.

Most of what makes learning difficult is specialized language and it usually takes me five books to begin to have a feel for this language.

But what this really means is that for the first three books, most of what I read I didn't understand.

The secret is to not get frustrated and to keep reading.

A lot of what the brain does is pattern recognition, and most of that takes place on an unconscious level.

As long as I keep reading, then I'll keep picking up tiny bits of knowledge, and my pattern recognition system will start stitching these bits into bigger pieces.

I'm building a scaffolding.

Eventually, usually after five books worth, my brain has enough data to complete the scaffolding and I can see a first glimpse of the macroscopic picture.

This is the point when real comprehension can begin to emerge.

So how do I know when real comprehension has emerged?

When I can start asking meaningful, articulate questions about a subject, then I usually feel confident I've got the basics.

2. Be The Idiot:

This is what happens after I'm done reading those five books and have begun to formulate some intelligent questions on the material- I seek out people to talk to about the ideas.

As a reporter, of course, I have an advantage. It's a hell of a lot easier to call up a Nobel Prize winner when I'm calling on behalf of Forbes than it is if I'm trying to finish a term paper for Northern Podunk U.

But one of the other things I've learned as a writer is that people love to talk about what they do.

So if you can't get the Nobel Prize winner, call one of his graduate students.

As long as I've done my homework and can ask genuine questions, most people will talk. In fact, most won't want to shut up.

The point is to talk to people who are way smarter than I am and leave my pride at the door. I ask people to explain things to me as if I was four years old.

I want to be the idiot in that conversation.

How do you know I've talked to enough people? When the smart people start routinely telling the idiot he's asking good questions then I'm sure I'm on the right track.

3. The Gap:

Once I can start asking intelligent questions, I follow those questions into tangential areas.

I try to use my curiosity as a way to surround a subject. This keeps me from getting bored and, because of specialization, because knowledge tends to be balkanized (experts know their subject, often not what's going on next door), most interesting topics are usually the ones that are stuck between categories.

These are the gaps. When I surround a subject I typically end up floundering around in those gaps.

That's because these are the places where we really just don't know. And because I've followed my curiosity to get there, suddenly I'm stuck with burning questions that no one can answer.

So I end up trying to answer them myself. Out of this frustration, I think, real learning actually starts.

4. Always Ask The Next Question:

The reporter's creed is that three sources make a fact.

This means that if three people independently tell me the same thing, then I can be pretty sure that thing happened.

Magazines and newspapers and news shows will let me report a fact thrice verified as truth.

But not so fast. Personally, I always figured there are plenty of people more talented than I am, so I should probably do some extra work just to keep up.

As a journalist, this leads me to calling a fourth person, then a fifth.

Early in my career, on two separate occasions, when I called that fifth person, I got answers that conflicted with everything else I'd heard thus far.

On both occasions, when I dug deeper into this conflicting data, an entirely different picture of the truth emerged.

Everything I thought I knew was actually wrong.

These days I don't really feel like I've learned a subject until I've had this kind of revelatory butt-kicking.

If my position hasn't been thoroughly reversed at least once, then I still have more work to do.

5. Find the Narrative:

The only way I can be sure I've actually learned something is to tell it to someone else as a story.

Actually, two people.

The first person is someone who is completely ignorant and usually a little bored by the subject.

If I can turn all of this knowledge into a compelling narrative that holds this hostile audience's attention and makes total sense, then I usually feel comfortable I'm halfway there.

The next person I tell is an expert, and always someone not afraid to tell me when I got it wrong.

If I can satisfy both camps, then I am comfortable starting to write about a subject.

Hope that was helpful folks!

Hit reply to this email and let us know what you're currently learning!

P.S. If you're a business leader attempting to thrive amidst uncertainty, chaos, and overwhelm consider applying for our flagship training Zero to Dangerous.

It'll equip you with the peak performance tools needed to pull this off. We have a couple of spots open for applications this week and we'd be psyched to chat with you.

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According to the World Health Organization and International Classification of Diseases (ICD-11), Burnout is defined as:

A syndrome conceptualized as resulting from chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed. It is characterized by feelings of energy depletion or exhaustion, increased mental distance from one's job, or feelings of negativism or cynicism related to one''s job and reduced professional efficacy.

Does that sound familiar at all, London King?

A hell of a lot of our high performing entrepreneurial clients have. That's for sure.

Burnout is the opposite of flow.

Performance flatlines. Everything's a grind. Focus is damn near impossible.

It often sneaks up on us in an unsuspecting way.

We may not be totally aware that we're about to hit a wall.

Problem is, after we hit that wall there's no going back.

After burning out you can't just return to your old way of working.

If you do, you're going to bash right back into that wall.

The real key is to preemptively avoid burnout so that it doesn't creep up on you and catch you off guard.

Here are some quick tips you can deploy immediately to help you reduce and avoid burnout:

1-Get Serious About Recovery:

Take recovery as seriously as you take your work.

That means adding it to your to-do list, putting it on your calendar, making sure it happens.

By recovery-we mean active recovery. Doing things that are going to speed up your return to baseline.

Some protocols our clients like are ice baths, foam rolling, massage, saunas, yoga, nature immersion. You get the idea.

What's more, research done by Harvard Cardiologist Herb Benson found that flow states actually happen as just one stage in a four stage physiological cycle.

The final stage of that cycle? A recovery phase.

Flow is a neurochemically expensive state and you need to recover on the backend of a deep flow state to avoid getting fried.

2-Make Your Life Binary:

This means living a life where you're always either fully on, or fully off.

At any given time, you should either be working as intensely and productively as possible or you should be recovering as deeply as possible.

Anything in between is what we call the grey zone.

That no man's land where we're not fully focused or recovering or even enjoying ourselves.

Do your best to eliminate this grey zone so that you're either in flow fully focused or unplugged and fully off.

No one looks back on life and wishes they spent more time half checking Instagram while half responding to emails.

3-Make Sure Your Day Has A "Definition of Done":

Research done by Stanford Social Psychologist, Dr. Christina Maslach found that "insufficient reward" is just as much of a contributor to burnout as overworking is.

Without a clear definition of what makes your day a win, you can never declare victory.

It's super important to know exactly what a win looks like.

Otherwise, you'll never get a sense of reward and life will just feel like an unending slog toward some undefined and out of sight end point.

If that sounds like a recipe for burnout it's because it is!

