Stephen Collar
Appearances
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
Flow follows focus. It only shows up when all our attention is the right here, right now. So that's what all the triggers do. They drive our attention into the present moment. If I wanted to get into the neuroscience, they do it a bunch of different ways. Some of them push dopamine to our system. Some of them push norepinephrine to our system. Some of them lower cognitive load.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
That's biology. That's all of us. Once you start figuring out how this shit works, you can do that yourself. It's really amazing.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
Yeah, let me, this is worth hammering on because it's so critical. So we've known since the 60s, this is Mihaly's work, but it's now baked into psychology and positive psychology. So we knew that flow underpinned happiness and well-being. We now know it underpins life satisfaction, meaning, purpose. In fact, when positive psychologists define happiness, there are three tiers.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
The upper two tiers, the best you get to feel on the planet, have flow baked into the definition. That was where we were for a really long time. I worked on this recently. The point I made a minute ago, we started to figure out the opposite. It's hard to prove happiness.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
low helps with depression or anxiety those are trickier because you need a specific kind of studies in this brilliant team in europe just to publish a study in nature and in one of the nature publications 10 000 twins so if you're going to study depression or anxiety or any of these conditions twin studies are the gold standard right you got
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
identical twins are separated at birth what happens to one what happens to the other and it's like the nature versus nurture yeah it gives you just the best sort of benchmark and they had took a 10 000 person twin sample this is where they discovered flow is protective against depression all uh anxiety bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, and cardiac-related stress conditions.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
So for all of us getting older, cardiac-related stress conditions as well. And then my lab proved that flow overrides PTSD. And my friend Karina Pfeiffer proved that flow overrides burnout. And so right now, the whole world seems to be suffering from burnout. And this is the only, there's no pill, there's no protocol in the world that treats it.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
all those conditions there's literally there's nothing else you can get that will protect against those conditions massively increase happiness and well-being and overall would the word antidote be appropriate for that is is it the antidote to burnout or is that i think so i'm not gonna say it's the antidote to depression or anxiety those are bigger things but it may be the antidote
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
to burn out certainly here's the crazy thing this is worth knowing so back in the 60s the book that introduced flow to the world was a book by chick sent me high known as beyond boredom and anxiety and he ran this really weird study where so there's macro flow that's what happened to me when i go when i went surfing right this is full-blown flow state time passes strangely self disappears you start on one with the ocean all that stuff and i can talk about the science of that if anybody cares
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
But microflow is what happens at work, right? You go to work. Let's say you work in an office. You sit down to write a quickie email to your colleague. It's supposed to be a paragraph long, take two minutes. But you get so sucked into what you're doing. An hour goes by and you look up and you've written a whole essay and it's great. You're like, what happened to the time? That's microflow.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
Microflow is really common at work. Most of us spend about 5% to 10% of our work lives in microflow, even without noticing it. So Csikszentmihalyi found a way to block microflow in people back in the 60s. He did this experiment. He blocked it for three days. And then he recorded what happened to people. Look what happened to people in three days blocking microflow. It's like extreme burnout.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
They go from normal, well-adjusted, happy to deeply paranoid. I can't think. I'm suspicious. I'm anxious. I can't focus. I'm miserable, et cetera, et cetera. Here's the thing. Modern business is designed to block microphone. The entire way we do business these days blocks microphone. The way almost every company is organized 11 different channels of communication coming in. You've got Slack.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
You've got email. You've got all this stuff pulling your attention on the present moment. You're blocking microflow. You're literally creating conditions for yourself and your employees that are going to drive everybody into burnout almost immediately. Hi, welcome to your new job. Have some burnout. That's literally what we're doing to people in our companies most of the time. They're our company.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
Toyota doesn't do it. Patagonia doesn't do it. The best companies in the world, you look at what they're doing, you look at their management philosophies. They've got pro-flow management philosophies, and they've found a way to go against that. But most companies have no idea. They think all this technology is making them more efficient, and it's making them miserable and less efficient.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
I think it's because he can lift a car on his shoulder.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
So here's the other thing that's really also interesting. Just let's go back to culture because we were talking last night when the three of us were together about the importance of culture in organizations. Flow is a culture building engine. That's one of the things. So here's something that's really interesting.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
You hear a lot of stuff these days about, oh, I want psychological safety in my workplace or we're going to be an inclusive workplace. Right. And first of all, first question, how the fuck are you measuring? Because it's fine to say it out loud. Who doesn't want psychological safety in an inclusive workplace? We all do. But how are you measuring it? And most people are trying to measure it.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
They end up breaking their companies because everybody's got their personal little things. And that's what comes up, right? Psychological safety and inclusion becomes code for, oh, no, anything that personally is bothering me, I can now call it I'm unsafe or I don't feel included. And suddenly the company's screwed. So you want to really, yes, we want these things. How are you measuring them?
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
Here's something cool. You can actually measure flow because you can't produce flow for reasons we can get into without psychological safety or If you're working in an organization and you don't feel safe or included, you can't get into flow. So you can literally measure flow in your employees as a way to find out, oh, do they feel safe?
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
Oh, do they feel like, is this my workplace without having to get into discussions about political correctness versus non, like all this stuff that really is sort of, I think, poisonous to most businesses these days and are really dragging up businesses and education, a lot of stuff. And it's not that the intentions are bad. I think the intentions are great.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
I think the way it's being operationalized is a disaster. And the better way to operationalize it is to actually track for flow because you get those other things baked in. By the way, we just talked for an hour.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
And maybe this hasn't happened to you, which is amazing. When your dreams become your own prison, when you build it, that's what happens to a lot of entrepreneurs, right? They're tracking on the vision, they're growing it, they're growing it, they're growing it, they're growing it. They get to where they want to go and they're like, oh shit, I built a cage out of my dreams.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
Well, the other thing you said, and this is worth asking about, I've always had a vision. My attention always is going, okay, I've learned this. Where can I go next? What's the next hard challenge? What's the next hard challenge?
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
If you don't have those, if you don't have a new North Star, if you build a company and get suddenly achieved everything you want to do without another vision to anchor yourself, we're goal-directed machines. Humans are goal-directed machines. What the science tells us, if you look at my book, The Art of Impulse, which tracks this,
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
we function best with three tiers of goals you need daily to-do list clear goals and flow terminology and they're said in a very specific way you need high heart goals these are like multi-year goals three to five year goals and then you need mission statement goals for your life right you want them all pointing in the same direction so like what you're doing today is feeding into your high heart goals
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
which is feeding into your mission goals, which is what Peter and I called a massively transformative purpose, right? Back when we were writing Bold, credit where credit is due. Salim Ismail's term, we stole it from Salim. But a massively transformative purpose is your anchor, and everything sort of fills to that. And if you're massively transformative purpose, you've suddenly achieved it, right?
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
And you haven't set another one or extended it out, that also derails a lot of people. That sounds like what you were talking about.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
My brain, my body, my career, my marriage. I bankrupted myself.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
Because, and I'm sure probably 50, 60, 70% of the people who listen to your podcast are interested in some level of self-improvement, fixing their lives, fixing their career.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
Most people. Yeah. If your experience was anything like mine, if you don't come in armed with the neuroscience and blah, blah, we'll come back to that in a second. The fuck do you do first? Do I care about goal setting? Is this about connection? Is this about motivation? Where do I start? Is this about flow? This guy's talking about flow. It turns out if you follow the biology, there's a map.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
There's literally a map. We know where you start. We know what you do. We know what order it goes in. It always has to start with motivation. We learned this way back in the day. Abraham Maslow pointed it out, but it's been proven again and again. First of all, You can't pay your bills on that. You are rent insecure, food insecure, any of those things.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
Solve that problem first because until you don't need a lot of money. You need to just, they've proven like after 70,000. Well, but that number is literally for a family, right? It's basic needs plus a little leftover for discretionary income. That's all you need. But if you don't have that. The basic necessities. There's too much fear. So fear. Maslow's hierarchy.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
Norepinephrine, all that stuff that produces for your cortisol. It blocks peak performance. It blocks everything else. So you have to start with extrinsic motivation. You got to start by paying your bills. Once that happens, the next thing you want is intrinsic motivation. Big drivers to drive you forward so you can get in the game. And what are the biggest drivers?
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
Autonomy, mastery, purpose, passion, and curiosity. And there's an order. Curiosity is designed to be built into passion, which is designed to be built into purpose. And once you have your purpose, what do you want? Autonomy, you want the freedom to pursue your purpose. Once you have your autonomy, what do you need? Mastery, the skills to pursue that purpose well. That's how the biology works.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
Once you're there, It's time to layer in the three tiers of goal setting. And once you're there, now it's time to talk flow. right? Like we know this, you know, everybody's selling a different piece in this puzzle. So you're getting all these different messages, but neurobiology really laid out the map. It was like, okay, start here, go here, go here. It's a check.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
I said, we may argue over this, but I'm the dumbest guy in the room. I need a checklist. What am I doing first? What am I doing second? What am I doing third?
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
So with Tommy, and we can talk about why again, but I've seen this again and again and again, right? My career started as a journalist, then moved into writing books. And now I still do those things. Not a lot of journalism, but now I do the science. It's just gotten me sort of more granular about, over the time.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
But what I've really done is in every domain, I've tried to be in the room when the impossible becomes possible, right? Like when somebody does something, whether it's turn on the very first artificial vision implant, the very first time a blind person could see, how did you do that? Where did it come from to like Peter when he founded the XPRIZE and was the first private spaceship?
