Dr. Jennifer Groh

And I think I too share an interest in like how to get myself into that flow state and what to do when I have sort of bottomed out in like one particular – like I get – I might be in flow and making good progress on something and then I get stuck and I stop.

And I find that changing my immediate environment is a good way to get out of that little rut.

So for example, if I'm working on a difficult piece of writing, I might get to the end of what I can achieve in one particular cafe.

But if I go to another cafe,

That could be.

Yeah, they maybe haven't figured out how they need to hack themselves.

And I think that one reason why I haven't specifically answered your question yet is because I think the answer may be specific to the individual.

So for me, for music, I like to listen to music while I work, but I do it sometimes, but not other times.

But as a musician myself, the music can't be too interesting to me.

Like it has to be either stuff I know really well already so that it's not like grabbing my attention to actually listen to the song or it should be classical music or something that doesn't have lyrics.

So I don't have that language intrusion to my thoughts.

Sometimes I find it useful to make a playlist for a particular project so that those songs start to become a cue for working on that project.

So I don't think there's going to be one answer that fits all circumstances, but to maybe have an understanding of what works for the particular person, the particular project.

So I think a theme of some of your podcast episodes involves, you know, physical exercise and workouts and, you know, what's the best routine for this, that or the other aspect of the workout.

And generally interval training, I think, comes up as a pretty effective strategy.

I sometimes think about that in the context of more mental work because I have not had good luck

screening out all the distractions to get going on deep writing.

For me, it's more like I can push out a sentence and that's so effortful that then I need to take a break.

It's like I'll write a sentence, then I'll check one new site, then I'll write another sentence, then I'll check another new site.

And if I try to just write one sentence and then another sentence and then another sentence –