Hope this helps you dodge burnout so you can keep on flowin'.

Stay tuned for tomorrow's email.

We're tackling exhaustion to get you sleeping better than ever!

Rooting for you,

Steven Kotler

P.S. If you're a high performing business leader pushing hard to achieve big goals, consider applying for our flagship peak performance training Zero to Dangerous.

It'll help you spend more time in flow and avoid burnout entirely-no matter how hard you push it.

You can apply to Zero to Dangerous here. We've got a couple of spots open for interviews this week so grab a slot now.

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London King, let's talk about the science of goal setting.

This is one of my favorite topics.

And for good reason.

As a way to boost performance and productivity, setting goals is extremely powerful.

Unfortunately, as simple as this idea might seem, there's trouble hidden in the particulars.

What the research shows is that not every goal is the same, nor is every goal appropriate for every situation and-most importantly-the wrong goal in the wrong situation can seriously hinder performance and actually lower productivity.

Let's start with the facts.

During the late 1960s, University of Toronto psychologist Gary Latham and University of Maryland psychologist Edwin Locke-considered the godfathers of goal-setting theory-discovered what we now hold as truth: the establishment of a goal is one of the easiest ways to increase motivation and enhance performance.

Back then, though, this was something of a surprising finding.

Until Latham and Locke came along, the general consensus was that happy workers are productive workers, thus putting more stress on employees by establishing performance targets (that is, goals) was believed to be bad for business.

But that's not what their research showed.

In dozens and dozens of studies, Latham and Locke found that setting goals increased performance and productivity 11 to 25 percent.??

That's quite a boost.

At the upper end, if an eight-hour day is our baseline, that's like getting two extra hours of work simply by building a mental frame (aka a goal) around the activity.

Yet, as mentioned, not every goal is the same.

"We found that if you want the largest increase in motivation and productivity," says Latham, "then big goals lead to the best outcomes. Big goals significantly outperform small goals, medium-sized goals, and vague goals."

"High, hard goals"? is the technical term for these large targets and why they work comes down to attention and persistence-which are two of the most important factors in determining performance.

High, hard goals focus attention.

They also make us more persistent.

The end result is that we're much more effective when we work, and much more willing to try again when we fail.

Yet for high, hard goals to really pull off this magic, Locke and Latham further found that certain moderators-the word psychologists use to describe "if-then" conditions-need to be in place.

One of the most important is commitment.

"You have to believe in what you're doing," adds Latham. "Big goals work best when there's an alignment between an individual's values and the desired outcome of the goal. When everything lines up, we're totally committed-meaning we're paying even more attention, are even more resilient, and are way more productive as a result."

None of this, at least so far, should be too surprising.

But this is only half the story.

The other half involves flow.

Since flow is an optimal state of consciousness-one where we feel our best and perform our best-it plays a huge role in our ability to reach our goals, especially when the goals in question are of the high, hard variety.

We also know that flow states have triggers, or preconditions that lead to more flow.

In simple terms, flow always follows focus, so these triggers are ways of heightening attention, of driving awareness into the present moment and onto present action.

And one of the most important of these triggers is known as "clear goals."

This is where goal-setting theory gets tricky.

There are significant differences between clear goals and high, hard goals.

It comes down to timescale.

High, hard goals are mission statements. They're our big dreams.

I want to become a doctor, I want help open the space frontier, I want to write the great American novel.

In other words, things that require years, sometimes decades, to achieve.

Clear goals, meanwhile, are all the tiny steps one takes along the way to the accomplishment of that mission.

They exist over much smaller timescales.

Writing a novel might be the high, hard goal-something that could take years.

Writing 500 words between 8:00 am and 9:00 am-now that's a clear goal.

And this difference is key.

When it comes to generating flow, clear goals are important because they tell us where and when to put our attention.

When goals are clear, the mind doesn't have to wonder about what to do or what to do next-it already knows. Thus, concentration tightens, motivation heightens, and extraneous information gets filtered out. Action and awareness start to merge, and we're pulled deeper into flow.

This also tells us something about emphasis.

When considering "clear goals," most people tend to skip over the adjective "clear" to get to the noun "goals."

When told to set clear goals, we immediately visualize our high, hard goals-seeing ourselves on the Olympic podium, the Academy Award stage, or the Fortune 500 list-and think that's the point.

It's not the point.

These high, hard goals are actually distractions that can pull attention away from the present moment.

Even if success is seconds away, it's still a future event subject to hopes, fears, and all sorts of now-crushing distraction.

Think of the dropped pass in the final seconds of the Superbowl; the missed putt at the end of the Augusta Masters.

In those moments, the gravity of the goal pulled focus out of the now, when, ironically, the now was all they needed to win.

If creating more flow is the aim, then the emphasis falls on "clear" and not "goals."

Clarity gives us certainty.

We know what to do and where to focus our attention while doing it.

When goals are clear, meta-cognition is replaced by in-the-moment cognition, and the self stays out of the picture.

Applying this idea in our daily life means breaking tasks into bite-size chunks, and setting goals accordingly.

Think challenging, yet manageable-just enough stimulation to shortcut attention into the now, not enough stress to pull you back out again.

What all this means is that goal-setting requires setting both high, hard goals accomplished over the years and clear goals accomplished one minute at a time.

But it also means knowing which goal to focus on when.

Across the shorter timescales of the moment, attention needs to be on the task at hand (the clear goal) and not the reason for doing the task (the high, hard goal) and getting this wrong can actually block flow-depriving goal-setters of the very fuel they'll need most to achieve those goals.

The key takeaway: When mapping out your goals, make sure you've got the right stack of high-hard goals and clear goals. Definitely don't underemphasize the clear! That's where most folks go sideways.

Stay tuned for the next flow tip email.

Steven Kotler out!

P.S. If you're an ambitious entrepreneurial type and want a turbo charge on the way to accomplishing your boldest goals, consider applying to Zero to Dangerous.

We'll work with you one on one to help you nail whatever goals you're seeking right now.

-> Apply To Zero to Dangerous Now <-

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London King, if you've read my book Stealing Fire: How Silicon Valley, the Navy SEALs, and Maverick Scientists Are Revolutionizing the Way We Live and Work you may have an idea of where I'm going with this.

I wrote about the fact that when Navy SEALs enter the chaos of combat they rely on an unusual form of teamwork.

What was once a group of individual soldiers becomes a tight, seamless unit, a fluid machine.