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
How did you do that, right? That was always my question. You pulled off the impossible. How did it happen? Flow is always part of the answer. There's a bunch more of the answer, which is why Art in the Impossible is a bigger book than just about flow. But one of the things that I found about the top performers across the boards is they use fear as a compass. And the reason is this.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
We are limited energetically and the most expensive thing for the brain to do. Brain takes all your energy, right? It's 2% of your body weight it uses at rest. So you're not even working, you're just chilling. 25% of your energy goes to your brain. So the brain is always trying to be energy efficient. It's the first order of business.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
But for people who are trying to increase their performance, if you can learn to work with fear, fear is awesome as a motivator because it gives you focus for free.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
you don't have to struggle to pay attention to stuff that you're scared of you can't not stop paying attention so once you get good at this and once you can go oh yeah this is scary but this also brings out the best in me and focus my attention does a lot of stuff the best of the best always they use a fear as a compass oftentimes so people will see my books and they'll be like you know you'll get that there was a communication challenge right i wanted to communicate a bunch of ideas
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
Cognitive load is just all the crap you're trying to think about at any one time. And if I lower cognitive load, this is why people will tell you, clean your office, right? If when you're totally distracted and you're all over the place, what do I do first? You clean your office. Why would you possibly clean your office? It lowers cognitive load.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
And that's what they think the book is about. And that's fine. That's what you see. What I see in every one of my books was this impossible writing challenge that I set for myself. This like, okay, you don't know how to do this at all, but to pull this book off, you have to learn how to write like this and this and this and this and this. And they're crazy. Incredibly scary, hard goals.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
The reason I like them is every morning when I have to face a blank page, they're scary. So I'm paying a little more attention for free. I'm not having to work so hard. So there's a lot of issues with fear. You've got to know how to control your nervous system. You've got to manicure your nervous system. We can talk more about why that is in terms of flow terms.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
But like the best of the best, we all use fear as a motivator, I think, for the exact reasons you talked about. It brings out the best in people.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
The environment, Matt. what you're doing. So the answer is going to be a little bit different depending on what the situation is, but let's just back it up one step and talk high level. So you want more flow in your life? Flow states have triggers. These are preconditions that lead to more flow. This is your toolbox. There's 28 known flow triggers.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
There's probably way more, but that's what's been discovered. And as Joe pointed out, There's two varieties of flows, individual flow, me in a flow state or Tommy in a flow state. There's group flow, all three of us, right? We're in a little bit of group flow right now, right? The conversations, our focus is right here. The conversations bounce around.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
We're sort of finishing each other's sentences and popping in a little group flow experience. So there's 16 triggers for group flow. The rest are for individual flow. So let's stay on the individual side. All the triggers do the same thing. Flow follows focus. It only shows up when all our attention is the right here, right now. So that's what all the triggers do.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
They drive our attention into the present moment. If I wanted to get into the neuroscience, they do it a bunch of different ways. Some of them push dopamine to our system. Some of them push norepinephrine to our system. Some of them lower cognitive load. Cognitive load is just all the crap you're trying to think about at any one time.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
And if I lower cognitive load, this is why people will tell you, clean your office, right? If when you're totally distracted and you're all over the place, what do I do first? You clean your office. Why would you possibly clean your office? It lowers cognitive load. All the crap you're trying to think about starts to go away. And what happens? You liberate some extra energy.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
What does the brain do with that extra energy? It repurposes it for focus and attention. So complete concentration is the first flow trigger, the most important. So if you're interested in complete concentration on the task at hand, right? If it's a group setting, you want your entire team focused on the same thing. If it's an individual, you want all your attention here. So what does that mean?
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
You asked about flow killers. The first step is distraction management, right? I start my day with my hardest task. I wanna get the biggest, hardest, most complicated thing out of the way first. One, because I'm gonna have the most energy when I wake up, right? I know that. So that's where I go from me. You're telling me you start your day. I am telling you.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
I am telling you, I didn't tell you why. I go from my bed to my desk in less than seven minutes. I bed, bathroom. I put my dogs outside and let them go run around. And I walk over to my office. I have big properties of my house. My office is on my property or from my house. Walk over to my office. Go on the coffee maker and I'm down at the computer and I don't.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
So I not only do I practice distraction management, I make my to do list the night before. So I know exactly where I'm starting. I shut everything down in my office. There's no email. There's no phone. Slack is off. All the things that my staff can reach me on. All those things are turned off. There's no communication channel open except Slack. for messages.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
And that's literally kept open for my wife and my business partner and my parents and a couple other people. Other than that, like I won't check anything. That's first distraction management. So like, you know, I've walled off. And in fact, I turn all my lights off in my office and I put my writing the night before in focus view, which is a Microsoft Word thing where all you see is the words.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
So literally, I walk into a black room where my book is floating in front of me. And the only difference, Tommy, is the hardest thing I have to do is actually create new words, right? I have to advance my chapter, a thousand words or 2000 words or whatever. I start by editing what I wrote the day before. And there are flow-based reasons for it.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
And I can talk about that in a second, but I start by editing and then I go into the hardest thing. So I guess I start my day with my second hardest task, which is editing what I wrote the day before. And then I go into writing. And I will tell you, like, if you're good at this and I'm good at this, 95% of the time, I'm on a flow state within like 15 minutes.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
I usually write for four hours in the morning. I started four o'clock in the morning and I, at eight o'clock I stop and I'll usually take my dogs for a hike in the back country. At that point, I'm a big believer in long walks too. And I like, so I like to go out for like an hour right after I've written for a bunch of reasons that we can talk about.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
This has been my life since I was 28 years old every day.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
I think everybody's different. I think you've got to figure out, one, what is going to work for you. What's the optimal time to get... There is no optimal time because... Optimal time, what I always tell people is you want to work in accordance with your circadian rhythms. It's really hard to fight your natural biorhythms. So I'm married to a night owl, right? I'm an extreme lark.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
I get up really early. You want the best of my brain? Talk to me at like 6, 7 o'clock, 8 o'clock in the morning. You're going to get my best brain power. If you want my wife, you better talk to her at like four or five or six in the evening. Most people are like Bezos. Most people, this is why work starts at nine and things like that. Most people start to hit their prime around nine or 10.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
that's like normal body clocks right right i'm an extreme lark so my problem is i'll get up earlier and earlier and if i'm not careful i'm waking up at like 1 30 in the morning and now i have to go to bed at like you know six o'clock to be able to do that so like my problem is my body will keep waking up earlier and earlier because i really like it's just naturally that way so that's how i set my day i think you should start with your hardest task first and the reason is
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
If I do nothing else in my day, but I wake up and I've done my writing and then I have to take my dog out no matter what. And I, 90% of the time I hike with a weight vest and I do it for a bunch of different reasons. But one of which is it gives me, I mean, I'm going to go to the gym later in the afternoon, but in case my schedule gets crazier, it comes up.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
It means that I've always gotten my exercise in. I've gotten a workout in because I'm going to do 45 minutes up a mountain with like 20 or 30 pounds on my back, my dog. And I've gotten my hardest test. So I've sort of won my day by 9 a.m. Most people, they're starting their day. I've already won most of my day by 9 a.m. And then and I go from there, you know, I'll work six or seven every night.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
You know, I'm like the rest of us. I'm a workaholic. But it's that morning stretch that really matters to me.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
Yeah, by the way, I got to say, you're right. Because this is the first thing we find out. When people come to train with us, that's the first question we ask is, how much are you sleeping? Because you're not sleeping seven to eight hours a night. Sure, you can get into flow, but not reliably and repeatedly because it's a high energy state.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
So if you don't have the right nutrition, you don't have the right hydration, you don't have the right sleep. And I'm not saying there's one diet for flow, but you want to have energy. So you got to eat healthy food that gives you energy. And you need good hydration. So you're getting out of energy and you need seven, eight hours of sleep. And you know, there's no argument with that.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
So, all right, we can talk about clear goals, which are a flow trigger. And this is about a properly daily to do this. But the second thing is flow is a high energy state. And okay, let me tell you one flow trigger. We talk about one other flow trigger besides complete concentration. That'll be really helpful. The most important flow trigger is known as the challenge skills balance.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
Challenge skills balance. Every listening is going to know exactly what I'm talking about when I explain it. So the idea here is flow follows focus. We pay the most attention to the task at hand when the challenge slightly exceeds our skill set. You want to stretch, but not snap. So if I were to describe it emotionally, right, there's something known as the flow channel.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
It sits between boredom and anxiety. Boredom is, hey, there's not enough stimulation here. I don't give a fuck. I can't pay attention. Anxiety, whoa, way too much. I'm paying too much attention. In between is this sweet spot. It's known as the flow channel. If you're a physiologist, this is the Erg-Stopson curve. And we've known about this since, like, 1906. So say the spell of that?
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
Y-E-R-K-E-S hyphen D-O-B-S-O-N. And it basically says no matter what the stimulants is, there's a music. Certain level, it sounds too low. You can't hear it. You can't hear it. You can't hear it. And then there's a sweet spot in the middle where we like it. And then it gets too loud. That's everything, including flow. Same thing. So there's a sweet spot, the flow channel.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
anxiety, if there's too much anxiety, you're going to block flow. A little bit focuses attention. This is you using fear as a motivator. This is me using fear as a motivator. You're not using abject terror as a motivator because that'll blow you out, right? Then all you can think about is the thing you're scared of. There's no maneuverability.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
So that said, flow requires you to manage your nervous system and manage your energy levels on a regular basis. So at the end of my day to answer your question, Joe, and I'm not sure how it really does this. I will work to wherever I work, work to, I need roughly two and a half hours afterwards. I am going to go. The first thing you want to do is have an active recovery protocol.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
Passive recovery is TV and a beer, and both are terrible for performance. alcohol will fuck up REM sleep. So you can have one to maybe two drinks, right? But now once you go over two drinks and if you weigh like I do, which is like 160, it's one drink. With you, it's two drinks. But for me, it's like one drink. Anything beyond that blocks REM sleep. So I've just messed up my sleep, right?