In peak performance research, this experience is known as "group flow."

It was first discovered by University of North Carolina psychologist Keith Sawyer (a student of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi), and fully described in his book Group Genius.

Sawyer spent almost 15 years studying group flow in improv jazz musicians and improv comedy troupes, along the way discovering that, just as individual flow states have triggers (that is, pre-conditions that produce more flow), group flow also has triggers. ?

The cool thing is when you understand these triggers you can begin to deploy them in your own life and in your organization.

These triggers are the starting point for high flow, peak performing teams.

Here are all of the Group Flow Triggers, one by one:

Serious Concentration: It's vital that everyone in the group has their maximum attention tuned in to the here and now. No distractions.?
Shared, Clear Goals: This is a balancing act. You need enough focus so the team knows when they are close to a solution. Equally, you need to leave things open enough for creativity to emerge.?
Good Communication: It's important that the conversation is always moving forward. Drawing on the most important rule of improv. "Yes, and." goes a lot further than "No, but."?
Familiarity: This comes in the form of a common language and a communication style based on unspoken understandings.
Equal participation (and skill level): Think of professional athletes playing with amateurs. The professionals will be bored and the amateurs frustrated.?
Shared Risk: In particular, the risk of failure. There's no creativity without failure, and there's no Group Flow without the risk of failure.?
Sense of Control: In the form of autonomy and competence. It's about getting to choose your own challenges and having the necessary skills to achieve them.?
Close Listening: This is about being fully engaged as well as the ability to always say yes.?

Now that you know what these triggers are, what can you do with them?

Simply start by analyzing your own life through the lens of these triggers.

Ask yourself: How often do I experience group flow?

When it shows up, which of these triggers tend to accompany it?

When I want it to show up, how can I use these triggers to get more of it?

Now run the experiment. Add a few of these triggers into your next few weeks, see what you discover..

Stay Dangerous,

Steven Kotler

P.S. If you're an entrepreneur or leader and want to get more flow in your own life and also help your team achieve peak performance, our flagship training, Zero to Dangerous is the starting point.

You can apply right here. Takes 3 minutes. We'd be psyched to speak with you and see if it's a good fit.

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London King, do you ever wish you could just click a button, pause time, catch up on everything and then click play again?

I know a lot of our clients do.

Time is this ever elusive, increasingly scarce resource that we can just never seem to get enough of.

This time scarce, always urgent, always rushing mentality really sabotages our efforts at getting into flow.

To drop into the zone and get deep into flow, you need time!

You need the space to focus, totally uninterrupted on one thing, for hours at a time.

You can't get into flow if you're always rushing around in a frenetic state of reactivity.

However, despite what you may feel, more time is not the solution.

Becoming a master of allocating your time is.

For now, here are 3 time management tips to help you get master time and spend more of it in flow:

1-Become acutely aware of "Parkinson's Law":??

This law states that "work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion".

It's trite but true.

Get ruthless about setting deadlines for yourself.

Create a container for your work and do not let it expand past that container.

What this will do is add an artificial sense of urgency to your work.

This urgency creates a risk of not hitting your self-imposed deadline.

And guess what, risk is one of the 21 flow triggers.

That means:

Self-Imposed Deadline -> Urgency & Risk -> More Flow

At least in theory. This is yet to be empirically validated.

For more on why time is not the determining factor in success or peak performance, check out my partner Rian Doris' Ted Talk here.

2-Apply the XDS Approach To Your Commitments:

Audit absolutely everything you're currently doing in any given week.

Write it all down.

Then ask yourself what can I eliminate entirely (X), what can I delegate (D) and what can I systematize (S).

Here's the golden rule: If in doubt, do it.

That means if you "kind-of-maybe" think you can eliminate something, you definitely can.

As always when it comes to this stuff, be ruthless.

3-Rocks Before Sand:

This relates to the time management classic; important before urgent.

It's simple but time tested.

Do the important things first.

The big juicy tasks that are actually going to move you forward towards your goal.

The urgent stuff-responding to emails, setting up appointments, whatever it is-will get done on top of the important stuff.

However, if you flip it, as most people do, and go urgent first, important second, the important just won't get done.

It's just the way it works.

A visual to hammer this one home: Imagine a jar. Your important tasks are rocks.

They should go in the jar first.

Your urgent tasks are sand. They should be poured in on top of the rocks.

If you put the sand in first, the rocks aren't going to fit.

Same applies here. Important before urgent.

And with respect to flow, it's the important tasks that are where we're going to be getting into flow anyway.

Those big tasks that take time and require focus.

It's harder to get into flow doing urgent, reactive, bitty work.

Alrighty, hope that helps you steal some time back.

Second last flow blocker coming at you tomorrow, and that's mindset.

Catch you then.

Steven Kotler

P.S. If you're a high performing entrepreneur or executive struggling with busyness and crazy demands on your time, consider applying for our flagship peak performance training Zero to Dangerous.

In Zero to Dangerous we go deep into the topic of time and teach you the little known art of "time bending". Along with how to spend the majority of your work time deep in flow, of course.

You can apply for Zero to Dangerous here.

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London King,

Steven Kotler here, Executive Director at the Flow Research Collective.

Congratulations on making it to the Flow Research Collective newsletter.

Whether you've come through a quiz, broadcast, or website, you're here and I'm psyched about it.

So what's the goal of the Flow Research Collective newsletter?

To be the signal amidst the noise.

That means sending you research-backed tools to help you get into flow and achieve peak performance!

If you get an email from us that doesn't help you spend more time in the zone, we're failing.

Over the next 10 days, you'll receive one email a day from me.

Each email will help you overcome one of the ten biggest "flow blockers".

These flow blockers are the most common challenges our clients face when it comes to achieving peak performance and flow.

Here are the flow blocker emails to look out for.

Eliminating Distraction To Unlock Hyper Focus
An End To Self Sabotage
Unlocking Pristine Clarity
Making Burnout Impossible
Putting An End To Exhaustion
The Overwhelm Fallacy
Battling Stress!
Becoming A Time Jedi!
Straightening Out Your Mindset!
Automatic Motivation!

Stay tuned for these emails from tomorrow onwards.

We'll be kicking off with distraction!

Rooting for you,

Steven Kotler

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The blocker we're talking about today London King, is motivation, but we're going to start by talking about passion.

Over the past few decades, "passion" has been declared everything from the secret to successful entrepreneurship to the foundation of a meaningful life.