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
It's a big one. No alcohol. No alcohol. You know what? I will say I did a thing. It was really funny. Richard Branson and I did a thing. We're both, I think, marijuana advocates. You know, have been marijuana advocates for decades. Various reasons. We did a thing about marijuana together. Somebody asked me in the Q&A question, do you have any business advice? What's your one thing? Smuggle a bowl.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
No, he said quit drinking. Quit drinking. Quit drinking. He said quit drinking. It's the most important.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
So alcohol is a flow blocker. Alcohol is a recovery blocker. TV is a recovery blocker. And most people don't know this, so they don't realize this is about YouTube or TV. And social media, yeah. Social media. Well, social media we know, right? But we don't realize that like TV does it because it's really subtle. So here's the problem.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
If you want to recover, right, all the active recovery protocols, whether it's a sauna or an Epsom salt bath or breath work, or mindfulness, or a long walk in nature, all these things, what they're doing is they're putting your brain into alpha. Alpha is like a basic, it's the recovery brainwave, it's relaxed, it's daydreaming mode, it's creative.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
And when we watch TV, the brain, that's that couch pit, if you're just watching it. But what you don't realize is every time there's a quick cut on television, at an unconscious level, your brain goes from alpha up to high beta. High beta is essentially at the edge of fight or flight. And the reason is we evolved in an environment where when anything moves quickly, it could be a threat.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
It could be a predator. It could also be an opportunity. Maybe this is something I can eat or have sex with, or it's something I got to run away from. So every time you're watching TV and you see that quick cut,
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
you're just chilling your brain freaks out you don't notice it but your brain goes is that a threat what just happened and it's blocking recovery so and i'm not saying tv bad i'm saying tv before bed TV before bed, bad.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
Social media, yeah, yeah, yeah.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
You know what is great? Books. Books. So, nobody wants to tell you this. I always tell people, they're like, well, there are so many choices, de-stressing-wise. Like, what do I do? And I'm like, it's simple, depending on how much time you have. If you've got five minutes, if you have five minutes of time, and you want to... reset your nervous system, there's certain things you want to do.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
If you have six minutes, read a book. No, seven to 11 minutes. If you want to reset your nervous system really, really quickly, breathwork can't really do it until you get to about seven to 11. Seven, 11 breathwork. Yeah. So if you've got like literally six minutes of reading fiction, Six minutes of fiction. Fiction will calm your nervous system down. What's the best fiction? It doesn't matter.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
The thing you want to avoid here is like super fast-paced thriller fiction where it's making you a little more agitated. Like almost anything else will work. This is only reading or audible? I haven't seen data on audible and the nervous system. And what I really think is learning styles is kind of crap.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
Like there was this idea that some people are visual learners and somebody who's auditory on somebody who's kinesthetic and we're all sort of blended, but there are handfuls of people who are just, they're audible learners, right? They need to learn that way. But as a general rule, if you can avoid audio books, if you've got a job where you're stopping traffic a lot or something like that,
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
Yeah, listen to podcasts, read audiobooks for sure. But if you can avoid them, and the reason is we know when you listen or read electronic books instead of actual physical books,
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
retain less and it's because the part of our brain that developed for memory is the hippocampus it originated from map making your brain is that you were hunter-gatherer where is the cave with the saber-tooth tiger so i could avoid it where's the ripe fruit tree come springtime where's the good watering hole right this is what the brain was designed to evolve so we use the thickness of a book
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
the geography of a book literally to help us with memory so your brain won't just remember the fact it remembers where like this if you tell me about your favorite books and you tell me about your favorite quotes i'll bet i can say where in the book is that quote you can sort of give me a general geographical reason and you a lot of people can tell you where on the page it is and that's why
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
No, you can't get back to it. So if you look at the studies on memory and reading, it's the highest. The real book. The highest when we read actual real physical books.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
So it's worth backing it up one step because it's relevant. So I came out of college trained as a poet. So I came out of college with an absolutely worthless degree. But I became a journalist and journalism. They sort of pay you to be curious. And I was really geeked on a neuroscience thing.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
So the good news is I don't have to say much beyond what I've already said. One of it is like books are, are fixed. The words are not jumping around the page and flashing and blinking and whatever. So cell phones, as you pointed out, what technology did they base cell phones on? You know this. They designed them to function like slot machines. the most, right?
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
Addictive, distracting, lots of bells and whistles, lots of noises, lots of earphones. Your focus goes all over the place. In a sense, the brain doesn't multitask. Like it's a total lie, right? I was on the original panel on multitasking with Cliff Ness out of Stanford. Like I worked on it. We are not built to multitask.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
We can serial process information, but we do that at a subconscious level, a conscious level, a conscious mind goes one thing at a time, right? It doesn't process two or three things at once. You have to switch tasks. And every time there's task switching, there's a cost to it. So- I want to dive into that a little bit. For sure. So like with phones, one is the anticipation, right? You're right.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
Dopamine is a, I mean, and even calling dopamine a chemical of anticipation is a lie. Because what are multi-tools? Neural chemicals are multi-tools. dopamine, norepinephrine, anandamide, serotonin, all these things. They do tens of thousands of jobs in the brain. The brain is really concerted by design. So it finds something that works and it reuses it and reuse it and reuse it and reuse it.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
because i like i think like a lot of us i wasn't born with an instruction manual i wasn't a super talented kid there were better athletes these people were funnier these people were smarter i had big dreams and i grew up in cleveland in a steel mill town basically at a time it was a steel mill town and i didn't have an operating man i wanted an instruction manual i was really pissed that i wasn't born with an instruction manual and
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
No need to reinvent the wheel each time. Oh, this works. Can it work over here? Can it work over here? Can it work over here? That's sort of how neurochemicals function. Dopamine does a lot of different stuff. Most people don't realize, I'll give you a really simple example. Why does time pass so strangely in the flow? One reason is when there's more dopamine in your system, time speeds up.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
And when there's less dopamine in your system, it slows down. You want to hear, this is weird. You want to talk about mind-body connection stuff. Like we used to think these were two separate things and they've been coming closer and closer and closer together. Here's the craziest mind-body connection story. There's a whole bunch of new research that says, and they did this, they wounded people.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
put cuts on their arms, and some people, time passed really, they asked them how slow was time passing for you or how fast it was passing for you. The people who thought time was passing faster, their wounds healed faster. People who thought time was dragging on board, it took them longer to heal.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
So the latest front of like the mind-body connection is literally how we perceive the passage of time impacts wound healing. The question that I ask myself all the time about that one is we're all weightlifters. Weightlifting is about tearing the muscle or wounding the muscles, right? And regrowing them.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
So the question I've been asking myself, but I don't have an answer, I just think it's fascinating is, wait a minute, if I'm wounding my muscles all the time and then I'm in
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
flow all the time and i'm not noticing the passage of time it's really sped up that that way am i you're healing fast am i getting bigger faster yeah right is is this a way to get bigger and nobody knows answers that nobody's really looked at this because the wound healing stuff is new but like it's cool cutting edge stuff so you said seven to ten minutes breath work six oh yeah what's the five minute have you got five minutes only oh a gratitude list gratitude i was reading that gratitude practice your book a gratitude practice is five minutes if you've got six ten things
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
No, well, you do one of two ways. Most psychologists, most like positive psychologists don't do the 10 things. They will say, write down three things you're grateful for. And this is what you can do in five minutes. Three things you're grateful for and turn one of them into a paragraph.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
And it's worth talking about sort of like, it's just worth talking about why that works because people hear gratitude and you hear it all over the fricking place. And it sounds to a lot of us, right? Unless you're come up in a spiritual tradition or things like that, it just seems wonky. So why would gratitude work? And it's important because gratitude works for the same reasons affirmations fail.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
We have phenomenal built-in bullshit. So if I'm looking in the mirror and I'm doing an affirmation, I'm a millionaire, I'm a millionaire, I'm a millionaire. And my mirror self is looking back at me and going, dude, you work at Walmart. Shut the fuck up. Right. It's demotivating. I'm lying to myself and I know I'm lying to myself and I'm really.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
But if I'm looking in the mirror and going, I am so happy and grateful that I woke up this morning and I'm breathing and my legs are working. Well, that's real. That's real. And if when you start listing things that you're grateful for the brain, we evolved in a high threat environment. So the brain is the word. This is a crazy word. Homeostasis. Homeostasis literally just means balance. Right.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
So let me give you a crazy example. There's dopamine involved in this process. So the brain is a prediction engine. That's what it does all the time. It's always saying what's about to happen and how much energy do I need to meet that challenge? Remember, we go back to efficiency. The first order of business for the brain is save energy. Calories are fricking expensive.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
All the crap you're trying to think about starts to go away. And what happens? You liberate some extra energy. What does the brain do with that extra energy? It repurposes it for focus and attention. So complete concentration is the first flow trigger, the most important.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
It's hard to get food in the environments we evolved in. So how do I preserve energy? If you know the doorknob is open, you don't need to put your shoulder into the door and waste all that energy trying to bust the door open. You just turn the knob, right? So when you're reaching for that knob, your brain is trying to predict, is it going to be unlocked? How much energy do I need for that, right?