It's the magic pill alright, which is exactly the problem.

Now, sure, if you already know what you''re passionate about, well, this isn't much of a problem.

But for anyone who wants to, say, build a passion-driven business, not knowing what you're passionate about is quite a hurdle.

I want to help you get past that hurdle so you can tap into limitless motivation in a few simple steps, but before we get there it's first helpful to demystify this term.

For starters, why is passion important?

Simple. It's a profound focusing mechanism. We pay more attention to those things we believe in.

But focused attention is the ultimate gateway drug.

It drives performance, it increases productivity, and it triggers flow (which, in turn, further increases performance and productivity).

Moreover, since flow is among the most motivating states on earth, any experience that consistently generates the state is an experience we will go extraordinarily far out of our way to get more of.

It's why surfers will wake up at 4AM and drive for three hours to go surfing.

Or why video gamers will play games straight for 19 hours straight.

In other words, over time flow produces extreme intrinsic motivation.

Being in flow, is the payoff.

This flips the conventional way of thinking about motivation entirely on its head

It's no longer a matter of doing X to get Y, but rather doing X for X's sake.

In summary:

Passion -> Focus -> Flow -> Intrinsic Motivation

Around and around that feedback loop goes.

So how do we discover a passion, amp up focus, get into flow and see intrinsic motivation spike?

Step 1-Make A List

The easiest place to start is with a pen and a piece of paper.

For reasons that have to do with the relationship between writing and memory, it's better if you do this with pen and paper instead of laptop and keyboard.

The first thing you want to do is make a list of 25 things you're curious about.

And by curious, all I really mean is that if you had a spare weekend, you'd be interested in reading a couple books on the topic and maybe having a conversation or two with an expert.

The most important part here is to be as absolutely specific as possible.

In other words, don't be interested in football or punk rock or food.

These categories are way too vague to be useful.

Instead, be interested in the pass blocking mechanics required to play left tackle; the evolution of political punk from Crass to Rise Against; or the potential for grasshoppers to become a primary human food source in the next five years.

Step 2-Hunt for Intersections

Now look for places where these 25 ideas intersect.

Take the above example.

Say both grasshoppers as food and the mechanics of playing left tackle are on your list.

Well, if you're into pass blocking mechanics you're probably also interested in the nutritional requirements required to play left tackle most effectively.

Insects are exceptionally high in protein-would they make a good football food?

The point here is simple. Curiosity alone is not enough to create true passion.

There's just not enough energy there.

Not enough focus or commitment.

Instead, you want to look for places where three or four items on your curiosity list intersect.

If you can spot the overlap between multiple items on your list-well, now you're cooking. There's energy there.

Why? It's neurobiology.

When multiple curiosity streams intersect you create the necessary conditions for pattern recognition, which is the linking of ideas together.

Humans love pattern recognition.

Whenever we recognize a pattern, the brain releases a tiny squirt of the neurochemical dopamine and, for cultivating passion, this is a very big deal.

Dopamine serves a ton of different functions in the brain, but for this discussion three are critical.

First, dopamine is a focusing chemical.

It helps us pay more attention to the task at hand. Obviously, this enhances learning and drives progress and both are key to cultivating passion.

Secondly, dopamine tunes signal to noise ratios in the brain, which is a fancy way of saying it helps us detect more patterns.

Meaning there's a feedback loop here.

We get dopamine when we first detect a link between two ideas and the dopamine that we get helps us detect even more links.

This is why creative ideas tend to spiral-one good idea leads to the next and the next.

Lastly, dopamine is a feel-good drug.

It's one of the brain's principal reward chemicals and is extremely addictive.

This addiction is key to passion.

The more dopamine you get, the more addictive the experience, the more addictive the experience, the more you can't wait to do it again.

Step 3-Play

Now that you've identified that overlap, play in that space for a little while.

Devote 10 or 20 minutes a day to listening to lectures, watching videos, reading articles, books, whatever, on the topic.

Feed those curiosities a little bit at a time, but feed them on a daily basis.

This slow evolution strategy takes advantage of the brain's inherent pattern recognition software.

When you advance your knowledge a little bit at a time, you're giving your subconscious a chance to process that information.

It will (automatically) start looking for connections between the bits you're learning.

This means more patterns, more dopamine, more motivation, and-over time-a bit of expertise.

And make no mistake, the big point here is to develop that little bit of expertise.

For a while-in step two-a lot of what you're doing is learning a bit of history about your new chosen field and the language spoken by experts in that field-as this is the only way to get to real expertise.

The history is important because it gives you an intellectual framework for all the ideas.

Our brains love narrative.

Once you have learned enough to organize the history of a field into a little story, that story will lock into place.

This gives you a structural framework to attach new facts to.

It also makes those new facts stickier-meaning you won't have to work to remember them, they'll immediately slot into place in the narrative-you'll start learning faster.

The language is important because it allows you to both think about these ideas more deeply and helps you converse with others about them-which is critical for step three.

Step 4-Go Public

The thing about cultivating real passion is it's not just enough to locate those spots where multiple curiosities intersect.

Sure, those are spots with lots of energy.

Sure, playing in that arena will help with cultivation, but to really seal the deal you need some "public successes" in the area.

What do I mean by public successes?

For starters, positive feedback from others. Thus, once you're at this point in the process take things public.

Join a meetup on the subject. Join an online community. Start a Facebook page. Talk to other folks.

We humans are social creatures and adding social reinforcement to your passion is key.

The reason you want to wait to take things public is you want to enter the conversation with ideas of your own and something to say.

There's nothing very fulfilling (or passion cultivating) about being an absolute beginner.

Knowing little feels crappy (often).

But being able to add something to the dialogue-having a few ideas of your own and a few public successes built off those ideas-well now you're really starting to fuel this fire.

Step 5-Turning Passion Into Purpose

In one of my books with technologist Peter Diamandis, BOLD, a lot of time is spent discussing Massively Transformative Purposes or MTP for short.

Here's the thinking.

Passion, for all its upside, can be a fairly selfish experience.

Being all consumed by something means just that-you're all consumed.

There's not much room for other people.

Thus, it's critical to turn passion into purpose-that's both how your build businesses around your passion and how you guard against being swallowed whole by your new love.

Here's how it works:

Get out another piece of paper. Take up your pen again.

Now write down a list of 15 massive problems you would love to see solved.

And by massive I mean something everyone has to deal with.