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
I figured out very quickly that neuroscience was that instruction manual. And that sounds really strange if you're not geeked on neuroscience, but it's the difference between psychology and neuroscience is about precision. Psychology is squishy. It's subjective. People figure out, oh, this is the model and it sort of relates to who I am. So I'm going to train you with it.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
Doing that all the time. When matches your prediction, you don't notice, right? You think the door is going to be unlocked. You open the door and walk through it. You didn't even notice that you did it. You notice when it doesn't match your prediction. And that noticing that like, oh, it's locked, that feeling you get, that's because dopamine has been cut off.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
So every time we match a prediction, you get a little bit of dopamine, a little bit of dopamine. And when we don't, It gets cut off. So you asked a question that started me talking about prediction. What was that? Let's back up into it.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
God, I was starting, I'll just talk your face off and go on brand. No, I love this.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
Well, that's, I mean, that was the example. I'm just trying to think why I started telling you about the brain as a prediction engine. And no, no, we were talking about, oh, gratitude, gratitude. Okay. So what we don't realize is that the brain takes in, we take in a limited amount of information, right? But on average, the brain will take in
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
nine negatives for every one positive thing that comes through. So we get nine negative bits of information. This is dangerous. This is scary. This is don't do this, don't do this, don't do this, for every positive that gets through. Those positive things are the basis of creativity, opportunity, like for entrepreneurs, really, really, really critical.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
Because you're always looking for opportunity. You're always looking for novelty and new information, not the same old thing that scares you. So what a gratitude list is, it tips it. You stop taking about five negative for every positive. For that day? Yeah, for that period of time. So it calms you down, goes, oh, you're safer than you think. And it lets you start seeing more of the world.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
It opens up perception. So you're getting in novelty and opportunity. All these things are starting to come in and things are a lot less threatening. So that gratitude does that in five minutes. Reading is about six minutes. If you have seven to 11, 15 ish, you probably want to do breath work. If you've got 15 to like 25 minutes, I would do, I would take a page out of Tommy's book
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
I'd go for a long walk in nature. That's the like 15 to 20 minutes, 25 minutes, go for a walk. If you've got 25 to like 45 minutes, go get a workout in, right? Exercise is the best cure for your nervous system, right? Best way to really calm it down. There's other things you can do. So, Eight minutes of petting a dog, petting an animal.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
Social connection will do this too, but eight minutes of petting a dog starts producing oxytocin and a whole bunch of those neurochemicals for connection. So there are other like little hacks in there, but my point to get back to it, you asked, what do you do at the end of the day? I do an active recovery protocol, right? Usually I finish working. I either go, I've already worked out.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
So I'll go right into a sauna and I like to do breath work and reading inside a sauna. So I write, I've got an infrared sauna. you tend to say them for a long time, like half an hour, 30, 40 minutes. I can do 20 minutes of breath work and 20 minutes of reading and a sauna. So saunas automatically lower cortisol. They do it automatically.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
And it usually doesn't work and it doesn't help. Neuroscience is precise because it's shared by everybody, right? Evolution shaped all of us. So the way my brain works and the way your brain works and the way your brain works, it's very, very similar. So if you can get down to the level of neurobiology, suddenly you're dealing with mechanism.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
And then I massively amped up my recovery with some breath work and with some reading. By the way, what breath work do you- I rotate it. I rotate it. It depends on if my nervous system is really agitated, right? If I'm really sped up, i will do a wim hof style breath with breath holding because it's more effective at calming you down when you're already really sped up i'm slightly calmer
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
I'm going to do a focus meditation. I tend to do sound meditation a lot because I like it. It works really well for me. Sometimes I'll just count my breath or do things like that for a bunch of different reasons. If I really have the time, I will do loving kindness meditation.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
Of all the meditative systems, loving kindness meditation does some really interesting things that the other ones don't do. So one of them is loving kindness meditation actually has anti-aging properties. So they did a bunch of studies of focus meditation versus loving kindness meditation. And one of the things they were looking at was telomere lag. So telomeres are the caps on chromosomes, right?
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
And as we age, the chromosomes shrink, right? We lose our telomeres. Loving kindness meditation actually increases telomere health. So you can calm down your nervous system and it's got an anti-aging benefit. So the other thing about loving kindness meditation, we know this as adults, this is adult development.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
So if you want to have a successful second half of your life, you want to be happy, healthy, and joyous like 45 forward. By age 50, if you really want to enjoy the second half of your life and have a high flow and all that, you need to forgive most of the people who have done you wrong.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
if you carry grudges into the second half of your life it tends to make you miserable over time and it blocks so humans most people don't know this but your brain development doesn't stop as a kid it keeps going and there's really cool amazing things that happen in your brain in your 40s and 50s.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
You actually, if you get it right, and we'll talk about what right means in a second, you unlock whole new levels of intelligence, whole new, this is in our country, right? This is pre-performance age. You get new levels of intelligence, new levels of creativity, new levels of wisdom, new levels of empathy. Now think about this from a business perspective, right?
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
What do we know about the world today? Well, customer-centric thinking is really important because our customers matter. If you don't have empathetic employees, You're going to fuck up your company culture and you're going to fuck up your customer relationships. If you don't have wise employees, same problems. So these are all the things we actually want in people. So it really matters.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
How do we unlock these things? There's only two things to do. One, by about age 50, you have to forgive all the people who have done you wrong. And how do you do that? Well, there's a lot. You can spend years in psychotherapy, give it a go, or you can do loving kindness meditation. Loving kindness meditation tends to do that work for you. The other thing you need to do is learn how to be creative.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
Suddenly you're dealing with something that like works like an engine rather than like this amorphous car in the sky. And that was really useful for me. And I was covering action sports, surfing, skiing, rock climbing, snowboarding and the like, and this is the part that matters. At the time, I was living in what was then Squaw Valley was now Palisades Tahoe. And I'm an old punk rocker.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
So to have a successful second half of your life, flow is very deeply involved in it, but just to sort of get in the door, you have to be able to be creative and you have to forgive the people who've done you wrong. Starting in your late 40s to 50s, creativity is what unlocks these new thinking styles in your brain.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
There's a bunch of brain changes, like the two sides of the brain start working together like never before. The brain starts to colonize underutilized resources and things like this. There's things that happen in the brain And loving kindness, meditation, or forgiveness plus creativity is how you really take advantage of it. And it leads to more flow also.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
It's worse that they hated you at the beginning.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
Criticism is interesting because coming up as a journalist, I've never been in a field where people are ruder. than in journalists, editors dealing with journalists. Like my favorite story is Wired Magazine. The editor is a good friend of mine still. Wired Magazine sends me to the Everglades. I'm writing about the Everglades restoration project. Largest, it's $8 billion to fix the Everglades.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
Largest public works project anybody's ever done. I live in a freaking swamp for three months, middle of the Everglades. The only place to get dinner is the raunchiest strip club. I mean, like, it's like the worst thing you've ever... I've never seen anything like what was going on in the strip club in the middle of the Everglades. It's the only place to eat.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
There's a gas station and a strip club. And it's like scientists and people who are killing alligators for a living and selling boot skins and things like that. Nobody else is out there. It's a tough story to report. I spend four or five months writing it, turning it to my editor. He calls me up. He's like, Stephen, there's just one thing I didn't understand. I read your story.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
There's just one thing I didn't understand. And I am just like my ego. that good i just one thing i got i was like what's that adam he's like every word you wrote and i had to start over like literally like and that comment in editors editors speaking to writers like that that was what i did for 15 years i had people just
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
And Squaw Valley was like the punk rock mecca of the action sports world. When it was back, this is before it was a world. It wasn't an industry. It wasn't anything. It was a bunch of basically skate punks and ski punks and surf punks and whatnot. And the 90s in performance and action sports is often talked about as the era of impossible.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
rude to me all the time because they're overworked they got to get the pieces in and they don't have time for crap writing it's easier for them to be rude to me and hire another writer to put them on the story than it may be to help me fix it sometime and this is way before the world of ai where people could yeah and and this is also by the way this was my here's the part of that story that i left out i told you i bankrupted myself in lyme disease this was my comeback story
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
So I needed this money so desperately. Like I was so poor and I needed them to accept this story. My point is that I've gotten like, it's funny because there are one-star reviews and I, you know, people say all kinds of crap, but I don't take any of the personal stuff personally, but it's like, I always assume if somebody doesn't like something, this is when I work with editors too.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
And, or really I do it in business too. If you don't like something of mine, I believe that there's probably something wrong on the page where you were like, yeah, I really, I got lost here. I don't get what you're doing. I'm not into that. I don't think you know what you're talking about. I just think something's wrong there. You don't have any clue.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
You don't know enough about writing or my story or whatever. Be accurate with your, but something's wrong there. So I take the criticism as, okay, there's something here. Like I'm in the neighborhood. I don't trust your opinion because I don't think you have enough expertise about my thing. You have to tell me the exact thing that's wrong. But I trust enough that you're in the neighborhood.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
And I just take it and I'm like, okay, how do I do it better next time so that this neighborhood doesn't want to revolt against me, right? That's how I sort of think about it. But I don't know. You know, I'm an old school punk rocker. So like, I'm kind of used to you not liking me, right? I grew up in Ohio with a Mohawk. Like the whole state wanted to beat me up for 20 years.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
I actually speak at this in a flow way. So people ask me like, what is the goal you're training? Training in flow, what's a win? What do we call success? And so I'm going to use a couple of technical terms, then I'll explain. So what success to me is, as I said, clear goals are a flow trick. So a daily to-do list, well set. Well, and we can talk about what that means, what that looks like.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
I wanted to dive into that. We'll dive into that because it's probably important. But to me, there's a term in flow. So flow is defined, psychologists define flow. It has six core characteristics. How do you know if you're in flow? How do you know if your team's in flow? Complete concentration on the task at hand.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
the merger of action and awareness, vanishing or disappearing of the sense of self, time dilation, time passes strangely, and then there's two other things. There's a sense of control, I look at you in flow and it looks from the outside looking in, it looks like peak performance. I see Michael Jordan in flow. He's just putting buckets.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
More things that had never been done got done in that era than ever before. Right. And if you knew anything about performance back in the 90s, it was all about like better have a lot of money. You better have the right coaches. You better go to the right schools. You better have the right parents. You have the right genetics. It was all this stuff that you couldn't control.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
On the inside, it feels like, oh shit, I can control things I couldn't normally control. This could be Michael Jordan. He used to talk about being in the zone, being in flow. The basket looks as big as a hula hoop, but I can't miss. Me in flow is a writer. Suddenly my sentences are sort of dancing around the page at four o'clock in the morning on a Tuesday.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
That's not usually what happens, like right when I sit down at 4 a.m., but, you know, that's what will happen. Or it's a great brainstorming session where the idea is just ping-ponging out that sense of control. Then the other, the last one, and this is where I was going, this is the point, is flow is described as an autotelic experience.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
Autotelic is a Greek word, and all it means is an end in itself. It means flow is so joyful, so ecstatic, so much fun. If I were to put it in addiction terms, I would say flow is the most
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
addictive state on earth it is it's just a positive addiction it leads us forward into the future that we want to go to rather than most addictions which lead us backwards and drag us down but flow is it's the same you know same reason yeah i see i you know if you want to use addiction positive or negative i would maybe frame it this way it's like you know flow expands you the opposite contracts you yeah that's great that's great okay so when you can make the clear goals list
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
Your daily to-do list and autotelic experience, meaning the completion of all the items on your clear goals list, generates, is joyful, drops you into flow. So it becomes its own motivation. That's my goal. If I can get you to there, right, you're dangerous.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
So one of the things that happens, and you guys are going to totally agree with me on this, what you get from that clear goals list, and I'm not talking about like, I got everything done on my list today, but I've now done it for like, five years in a row, and you know what happens.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
If you get everything done in your clear goals list day after day after day, you get way more done than you could possibly shake a stick at. So you end up looking back on your five years and you're like, look what I did. So when you take criticism and you've got that kind of track record where your clear goals list is automatic and you've done that,
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
you've built, because what really gets built with that is the confidence that you can produce at a really high level. You can meet your goals. This is the other thing people don't realize. They set goals. If you don't meet your goals, You're training your brain that it's okay to not meet your goals.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
You're training your brain that it's okay to be a loser, to not be who you want to be, not live the way you are. You're always teaching yourself something. You're either teaching yourself this is the good way to go or this is the bad way to go. We don't accomplish our goals. I always tell people,
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
Don't ever, ever, ever speak your goal out loud unless you were absolutely, like if I say it out loud, my word is my bond is going to get done no matter what. And it's not even about as much about integrity or honesty or all those things that matter. It's about the fact that if I set a goal and I don't accomplish it, I'm training my brain that it's okay to not accomplish goals.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
And your brain is an energy efficient engine. Once you start not accomplishing your goals and your brain goes, oh, it's okay if you don't accomplish your goals, I don't even need to generate the energy. So if you break your word to yourself, every time you set a goal and you don't keep it, you're breaking your word to yourself, you're training your brain. It's okay to fail. It's fine to fail.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
And I'm living in this community with people who are routinely not just setting world records. They're doing things that for all of our query history, we thought was going to kill people that you couldn't do. And I always say it's like one thing when you see like Laird Hamilton surfing a big wave on a screen.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
That's just fine. And after a little while, your brain goes, oh, you're not going to succeed anyways because you just say this shit. It's not real. We're not even going to bother getting in the fight. It works the same way. You understand the neuroscience of mindset, right?
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
If you have a growth mindset versus a fixed mindset, when they look in the brains of people who have fixed mindsets, when things go wrong, they don't learn from their mistakes because the brain doesn't even turn on the learning machinery because why waste the energy? If you've got a fixed mindset that you can't grow, you believe your talent is innate. There's nothing you can do.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
You can't grow from this. So your brain just stops producing the energy completely. This is Carol Dweck's work. And we also discovered if you have a fixed mindset, it blocks flow for the same reason. So these are two of the things that we've discovered along the way. People with regular gratitude practice and people with a growth mindset have way more flow.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
So I always tell people, we talked about the challenge skills balance, right? there's actually a number. So Csikszentmihalyi put a number on it. With a Google mathematician, they were like, when your challenge is 4% greater than your skills, that's the sweet spot for maximizing flow and focus.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
So, and Tommy, you were talking about this earlier, you and I both set these impossible goals, like really crazy, big, high, hard goals, but you chunk it down. So what's in front of you today- It's 4%, right? 4% to 5%. In fact, my favorite story is Alex Honnold, who everybody knows from Free Solo, right? So I like the Half Dome story.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
And it's one thing when you go out drinking with your buddies on a Friday night, every time you wake up Saturday morning and go into the mountains together and they do something that for all of recorded history has never been done. It sort of catches your attention. What really caught my attention was everybody I knew, they didn't have any money.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
So 10 years before he climbed El Cap, he Free Soloed Half Dome in 2012. So Half Dome, Yosemite, it takes about most climbers about a day and a half to climb it. They bring portal edges. They sleep on the side of the wall. Alex Free Soloed it. So no portal edges, no ropes. You fall, you die. Everything's through the roof. Most people take about a day and a half to climb it.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
As I said, Alex climbed Half Dome in an hour and 22 minutes. It's like the rough equivalent of running a four minute mile in 43 seconds. Like that's essentially what it's the, in my, like if you say, Steven, what's the craziest, most impossible thing you've ever seen anybody do? That's the one. I mean, maybe there are others, but like for my money, that's the thing that I look at.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
I'm just like, but if you ask Alex, How did you do it? Like, how the hell do you do these impossible things? He'll say the same thing. He'll say 4% plus 4% plus 4% day after day, week after week, year after year for a career. That's how you do the impossible. That's always how you do the impossible. There's no other formula. This is how we're designed to work.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
And so it's always 4% to 5% at a time. In fact, if you try to go 10% or 20%, you're actually going to stall out because it's too much anxiety, too much cortisol, too much norepinephrine, and you're going to block performance. And when I say block performance, let me give you the example. So I'm going to get a little neurogeeky technical here.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
But my favorite structure in the brain is the anterior cingulate cortex. Why? Because it chooses. When we make decisions, are we going to make the logical, linear, tried, true, safe, secure decision, or are we going to do something creative and interesting? And it makes this decision based on how much fear you have. So if you've got too much fear, your brain starts to limit your options.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
We all know this. The extreme example is fight or flight, right? You're really freaked out. So your brain says, oh, no, no, no. Three options. You can flee, you can freeze, or you can fight. That's all you can do. What we don't realize is that all fear does that. Your brain goes, oh, I'm scared. Give me something that worked last time.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
let me give you the conservative choice give me right so as entrepreneurs i'm a big fan of what branson said and we wrote about this is you definitely want to protect the downside i think you want to find ways to protect the downside but as entrepreneurs you're looking for the creative interesting solution that keeps you sort of ahead and if too much fear It completely blocks that.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
So you get really logical, you get really linear. And I always tell, I think as a hiring practice, I always tell my team, remember, we're hiring two people. You're hiring the person when everything is going well and they're in a good mood. And you're hiring the person when they're terrified. and scared.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
They were like broken homes, blue collar, very little education. There was a lot of substance abuse in those communities and a lot of high-risk behavior. Normally, you put those things together in a community, you know what happens. People die younger, they go to jail. What they don't do is reinvent what's going on for the human species, what's possible.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
Usually, if you want to come work with me, we're going to put you through a fairly rigorous test trial period. And in that trial period, I'm going to overload you. I'm going to scare you a little bit. And it's not that I need you to succeed. I don't give a shit if you can pull the task off or not pull the task off. How do you respond? How are you when you're scared? Because
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
The employees who totally shut down and get really, really selfish and really logical, which is most people when they're scared, I don't want to work with them. Those are not my people. That's not helpful because the things I do for a living, we move really, really, really fast, and there are high consequences.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
You roll the dice a lot, and when you're writing books and you're doing things in public, there's consequences. You know what I mean? We're playing with a lot of ammo and resources. We're training the best of the best of the best of the best of the best. And like they're playing with live ammo, right? Also like their lives are live.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
I always remind them, but like there are lives at the other end of this conversation.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
Yeah, let's talk about how to set a clear goals list, okay? You said, we started this conversation with what are the flow, where do you start? One more flow in your life, where do you start? We've actually covered two thirds of my answer. Complete concentration. So like I always start with distraction management, start with the simple stuff.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
The only thing I, caveat, if you're burned out and most of us are burned out, start by sort of calming your nervous system down, getting sleeping, right? Start there. Then the next thing, complete concentration is how you sort of prep the space for, oh, I'm going to go in here. This is my focus time. The challenge skills balance is how you attack your project, right? I always like to automate.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
So I'll give you an example. I'm a fairly, things have to be pretty straightforward and simple for me. So when I say a clear goals, I said, I start my day writing, right? So my first day is write my, whatever book I'm writing. If I'm starting the book, it's right. 500 to 600 words, because that's 4%.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
That's what I was seeing on almost like a weekly basis. So the question was, what the hell is going on? Where is this coming from? And if you started talking to people about it, nobody had that word flow back then, right? It was in psychology, but we talk a little about being in the zone, but you couldn't really, hey, my sense of self disappeared in time passes.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
So, and the reason as a writer is in the way I write, usually about 350, 400 words, you have to transition between ideas. Go from idea one to idea two. That's the hardest thing for a writer. That's the most complicated thing. So I can write 350 words in my sleep, but at around 350, I got to transition you out of that paragraph into a new set of ideas, into whatever. That's hard.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
That's going to catch me. It's going to take some elbow grease. If I'm in the middle of the book and I know more of what I'm doing, I write 700 to 800 words a day, maybe a thousand. And at the end of the book, I know what the fuck I'm doing. So it's 1500 words a day. So when it says, you know, first list of my thing, clear goals list is write the new novel. It's goals are clear.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
So when you say clear goals, the reason the point is not a daily to do list. And why do we call it a clear goals list? Clarity is what matters. It's a focus game. You're playing a focus game with your brain. What should your brain pay attention to now? What should you pay attention to next? That's why clarity matters. The goal matters a lot less than the clarity.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
So I usually, it's like 500 words that leave readers feeling excited. So clarity, did this come as the outcome? No, you don't want to focus on outcome. You want to focus on process, sort of. Well, 500 words is an outcome, but it's not, I'm going to write 500 words that get me on the New York Times bestseller list.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
I just want to write 500 words that maybe make my reader feel curious or scared or empathetic or whatever. That's my clear goals list. It's sort of this much done and this feeling to the reader. That's all I need. So now we've talked about what a clear goal is.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
I said before, if you can, start your workday in accordance with your circadian rhythms because it's hard to fight against your own physiology. Start with your hardest task. So your first thing is your biggest win. And remember that energy and willpower diminish over time. So you want to go in order from the hardest sort of the easiest. This is the most important thing, Tommy, do a trial period.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
Spend like two to three weeks and ask yourself, how many things can I do in a day and still be excellent at all of them? Because what you don't want to do is put more shit in your clear goals list than you can actually accomplish and be a great. If you want to be a peak performer, set yourself up to win.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
If you know in an average day, based on what you do for a living, you can get eight to 10 things done. That's your clear goals list. Now, two caveats here. First one. If it takes energy, it goes on the list. That's the point. You have a limited energy budget.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
So a lot of people won't be like, okay, have discussion with my wife about what to do about my son's drinking problem isn't going to go on most people's clear goals list. but it's got to, because it's going to take a mass, that's a fricking hard conversation. It's going to take a ton of energy, right? So like working out needs to go on your goal list. Why?