Another of the points made in Bold is that the world's biggest problems are the world's biggest business opportunities.

Now look for places where your passion intersects with a grand, global challenge.

A place where your passion is a solution to some giant problem.

That linkage-now that's purpose.

Suddenly, you're looking at both a golden business opportunity and a way to use your new found passion to do some real good in the world.

Now you have a real deal Massively Transformative Purpose.

Go get 'em, tiger!

Hope you dug this series on the ten biggest flow blockers.

We've got some more epic goodies for you coming soon.

Stay posted!

Steven Kotler

P.S. If you're an ambitious, big thinking, entrepreneurial type and want to get laser clear on your passion and mission in life, consider applying for our flagship peak performance training Zero to Dangerous.

It'll get you crystal clear on where you going along with giving you all the peak performance and flow tools needed to get there fast.

--> Apply for Zero to Dangerous here now.

P.P.S If you're wondering what kind of results others get from Zero to Dangerous, here's a snapshot of what they say.

"It helped me discover my purpose and now my work is incredibly fulfilling and way more productive! Working with the Flow Research Collective helped me get there." - Dr. Carol Grojean, Cultural Engineer at Microsoft

"Being able to drive yourself into that state of incredibly deep focus called flow is the ultimate superpower. Flow Research Collective is the best place in the world to develop that superpower for yourself." - Roy Chung, Co-Founder of Apollo & Serial Entrepreneur

"Training with Steven and the Flow Research Collective has reduced friction in my life, made me happier, and increased my output. Honestly, it'll probably end up adding millions of dollars to my career." - Tucker Max, 4 x NYT Bestselling Author & Founder of Scribe

"The value was so huge. My productivity levelled up so fast that it produced the exact new career opportunity I'd been looking for, before I even finished the training! It literally did what it promised faster than I could finish it. It's really amazing stuff!" - Sean McCormick, Host of the Optimal Performance Podcast with Natural Stacks

"This shit is just next LEVEL! I've done Tony Robbins, Brendon Burchard, everything-this is worth 10x what the Flow Research Collective charges. If you really apply this, it will be THE THING that changes your game forever." - Bret Lockett, Former NFL Safety, Entrepreneur & Business Consultant

"If you''re at all interested in living up to your full potential, flow is the way to get there. Zero to Dangerous gives you all the tools you need to get into flow more often and go full speed ahead after your dreams. I loved every second of this program. The science and psychology behind flow is absolutely fascinating, and there are an unending amount of possible applications to both our daily lives and our biggest long-term dreams." - Krysta Stryker, Entrepreneur & Fitness Expert

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London King, let's talk about stress.

According to the American Psychological Association, there are three types of stress-acute stress, episodic acute stress, and chronic stress.

The real danger here is chronic stress.

When folks complain about "being stressed out" all the time, they're really saying they're suffering from chronic stress.

And chronic stress is no small issue.

Chronic stress causes atrophy of the amygdala and the hippocampus which impairs memory and skews fear conditioning.

What then happens is that our hypothalamic pituitary adrenal (HPA) axis, our central stress response system, becomes imbalanced.

All of a sudden minor things feel stressful.

Our "nerves have worn thin".

We're impatient, frazzled and easily agitated.

I'm sure you've found yourself in this frenetic worn out state many times.

Chronically stressed has become a standard way of being and operating in the 21st century.

However, when it comes to peak performance, there are really only two states that you ever want to be in.

Calm and alert or asleep.

That's essentially it.

Of course a flow state is the epitome of a "calm and alert".

We're super calm, and hyper focused simultaneously when in flow.

So how do you combat chronic stress so you can stop being frazzled, stay calm and alert and get into flow?

Well our good friend, Dr. Andrew Huberman at Stanford says there are three types of tools for dealing with stress.

The first are tools that raise your ceiling on what we perceive as stress.

The second are tools that reduce the stress response once it's been activated.

Third, are tools that bring your state up, if underaroused.

The following three tools fall into the first two categories.

Tool 1-More Stress!

Weird huh?

Key point is it has to be the right kind of stress.

Engaging in short, intentional bursts of acute stress can be really effective for reducing chronic stress.

An intense workout. An ice bath. Deep tissue massage.

These kinds of activities mitigate chronic stress even though they're a form of acute stress.

So if you're struggling with chronic stress, make sure you're engaging in bursts of super intense acute stress regularly.

It'll help.

However, if you're already battling another acute stressor, like a terrible night of sleep or immune system compromisation from a cold, be careful.

Too much acute stress can tip you over the edge and leave you feeling run down.

Tool 2-Cognitive Reframing:

A frame is a psychological device that offers a perspective and manipulates salience (what you perceive as important) to influence how you think about something.

The degree to which the "cognitive frame" we place on something changes how that thing impacts us, is shocking.

Let me elaborate.

A longitudinal study at the University of Wisconsin found that when participants told themselves they liked the feeling of stress, they were alleviated from the physical symptoms of stress.

Even more crazily.

Individuals who experienced a high level of stress throughout their life, but viewed this stress as something positive-a sign of growth and expansion-had lower mortality rates than individuals who experienced less overall stress, but viewed it as a bad thing!

The takeaway is that the "cognitive frame" you wrap around your experience of stress will determine how negatively that stress impacts you.

View the stress you're dealing with as something that's helping you grow, and it will!

It may sound a little self-helpy but it works.

Tool 3-The Rapid Nasal Breath:

This final tool falls into Dr. Huberman's second category, it's something we can do to mitigate the stress response after it's already been activated.

You'll want to use this right after you feel a surge of stress.

A colleague drops some bad news, you're about to give a presentation, you're children are pulling out of you.

Here's how it works:
Take a long, deep breath in through your nose. When it feels like you can't breath any more air in, rapidly sniff as hard as you can.

Try it right now.

What'll happen is the alveoli in your lungs will snap open, increasing oxygenation and activating the parasympathetic branch of the nervous system.

Super simple, but super helpful. Try it out today when you feel an uptick in stress.

That's it for now folks!

Tomorrow's flow blocker is time and how to manage it.

Catch you then.

Peace,

Steven Kotler

P.S. If you want access to the world's most cutting edge tools to eliminate stress and stay calm and alert all the time so you can blaze through your work, deep in flow. well, consider applying for Zero to Dangerous. It'll get you there fast.

Our team has a couple of spots open for interviews this week. They'll speak with you to see if it's a good fit and give you more information.