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
Like you couldn't talk about that stuff out loud. Back in the 90s, people really thought you were crazy. But if you talk to these action sport athletes, that's what was happening. So. In that milieu, out of that milieu, I got Lyme disease. And I spent three years in bed and was going to end my life. The doctors had pulled me off medicine. My stomach lining was bleeding out.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
Because it's going to take a bunch of energy, right? And this, you're just, it's energy management we're doing with this thing, right? It's focus and energy management. And then the most important thing is once you figured out, oh, I can do nine things in a day and be excellent at them. Once you've done those nine things, you've won your day. Now it's time to shut it down and recover, right?
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
You have to be able to tell your brain, okay, you've done enough. This is a win. You pulled it off. Now turn off. Now recover. Let me calm down my nervous system. Let me have this active recovery protocol. Let me be able to sleep at night. Take your mind off this stuff. And one of the reasons that's so important is... The brain has a built-in pattern recognition system.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
So you do a lot of problem solving once you can get your conscious mind off the problem and let your subconscious chew on stuff. That's why, you know, if you're, one of the reasons I'm such an extreme lark is like, I always tell people like, I'm not the guy, if you're having a crisis and you need like somebody to come into the room and solve that problem right there, then I'm not the guy.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
If you can wait a night,
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
There was nothing anybody could do for me. I was so- What year was this? I got it when I was 30. So it was 1999 is when I got it. And I was sick to like 2002. I was basically in bed for three years. Brain fog was terrible. I couldn't think. I could function like 10 minutes a day. So I had 10 minutes a day when I was clear-headed. The rest of the time, I laid on a couch.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
You've got to keep your word to yourself, most importantly. I think keeping your word to me would be walking away from the neighbor and being like, fuck you. You know what I mean? I don't cut grass anymore. I fix garage doors. I'm better than, you know what I mean? That's breaking your word.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
You're sort of renegotiating and trying to fulfill on your promise and take care of the person, but you're just trying to re-strategize. How are you doing?
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
Yeah, that's a different, I'm thinking about that differently.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
logistically digest it all and we're both we're all curious the only reason I've been the only reason I'm not as screwed on that one as other people is because I came up as a book writer and books are like they're you know in the beginning I mean now I can write a book in a year but in the beginning it was three four five six these were you know projects and this was all what I could do like six seven hours a day so there was a limited amount of time and it sort of taught me one of the things I think of and who don't think about it this way but
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
Think about like, how do we define our lives? Like what are the defining things we make? our lives are much more defined by what we say no to than what we say yes to, right? We say yes to very few things. You're going to say yes to like how many partners over the course of a lifetime. You know what I mean? Like there are not a lot of yeses compared to the amount of no's.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
You're saying you walk into a bookstore, you're saying no to most of the books. You're going to walk out with two or three books, right? You go see a movie, you're saying no to 30 movies. You're saying yes to to one of them, we're defined by our no's way more than our yeses. So I just think about it that way a lot, which sort of like makes no a little more empowering.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
It doesn't like sort of like I'm a people pleaser too, right? I grew up in a, you know, it was scary at home. It was scary at school. And so like the first thing I want to do is make sure you're happy, you're okay. So you're not going to kick my teeth in. Cause I'm not a particularly big guy and I don't like losing fights.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
I could watch basketball, but I couldn't even watch basketball because I had no memory left. So I couldn't watch the Lakers. Anybody playing a half-court style was too slow. The Clippers that year were playing that like Antonio's seven-second offense where they'd run up and score back. It was the only thing I could follow on television because it was the only thing that was making any sense.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
Yeah. I mean, like this is a hard one, but I have found, I'll give a Joe example. So I'll just give a marketing sample. So I wrote three cult classics in three different genres before I had a bestseller. And I, the first bestseller I had was abundance, which I co-wrote with Peter.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
Now, most people don't ever manage to write one cult classic in their lifetime, let alone three in three different areas, which sounds really fancy. What it tells you is I couldn't fucking find the mainstream with two hands and a flashlight. Like, where are people? I couldn't do it. I couldn't figure out where are. I'm a weird dude.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
So like I can write these little sliver for super niche books for like, like these people over here, these people over here. But I had to partner with Peter. He was like, no, no, the mainstream is over here. We're going to write abundance for everybody. It's wide. I didn't know how to do that. Nor did I know how to market it. So when I partnered with Peter, Peter partnered with Joe.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
at this was 10 years ago 12 years ago when you were doing a lot more fear-based stuff that i was morally and ethically joel tell you this like we butted heads we liked each other we were but we butted heads a lot we first made each other because i had all kinds of ethical qualms moral qualms and i had standards it's got to be and one of the things that i learned but what i decided with abundance was i don't know what the i'm doing these guys clearly do
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
So I'm going to watch Peter and Joe and everybody else sell the hell out of this book. I'm going to figure out exactly what they're doing. And then I'm going to make it my own and do it my own way, which is exactly what I did. And my next book was rises man and all the things without all that stuff.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
But I had to go through a period where I was like the stuff that was out there that was representing me. I wasn't comfortable with any of it for really for a while, but I needed to go through that period to sort of like, This is what's okay. This is what's not okay. This is the same thing with delegation.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
You have to, most people don't realize, and I guess if you do this public speaking a lot, you know, you guys both know this. As long as your mouth keeps moving, like you could stop making sense for a good like three, four minutes. But as long as your mouth keeps moving, you look like you know what you're talking about. 95% of the people are not going to even notice.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
I'm not telling you to do this, but you could literally stand on a stage and start going from English to like, most people aren't going to notice as long as you present it as if you, right? Nobody is paying as much attention as you are. And you start to realize that there's certain things where 100% quality, you know what I mean?
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
When I'm training customers, if you don't come out the other end with more flow in your life, I did not do my job at all. So that, I got no wiggle room on that one. I gotta deliver that 100% of the time, right? But there are certain things where like, if I'm putting out a video, no, I can actually, I can do it at 70% because it's going to be pretty effective.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
And a friend shows up at my house. I'm literally ready to kill myself. And she says, let's go surfing. You know, my response was, fuck you, right? You're out of your mind. You're crazy. I can't walk across my room. I can't go surfing. You're out of your mind. And she wouldn't leave my house after like four hours. I was like, fine, let's just go surfing.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
And that 30% of perfectionism isn't actually going to make that much of a difference because it's a piece of marketing copy and it's still deadly effective. Now, yes, I'll A, B test it and figure out how to get it better. But there are certain things that you have to go
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
oh, I can trust my employees to do this because it doesn't have to be 100% out of go because we can test our way, our iterator way, our learner way, or have an adventure together. And sometimes I do this with the people I get to work with. I'm like, look, there is no possible way we're going to get it right out of the gate. We're just not going to get it right out of the gate. That's rare.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
At least like, you know, what's the worst that can happen? And they had to carry me to the car. They gave me a board the size of a Cadillac. They brought me to the wimpiest beginner wave in Los Angeles. And I was out there
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
By the way, the other thing is, why do I want to go bed to desk that quickly? Because I got to do the hardest thing. And if I start thinking about what I have to do, right, I could get into my head. I could like paralysis by analysis.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
Exactly. So like one of the reasons is, I mean, look, one of the reasons I'm going bed to desk is I'm a creative and I want to be in flow. You wake up with your brain in alpha and flow is at the alpha theta borderline. It's a slower brainwave. So when you wake up, it goes up to beta. It's a fast moving brainwave. So like you're actually more flow prone first thing in the morning.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
Most people, it's totally killed because the minute they look at their phone, the minute that dopamine, that anticipation, that curiosity, that fear, You've just blown it. It's just gone. Right. So like, I'll do it sometimes too. This is the classic Steven fuck up. I'll put something on the Insta Google tweet face. That's getting a lot of attention yesterday.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
So I'll wake up in the morning and while my coffee is brewing, I'll be like, Oh, let's check the post. Cause I've got like two minutes. Right. And that's,
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
if yesterday's good fortune will lure me back that's the one where that's the trap i'll get caught on um because i want the good feeling i want that like i want that little bit of a rush that's what i'm going after and it's it's a it's false hope but i've you know i've learned not to do it at all but that's the one that'll that'll screw me up i was uh we'll close out here soon i was reading an article about elon musk and it said a guy that works really really close to him for a
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
maybe 30 seconds they walked me out to the break put me on this big board i'm just bobbing in the waves and a wave came and i hadn't surfed in like five years but i popped up it was just like muscle memory i just spun my board around and popped up probably all the energy i had in the world left period was to pop to my feet but i popped up into a dimension that i didn't even know existed i've had flow states experience but i had never had it like with is known as macro
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
Well, that's the flow. I always tell the people this with, so in our country, right? In our country is a diary essentially, right? It's I took on an impossible challenge at age 53. I decided I was going to teach myself how to park ski. with train park scheme, which is supposed to be impossible for a bunch of different reasons over the age of 25, 30.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
And I've been reading all these studies on what we now know about aging. And I was like, well, wait a minute, if all this stuff, I mean like 5,000 papers said, I should be able to do this. But nobody ever, though common perception wasn't as possible. But that book is written as a diary. Why is it written as a diary? In a sense, like it goes day by day through that season.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
It's because the hardest challenge I have with our clients, really with anybody who I'm talking peak performance with, is peak performance is exactly what you just said, Tommy. It's compound interest. You get a little bit farther ahead today, a little bit farther ahead tomorrow. Flow massively amplifies it. We found that people can get into a couple microflow and maybe a macroflow state a day.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
You've got three 90-minute blocks where you're 500% more productive than you normally are and that Sure. Maybe it's like one extra thing you're getting done on your to-do list today. But like you get through a week of that, it's five extra things that you've done that the next guy hasn't done. I always tell people that all this stuff is like, it's a little bit at a time, but if I'm doing...
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
five extra things a week right it's one a day i'm getting and five a week it's 20 a month now multiply it out by a year right it's why sometimes i remember when i first sort of like came into like the peak performance space and you'd meet top performers and you'd see what like in a year they would like we'd start at the same place and they would be like 17 miles ahead of me and i was like how the hell what is it's compound interest
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
It's just, it's right. So that's, I mean, that's the other reason, like, why do I stick by the clear goals list? Why am I always going to like walk my dog and get my exercise and get my seven, eight hours? It's all that stuff. Cause ultimately I, you know, Stuart Brand wants to only enduring happiness is the satisfaction of a job well done.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
And I kind of like, I agree, like long-term what sticks with me, right? What sticks with me? Like, what are the things I'm deeply proud, proudest of? I'm deeply proud of my marriage. Been married for 20 years. It's fucking hard to be married for 20 years. That was a sort of a, there were years where it was a daily struggle to stay in that marriage and make it work.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
I'm really proud of the 14 books. Each one of those took a year to three years to like whatever. Like those are the things I'm really proud of. All the like little bits. Like when I work, I work with an editor and we'll do a marathon session. I'll be like, oh, I've got another chapter, but we've been working for like four hours. You know, let's call it.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
full-blown macro flow experience. I had an out-of-body experience at the time. I lifted out of my body to watch myself surfing. We now know why all those things happen. But at the time, I was like, what the hell is going on? But I felt great. It was the first time in three years I actually felt alive. I was happy or at least functional. And it felt so good. I caught like four more waves that day.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
We should be like, you're not going to remember this later. Like this is, you're not even going to know this tomorrow. You're not even going to remember that we put an extra half an hour in and you felt shitty. You're just going to remember that you've got the work done. Right. Right.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
Do you care about the shitty feeling that's only temporary or do you want the, and I'm like, okay, yeah, well, of course we're going to put the extra half an hour in. It's not even, it's a no brainer. Like once you, and I think most people are this way. They just don't know how to weigh their choices properly based on their actual happiness. I'll give you another example.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
This is a exercise I do when I train people in peak performance aging and it shocks me. So one of the things I do is I make people write down their 10 favorite feelings on a Not your favorite activities, your favorite feelings, because you get slightly different things. So I'll give you an example.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
When I made this list for the first time, laughing with my best friend ended up being number two on my list. If you were asking what my favorite activities are, laughing with my best friend would have not made the list. It wouldn't have come to me that way.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
So what I tell people is you want to massively increase the quality of your life, make a top 10 list of your 10 favorite feelings and say no to everything that's not on the top 10 list. Because why would you waste time on like your 27th favorite activity or favorite feeling when you could actually go get more of the top 10?
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
If you're trying to go for like quality of life, that's a really simple metric. It's a really simple way to sort of like map things out.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
I got random funny stories as we're talking. So this is just random, but so I opened at the biggest, biggest business conference in Europe for Obama. And the guy who was interviewing Obama on stage, I think we were in Sweden. I want to say it was the guy who used to run IKEA. I could be wrong. It might have been a different company.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
But, you know, saunas are like the natural national culture once you get into like Sweden, Norway. Oh, yeah. Right. The guy spent the first 10 minutes of the interview with Obama. Mind you, 75,000 people in the like we're in like a stadium. And then there are like millions watching online. He's got Obama for, I don't know, half an hour.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
The first 10 minutes for trying to get convinced Obama to take a sauna with him. It was the funniest thing I've ever seen was trying to watch a president get out of like getting into a sauna with some strange dude he's never met before. Especially if you're not, don't grow up in a sauna culture. Like, hey, let's go take a sauna together is not really the line you want out of a president.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
One of the funnier things I've ever seen.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
I mean, I just found that like laughing with my best friend. I also found there were a couple of things on my list that I was like, Oh, give us some examples. Um, well, I mean, so here's, here's the biggest frame for me. And this was the biggest, the number one on my list was, was powder skiing. And here's what really blew my mind about this.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
By the fifth wave, I was done. They brought me home. They put me in bed. People brought me food for like two weeks because I couldn't even get out of my bed to make my kitchen. And on the 14th day, I had a neighbor who was a pro surfer or semi-pro surfer. And I knocked on his door. He didn't even know I knocked on his door. I was like, hey, I'm your neighbor.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
This is sort of one of the things that led me to start looking flow is very involved in successful age. So like everybody who studied flow, including, you know, one of my mentors, but the end of their life, his career, his work, everybody's working on this adult development in the second half of your life. flow is one of the big drivers of adult development. So it's how we do this successfully.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
So that's where this knowledge came from. But years ago, I made this list and number one was powder skiing. And I realized at the time, great powder days show up seven times a year. And, or maybe they show up 10 times a year, but I only managed to like get to the mountain six or seven times a year. So let's say I got there seven times a year.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
And at the time I was doing this calculation, I want to say I was 50. 57 now. So average men are going to live to 82, right? That's on average. So let's just say it's average. I had 32 more. 32 years. She had about 210 times. Exactly. So I realized, well, I've got all these whiz bang friends who are doing longevity shit. So maybe I get an extra 10 years, right?
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
So maybe we can say it's 40 years and I get to do my favorite activity 280 times more period. If everything works perfectly, that's not a very big number. No. Right? It's really not a big number. So what the first- Better take advantage of it. You know what I did? I put a giant countdown clock on the wall in my office. It shows powder stays till death.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
So I'm always like, it's really a way of focusing my attention on like what matters. And it also like, what it does is it stops me. I'm a workaholic like us. And a lot of my satisfaction and joy comes from that. So I don't take a lot of time off. And- Oftentimes, when I do take time off, it's because I've said yes to somebody. Hey, Steven, do you want to come to the Genius Network thing and hang?
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
It's those kinds of things. So that list of 10 things allows me to filter. It's like a vision board. What do I say yes to? What do I say no to? It's a framework for how do I say no to delicious things.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
I think you need to take me to the ocean because I got to go surfing again. And that was all I did over the course of about six months. I was surfing and having these. I didn't even know they were actually flow states because flow was this sort of smaller thing. I was having this crazy experience. I didn't know what it was, but my health was getting better.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
Yeah, I like writing. The famous one is Sir Edmund Hillary. There are people who like climbing Everest and there are people who like having climbed Everest. Yeah.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
But just I mean, to me, like I love the writing. What's hard is the fact that like when the book is finished, the job is only half done, like the marketing of the book.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
is equally difficult and takes the exact usually if it takes me like four years to write a book it's going to take about four years to promote it this is one of the things people don't get about books is they're not like tv shows like people you can't nobody it's not like a new album and everybody's going to go home and listen to the song in four minutes they take a while you were talking yesterday about like you're a slow reader right one of my new books comes out
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
and you're a good friend of mine and you like my work a lot. I know you're not going to read it with, it's going to take like six months to a year before you actually get through my book. So I know when I put a book out that it's going to take six years to percolate through the world minimum. And I've got a, like, that's my marketing window, right?
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
So however long I wrote it, I'm still like working for that book for an equally long period.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
Yeah. You can definitely do it. I will also say like, one of the things that really shaped me was, was my friendship with Peter. Cause I've known Peter since the key. We were both in our twenties when we met and the X prize, I met Peter right when he founded the X prize. And I won't go into this. There's a long story, but like at this point, everybody in the world thought Peter was full of shit.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
And I, like, still, I'm just, like, lying on the couch in between surf sessions. But it started out as 14 days. And then it was 10 days. And then it was eight days. And then it was six days. And slowly my health is improving. And, like, surfing is not a known cure for chronic autoimmune conditions. So what the hell is going on?