You can apply right here.

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Did you go to high school in America London King?

If you did, there is a pretty good chance you learned to write essays using the dreaded five paragraph method.

For those who don't remember, the structure is this:

Introductory paragraph (wherein you lay out your thesis), followed by three supporting paragraphs (each one making a different yet complementary supporting argument), finished with a conclusion (essentially your introduction restated and a final conclusion drawn).

What I want to point out here is the amount of data being offered up.

While it's called a five paragraph essay, the argument itself hinges on three main data points.

Three core ideas.

Because of this, the five paragraph essay is also known as the "hamburger essay" or "one, three, one," or, occasionally, a "three-tier essay."

Ever wonder why?

Why three tiers? Why five paragraphs? Seriously?

Generations of Americans have been taught to write this way.

If, as the author David Foster Wallace, so ironically pointed out, the purpose of an education is to teach students how to think, why exactly are we teaching them to think this way?

The answer lies in working memory, our technical term for the part of your brain (roughly: frontal cortex, parietal cortex, anterior cingulate, and basal ganglia) that holds the information currently active in consciousness.

That is, the things you are actually aware of, the things you can actually think about.

For example, when you ask someone for their email address, when they answer, it is working memory that holds onto that answer long enough for you to write it down.

In computer terms, your working memory is your RAM.

But-the most important point here-it is also an extremely limited bit of RAM.

In 1956, Harvard cognitive psychologist George Miller published what has become one of the most famous papers in psychology: "The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two: Some Limits on Our Capacity for Processing Information."

Miller's discovery was that working memory has a limit of roughly seven items.

That's it.

That's the most stuff we can hold in our consciousness at once.

That''s why phone numbers are seven digits long-any longer and we would have trouble remembering them.

But this magic number seven is actually misleading.

It's not that we can't hold seven items in consciousness at once, it's that we usually don't.

In fact, in thousands of follow up studies, most researchers found that we usually hold about three or four items in consciousness at once.

And this brings us back to the five-paragraph essay.

Why five paragraphs?

Well, because, when considering an argument, we can usually only hold onto just three or four ideas at once.

Thus the structure of the essay: one introductory chunk that introduces a thesis, three supporting notions that back up the thesis, then a reiteration and, perhaps, a slight extension of the thesis.

In other words, the five paragraph essay is customized for the brain's internal processing limits-it's built to work with working memory.

Of course, it's not just five-paragraph essays.

One of the most famous rules in writing, speaking and music is the "Rule of Three."

The rule is that concepts or ideas presented in threes are inherently more interesting, more enjoyable and more memorable.

This is why the Declaration of Independence talks about "Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness."

It's why we have three wise men and three blind mice and three musketeers.

It's "Blood, Sweat and Tears" and "Earth, Wind and Fire" and "Sex, Drugs and Rock-and-Roll."

A couple of years ago, Carmine Gallo wrote a great blog post talking about how uber-presenter Steve Jobs relied on the Rule of Three.

The 2011 iPad 2 was described as "thinner, lighter, faster," while the 2007 iPhone was made up of three new products: "a new iPod, a phone and an internet communications device."

The high-performance takeaway from all this?

The rule of three is super sticky.

If you can deploy it everywhere you can-your note taking, content production, speaking-it''ll amplify learning in yourself and others.

Use it to stock up your memory, pitch your next startup or whatever.

You''ll be surprised at the results.

Peace.

Steven Kotler.

P.S. If you want to learn other ways to get your biology to work for you, not against you, then consider applying for our flagship training Zero to Dangerous.

Zero to Dangerous is for 21st century knowledge workers who want to get more done, in less time by harnessing flow and other neuroscience-backed peak-performance tools.

We're accepting applications right now.

--> You can apply right here <--

We'd be psyched to hear from you and, if it's a fit, train with you!

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Hey London King,

Today brings a story about spite.

Or, more specifically, it's a story about the joy of spite, which is to say, it's actually a story about how to use spite as a flow trigger.

Psychologists tend to think of spite as a negative, but they tend to be speaking about what we could call "Capital S-spite."

This is the desire to hurt someone who has hurt you.

Here, I'm talking about "small s-spite," for which there isn't a terrific word in English. The British call it "bloody mindedness."

Here's an example:

For the past decade, my wife has kept a fortune cookie fortune taped to our fridge. It reads: "You get great pleasure out of proving other people wrong."

She thinks it sums me up perfectly. I think she knows me a little too well.

Athletes typically call reminders like these "bulletin board material."

They're reminders of all the times people doubted you, and all the times you proved them wrong.

And this desire to prove wrong those silly souls who had the nerve to doubt you, that's what I'm calling "small s-spite."

And the case I'm going to make is that small "s" spite is a fantastic tool in a flow hacker's arsenal.

For starters, spite is that little nudge that says "go harder, focus more, stretch farther."

But "go harder" means take a little risk.

Focus more means amp up your concentration on the task at hand.

Stretching farther means pushing on the challenge-skills balance.

All three are flow triggers that improve our ability to get into the zone.

Spite is only a tiny bit of extra oomph, a nudge, but sometimes, for triggering flow, a nudge is all it takes.

But don't waste the nudge. Don't spite the small stuff.

Useful small "s" spite isn't about proving your best friend wrong-the ego-boost you get from being the one who absolutely knew the fastest way to get to the restaurant.

This isn't "I told you so" spite.

This is "you told me to not waste my time chasing my dreams" small "s" spite.

In other words, my first grade teacher told me I wouldn't amount to much, my sixth grade teacher told me I wouldn't live to see thirty, and a busload of people told me that wanting to be a writer was a form of mental illness.

Well thank you all so very much.

High performance psychologist Michael Gervais-who is both on the board of the Flow Research Collective and works with Pete Carrol and the Seattle Seahawks-has found a way to use this same motivator to drive group flow.

It's become a regular portion of the Seahawks pre-game warm up.

Here's the drill.

The Seahawks gather in a circle and trash talk, but in a very particular way.

Player X says-"Don't try that one-handed catch shit in the game, this ain't practice."

In other words, Player X doubts Player Y.

But Player Y has a very specific kind of comeback: "I'll not only try that shit, I'll catch that shit, why, because I caught it a thousand times this week in practice."

Gervais has crafted a more competitive version of the "yes, and" game, which is one of group flow's more powerful triggers.

But to play the game, the players can't just boast, they have to use prior successes as the core of their boast.

They are reminding themselves of their capabilities-which lowers anxiety, increases focus, amps up motivation, tunes the challenge-skills sweet spot and, collectively, drives flow.

Even better, every time you actually do manage to exceed expectations you gain a deeper level of confidence and unlock a deeper level of the adjacent possible.

Confidence matters because a large portion of the "skills" portion of the challenge-skills balance is actually how we feel about the skills we have (in some cases, this matters more than our actual skills).

Unlocking the adjacent possible matters because it allows you to continue to stretch, which keeps you in that challenge-skills sweet spot over time.

The point is that intrinsic motivators can be ethically-neutral.

You can turn spite or anger or resentment into fuel.

As Sarah Sarkis, one of our resident psychologists likes to say, "our drives don't have to be benevolent, they just have to drive us."

So take that doubters.

Hope you're digging these flow tips! The next email brings a "stupid simple memory hack".

Steven Kotler

P.S. If you want to learn how to unlock hyper focus and flow so you can blaze past the competition (and prove the naysayers wrong) then apply for Zero to Dangerous now.

My team will jump on the phone with you for 30 minutes and see if it makes sense for where you're at.

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Hey Good People,

In case you missed this...

For years, I've had countless requests for a podcast focused on flow science and peak performance.

I've given in and we're making it happen.

In fact, it just dropped a few days ago.

It's called Flow Research Collective Radio..

It's a podcast dedicated to asking the big questions about the bounds of human potential.

I'll be interviewing world-leading scientists, innovators and creatives and sharing science backed strategies to boost your performance.

So what's our first episode?

Big surprise.

It's an interview with yours truly.

Trust me, I resisted, but Rian Doris, my partner here at the Collective is a stubborn one.

However, it turned out to be a great conversation.

We went deep into some topics I don't usually talk about, such as.

Why the spiritual path didn't work for me but how it lead me to flow research
Why science is so crucial to producing results in your life
Our mission here at the Collective and our founding principles
The mentors that helped me the most on this journey and what I learned from them

Check out the first episode of Flow Research Collective Radio here.

If you dig it, hit the subscribe button, leave a review and share it on the socials.

It'll help boost the podcast so we can get the flow word out to more people!

Really hope you gain a lot from Flow Research Collective Radio.

It's been a helluva long time coming!

Rooting for you,

Steven Kotler

P.S. Go ahead and download my kick off interview of Flow Research Collective Radio here!

P.P.S. Not to spill the beans but episode 2 of Flow Research Collective Radio is with FBI Hostage Negotiator Chris Voss.

We talked about how to harness flow during the most difficult conversations.

It was badass. Stay tuned for that.

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London King,

You're making progress towards your goals, ultra consistent, good week after good week and then...

BAM!

You derail yourself.

Binge eating, procrastination, shirking responsibilities-whatever it is-we've all tripped ourselves up on route to our goals.

Self sabotage is frustrating as hell.

While there may be deeper psychological issues going on, what helps our clients with self sabotage is understanding that consistency itself is a high performance skill.

The aim of the game is not having all your habits and practices flawlessly dialed in all the time.

Consistent execution is key.

In fact, when it comes to producing results, consistency often matters more than what you're actually doing.

Imagine working out flawlessly, five days a week for a month straight, then taking a month off and derailing your diet and repeating this cycle for an entire year.

Now imagine working out twice per week. Every week, for an entire year.

The latter option involves 156 less total workouts than the month on, month off approach.

But I'll bet you'd end up with much better results with twice a week workouts all year long.

The difference?

Consistency.

I like to think of consistency as "keeping your word to yourself".

Make doing what you've said you're going to do a non-negotiable. Over time your consistency will improve.

When it comes to notching up consistency, avoiding perfectionism is crucial.

The pursuit of perfection all too often cripples performance.

Think back to some time where you've been doing great and then slacked off and "messed up your day".

All too often, instead of just getting back on track quickly, we write off the entire day.

A naughty bite of cake becomes a ferocious feast.

We derail all plans and declare the entire day a failure-simply because some arbitrary notion of perfection was taken off the table.

This is the behavioral equivalent of getting a slight crack in your iPhone screen and then taking out a hammer and smashing the screen to pieces because it's no longer perfect.

What helps with this?

A cognitive reframe:

The idea that your success is equal to the average of your default day.

When you think of it like that, having a 6/10 non-perfect day is a hell of a lot better than throwing the towel in entirely.

So next time you go to self sabotage because you haven't been perfect, remember that decent always beats bad.

Do your best to stay consistent.

Tomorrow, we're going to be tackling the next flow blocker-uncertainty.

Stay tuned.

Rooting for you,

Steven Kotler

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Hey Good People,

What is enlightenment?

Is enlightenment possible?

What's happening in the brain when someone experiences "God"?

These are some questions I asked Dr. Andrew Newberg on the latest episode of Flow Research Collective Radio.

Dr. Newberg was one of my first mentors and he's an incredible mind.

Interviewing him about his research on mystical experiences, meditation and enlightenment was a blast.

We talked about.

The difference between flow and enlightenment states
Why flow may or may not lead to permanent shifts in consciousness
What's happening in your brain during an experience of "oneness with everything"

Check out the episode on Flow Research Collective Radio here.

If you enjoy it, drop us a review!

My team reads them all and it'll help us get this content to more people.??

Rooting for you,

Steven

P.S. We're hiring again here at the Flow Research Collective. For now, we're calling this position "Director of Operations". It's a big, crucial and exciting role.

If you've got stellar operational abilities (managing people and projects, building systems that maximize output, hiring A-players and integrating the major business functions) you may be a fit.

Read through the job description in the link below and if it sounds like you, go ahead and apply. If you know someone who may be a fit, send them the link and encourage them to apply!

-> Apply to be the new Flow Research Collective "Director of Operations" here now.

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Wanna know what state does not lead to peak performance, London King?

Exhaustion.

No prizes for guessing that one.

Thing is, being underslept is far worse than we tend to think.

Work done at King's College London, John Hopkins, and UC Berkeley found that sleep deprivation causes issues ranging from a 2X risk of cancer to pre-diabetic blood sugar levels to hormonal dysregulation and handicapped cognition.

Definitely not things that are going to lead to you dropping into flow and having a phenomenally productive work day.

Sleep is a basic form of flow hygiene.

If you aren't well slept, your chances of getting into flow and being uber productive are slim to none.

So, how do we get rested and say goodbye to exhaustion?

Well, luckily, for most people, this is actually the easiest flow blocker to solve.

Implementing the following four tips is a super solid starting point.

1-Sleep Hygiene 101:

This is the stuff you've heard a million times.

Don't eat less than two hours before bed. Make sure your room is cold and totally dark.

No screens before bed. No caffeine after 12PM. Exercise intensely, at least three hours before bed.

Have a good routine to wind down before bed. Close all open cognitive loops by writing everything out that's on your mind.

Get all these basics locked in as your first port of call.?

2-Train To Sleep, While Awake:

Dr. Andrew Huberman of Stanford and a member of our advisory board, talks about the need to practice relaxation while awake.

And it makes sense-we all want to sleep better but we rarely practice sleeping.

A simple way to do this is to get good at dropping into an incredibly relaxed state.

The better you can relax your entire system on command, the better you'll sleep.

A great starting point is by doing a practice like Yoga Nidra, a guided relaxation exercise.

You can just Youtube search for an audio and you'll find one.

3-Nine Hours In Bed For Eight Hours Asleep:

The golden rule of sleep is to spend nine hours in bed if you want eight hours of sleep.

Want to wake up at 6AM? You better be in bed by 9PM the night prior.

It's that simple.

4-Downregulate Your Nervous System Before Bed:

There's nothing worse than lying in bed trying to sleep but still jazzed from a day of work with cortisol, adrenaline and norepinephrine coursing through your veins.

To avoid the whole staring at the ceiling debacle, shift your state and downregulate your nervous system before you turn in.

How?

Hot shower. Foam rolling. Breathwork. Sauna.

Something that shifts you out of "work mode" and gets you into your body.

Hope these tips help you sleep well, London King!

We're halfway through the Flow Blockers.

Tomorrow we'll be tackling overwhelm.

Rooting for you,

Steven Kotler

P.S. If you're a high performing business leader that struggles with "turning off" and getting the recovery needed to sustain peak performance, consider applying to Zero to Dangerous.

It'll help. A lot. Expect much better professional results with a fraction of the personal sacrifice.

You can apply for Zero to Dangerous here now.

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Hey Good People,

"When all you've got is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail."

That's one of Abraham Maslow''s most famous sayings.

What he meant was, when it comes to problem-solving, we tend to get locked into using familiar tools in expected ways.

The technical term for this is the Law of the Instrument.

Give someone a hammer and, indeed, they'll look for nails to pound.

But present them with a problem where they need to repurpose that same hammer as a doorstop, or a pendulum weight, or a tomahawk, and you'll typically get blank stares.

We may be facing a similar situation when it comes to our minds.

At least as far back as the French Enlightenment and Descartes's cogito ergo sum (I think, therefore, I am), we've relied on our rational selves-what psychologists call our "egos"-to run the whole show.

It's a Maslow's hammer kind of reaction. Every issue we encounter, we try to solve by thinking.

It might be time to rethink all that thinking.

Rather than treating our psychology like the unquestioned operating system (or OS) of our entire lives, we can repurpose it to function more like a user interface (or UI)-that easy-to-use dashboard that sits atop all the other, more complex programs.

By treating the mind like a dashboard, by treating different states of consciousness like apps to be judiciously deployed, we can bypass a lot of psychological storytelling and get results faster and, often, with less frustration.

Instead of nervously waiting for a job interview and obsessing about all the things that could go wrong, we can take a page out of Amy Cuddy's book and stand up, breathe deeply, and power-pose our way to lower cortisol, higher testosterone, and more confidence.

Instead of using trendy leadership books and a new mission statement to fire up employees, we can follow ESADE's lead and use neurofeedback to heighten group coherence and prompt more productive strategy sessions.

But most of us, when challenged, will do none of these things.

We'll think more, talk more, and stress more.

We'll wait until after we feel better to go for that walk in the sun, rather than going for that walk in order to feel better.

We'll wait until after we get that job offer to pump our fists and stand tall, instead of the other way around.

That's because, at first, reorienting from OS to UI can be disorienting.

If I can change the "wallpaper of my mind" by deliberately shifting my neurophysiology-my breathing, my posture, my brainwaves, or any number of other interventions-what good are all those stories I've been telling myself?

When we step beyond our conventional egos and experience the richness of altered states, it's essential to upgrade our software.

Those monkey-suit personas we thought were us (until we suddenly realize they aren't) don't need to confine us or define us.

When we consistently see more of "what is really happening," we can liberate ourselves from the limitations of our psychology.

We can put our egos to better use, using them to modulate our neurobiology and with it, our experience!

Steven Kotler

P.S. Would you like to upgrade your "cognitive software" so you can think less, spend more time in flow, and achieve bigger things?

Then consider applying for Zero to Dangerous, our flagship peak performance training.

You'll learn how to dial in your state for optimal performance so you can accomplish your boldest goals, faster.

--> Apply For Zero to Dangerous Here Now

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Hey London King,

For years, I've had countless requests for a podcast focused on flow science and peak performance.

I've given in and we're making it happen.

In fact, today is the day it drops.

It's called Flow Research Collective Radio..

It's a podcast dedicated to asking the big questions about the bounds of human potential.

I'll be interviewing world-leading scientists, innovators, and creatives and sharing science-backed strategies to boost your performance.

So what's our first episode?

Big surprise.

It's an interview with yours truly.

Trust me, I resisted, but Rian Doris, my partner here at the Collective is a stubborn one.

However, it turned out to be a great conversation.

We went deep into some topics I don't usually talk about, such as.

Why the spiritual path didn't work for me but how it lead me to flow research
Why science is so crucial to producing results in your life
Our mission here at the Collective and our founding principles
The mentors that helped me the most on this journey and what I learned from them

Check out the first episode of Flow Research Collective Radio here.

If you dig it, hit the subscribe button, leave a review and share it on the socials.

It'll help boost the podcast so we can get the flow word out to more people!

Really hope you gain a lot from Flow Research Collective Radio.

It's been a helluva long time coming!

Rooting for you,

Steven Kotler

P.S. Go ahead and download my kick off interview of Flow Research Collective Radio here!

P.P.S. Not to spill the beans but episode 2 of Flow Research Collective Radio is with FBI Hostage Negotiator Chris Voss.

We talked about how to harness flow during the most difficult conversations.

It was badass. Stay tuned for that.

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