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
And because of this weird experience I'd had where I'd had a lot of access right before I met Peter, a bunch of aerospace engineers who all told me what Peter was saying was possible. And they were all sort of like rebel misfits engineers. So like the mainstream was saying what Peter was saying was impossible with this whole group.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
And I was like, these guys know what they're talking about because I watched them. I watched them drive a car through the sound bay. And if you, that's harder than putting a spaceship into space. So I was like, okay, this thing is possible. So I met Peter on, you know, the first time I met him, he was like, he doesn't tow this line now.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
And he didn't very, very quickly after the X-Prize got found, but he was like, we're going to take down NASA. We're going to, it was this crazy, impossible dream. And yet eight years later, Branson went into space. So like, I really got to live through like, I watched my buddy Peter open the space frontier and like everybody else looked at Peter as like, Oh my God, some kind of God.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
And I was like, no, no, he's just my friend. He's just like a dude. He's like all the skiers I knew back in squaw. Like if we lionize people, like if you're, if you're a skier and access for athletes, like you lionize people, like,
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
shane mcconkie and or uh dean potter like the folks i wrote about in the rise of superman but like they're goofy fuck-ups when you met them back you know what i mean they put their pants on the same way as everybody else i've met very few people who
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
would actually qualify for the term genius and you know most of the ones i've met are not particularly good at business or like they can't really function in the world i've met a handful of geniuses who can actually like they're good enough at like being a genius and business that they can pull it off but very few right very few i'll tell you what a lot of people confuse a genius is simply redundancy and keep at it keep at it keep at it until there is a skill development until like the compound interest thing that you mentioned
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
Well, the other thing is also like I had this crazy opportunity because I wrote the very first giant, the first big article on the XPRIZE. So I interviewed all the original XPRIZE teams. Like there was a Chinese team that was building a rocket out of wood. There was, like, people were doing really nuts, nuts stuff.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
And I really thought I was, even though I was feeling better, I thought I was actually dying because the Lyme had gotten into my brain. I didn't realize these out-of-body experiences, these things that I was having experiencing the waves were actually sort of common in deep flow states. And there was biology in them. I thought I was losing my mind.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
I mean, now you look at Bezos and you look at France and you look at Elon and you think, well, those guys know what they're doing. Like, it was a free-for-all when the XPRIZE got first announced. So it was even more amazing when it got won because when you actually, like, sat down with, like, it was, like, 20 of the wild-eyed boys from FreeCloud that were going to go to the moon.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
And what's amazing about it is it's a billion-dollar industry. Trillion-dollar industry. It's going to be a trillion-dollar industry pretty soon. Yeah, exactly.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
And you can find all this in my book, The Art of Impossible, and you can get more formal training. You can probably find this in a million different podcasts with me. When it comes to flow, flow itself, there's really only two things to know. What are those flow triggers and how do I just deploy them, right? And then, this is the other thing we were talking about earlier, flow is a cycle.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
It starts with a struggle phase, then there's a release phase, then there's the flow state itself, and then there's a recovery phase on the back end. That's your map, right? You've got to know where you are on the map and what's your toolbox and your flow triggers. So like, Oh, I'm in struggle. Okay, what are the triggers that are good here? Oh, I'm in release.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
I thought the disease had gotten into my brain and it was just eating my brain. That's what was happening. So I lit out on a giant quest, like what the hell is going on with me? And I very quickly discovered that
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
What are the triggers that are good here? Oh, it's flow. How do I sustain that for longer? What are the triggers good here? Oh, this is recovery. Well, how do I maximize my recovery? I mean, like, that's all you really need to know to do this. It's not a whole lot. And depending on like... What your field is and what your work environment is, you know what I mean?
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
Like those triggers are really, they're fairly easy to deploy. And the other thing I always tell people this with peak performance, because it's biologically hardwired, like I always think of people who come to the Flow Research Collective to train with us. I always say, I don't have a vertical. I've got a horizontal. Like my customers fit a horizontal.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
I tend to, people who come to me are usually top 30% in their field and they want to be top 5%. That tends to be who comes my way. I always tell people, you can't get top 30% of your field, top 40% of your field without doing this stuff because there's no secret weapon. There's just your biology, right? Like you're doing this shit anyways. What you don't realize is there's a map There's an order.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
Somebody's done the homework for you. You can hire a guide for this shit. You don't have to reinvent the wheel here because the neurobiology and the advances we've made in brain science over the past 20 years has allowed us to map it.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
So no, there's a bunch of different ways you can train with me. The one I, I do a flow for writers course, which is everything. Like flow for writers is my favorite course to teach because it started out as a way for thought, help thought leaders to write books, right? Guys that use themselves who wanted to write books.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
The same state of consciousness flow that had helped these, you know, the folks in the action sports world go from zero up to Superman was helping me go from like seriously subpar back to normal. And it was the same thing on either side of the equation. And Joe's right. Like if you go into a lot of treatment centers, I'm not talking about like court.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
And I think I probably help with more books on the New York Times, but I sell this to anybody else this time. But it's broadened out to anybody. If you want to write sales copy, if you want to advertise in copy, marketing copy, blogs, communication of any kind, It's widened out. So that is an actual live in-person event that I train. When is it? The next one is in the end of October.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
So stephencottler.com and just click training. And that's how you find Flow for Writers. And we do it live a couple of times a year. And then there's a digital version if that's what you want to go with. But that's if you want to train with me live. The two ways to train with me live is that. And the other thing is I actually come in and when we work with businesses...
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
The way we usually work with companies is I'll come in and I'll train the C-suite. We can go out and train every one of your teams in every location you possibly want, and I will send my coaches out, but I'll train up the C-suite. The interesting thing about working with businesses is when you analyze the companies that are best at this, who's really going to flow? Amazon's good.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
Google's pretty good. Toyota's great. Patagonia. There are these 28 flow triggers. When you dig under the hood, you realize that most businesses, and I'm sure your business is this way, and I'm sure your business is this way. If we did the analysis, you would find this. You focused on one or two flow triggers. You haven't, you don't, it's not the full menu.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
You may be aware of the full menu, but you're like, and usually it's the flow triggers that sit in between your strengths, your organizational strengths and your organizational values. So usually when I work with companies, when we go in and most companies know what their values are because they got a mission statement.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
And if you're a good company, you have your leadership qualities that you already like. So you have both of those. You know what your strengths are and you know. And if you don't know what your strengths are, I always tell people this is really easy. Think about your five favorite employees, list five traits that they have and look for the ones that they have in common.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
you're probably going to have one or two in common, and those are your strengths. So look for a flow trigger that sits in between your strengths and your values. And here's the cool thing, flow triggers. So we talked about challenge, skills, balance, novelty, complexity, unpredictability. These are other flow triggers.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
Google is great with the challenge skills balance because anytime you're emphasizing continual learning, which is what Google does, that's the challenge skills balance. That's how we learn. You walk up the challenge skills balance. So they're really big on that. Or Google is also big on autonomy. That's another flow trigger that they leverage.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
And autonomy, so this is interesting to know, but autonomy... and attention are coupled systems in the brain. So if you're not actually in charge of your own life and making your own decisions, you can't maximize focus. So Google gets at this really easy, 20% time.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
The classic Google, like if you work at Google, you spend 20% of your time on a project that improves Google, but is aligned with your values. That's like autonomy. That's a flow trigger. But what we've discovered is Culture matters so much. We've been talking a lot about this. And a lot of the question is, how do you instill a culture? How do you build the culture you want to build?
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
What we found is that flow triggers turn strengths into values. So if you want to build a culture and you've got organizational strengths, figure out the flow triggers that are going to link to the values you want. And that's how you actually do that. That's how most companies do that. It's just this is the biology underneath it.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
Not the industry around treatment, but actually people who are doing really good work. They're built around flow programs. We now know that flow can override addiction, override PTSD, override burnout. It can do a light... fights against depression and anxiety and bipolar disorder and schizophrenia.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
And like all all we've done is just sort of like looked at what worked. This is how I like I was training companies for a while and it was OK. We were good. We weren't great. And I was like, why are we not great? Why are we not great? What's fucking hard about this? And so I did a giant, I'm going to white paper it out at some point.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
I did this giant study on all the companies that were best at it. I was like, oh, I don't need to train companies on like 28 flow triggers and all this other stuff. I literally need to figure out what are the two triggers that sit in between strength and values. And then we do active recovery, distraction management, and a couple other things. And I can literally half day, full day.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
And it's a blast. I do it myself because the results have been so good. It's so fun to lead the workshops.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
It's the only static thing in the world that will treat all those conditions at once because it's optimal performance. We're all hardwired for it. I didn't know any of that. And I didn't know that flow massively improves the immune system and can reset your nervous system.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
So we now know why flow cures Lyme disease and is used for autoimmune conditions and addiction and all this stuff that we didn't back in the 90s. I was just trying to figure out, am I dying? And if I'm not dying, am I crazy? And if I'm not dying and I'm not crazy, what the hell is going on? And can I get more of this? How does it work? Can my friends get more of this? Can we control this?
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
Can we learn from this? What is this? And The 90s was really cool because not only did the neuroscience start getting laid down, but flow in the beginning when we started in the 60s, it was just like, how do we define it? Oh, we define it as an optimal state of consciousness where we feel our best and we perform our best. Then it expanded from that.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
Oh, flow refers to any of those moments of rapt attention and total absorption. It's so focused on what you're doing. Everything else just starts to melt away and disappear automatically. Sense of self goes away. Time passes strangely. You know, the common experience is you just get so sucked into what you're doing, right? Five hours go by. It feels like five seconds.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
And all aspects of performance, physical, mental, and emotional go through the roof. Now, back in the early days, all the work had been done on athletes. So we sort of knew, okay, fast twitch muscle response increases in flow, strength increases in flow, stamina increases in flow. We didn't know how those things worked or why those things happened. We just knew that they were happening.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
And then Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and myself also, both of us, not only were we interested in sports, we were also creatives. I was a writer, he was a writer, and a lot of our friends were artists or whatever. And we started to realize, oh, artists, we were doing this in our art too. It's getting into these low-grade flow states while I was writing.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
And when I was in like a low-grade flow state, as you just pointed out, productivity goes through. If the number you gave that 500% above baseline, McKinsey, the business consultancy, they went around the globe. They talked to leaders, like CEOs of major companies for 10 years. And they said, how much more productive are you in
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
You always got to take it with a grain of salt because it's like a self-reported thing, right? They were asking questions. We've studied it at more length and gotten better numbers, but it's still pretty accurate. The average was 500% more productive. You got to put that in context. That means you go to work on Monday. It's been Monday in a flow state.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
You can take Tuesday through Friday off, and you're going to get as much done as everybody else in the company out of flow in one day that takes them five days to get. So that's what was happening in my writing. Like something I was sit down to write and I produce a whole chapter where before I would produce a tiny little, you know, paragraph. And I was like, okay, this is kind of amazing.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
Like productivity is going through the roof and other things followed. We now started to figure out, okay, it's not just physical, it's cognitive. And now we know it's emotional. So when we talk about optimal performance, it optimizes physically, mentally. and emotionally. All three of them are lifted as high as they can go in humans. This is literally us performing at our very best.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
Because it's neurobiologically based, we're all hardwired for it. So everybody listening to this podcast can get into flow for free. This is like biohackers are spending $2,000 a month on supplements and blah, blah, blah. No, no, no. This is hardwired into everybody. It's yours for free. Just figure out how it works and you can get more of it. Get as much as you want. It's untapped.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
You can't live in a flow state because it's a cycle, right? We used to think it was a binary, like a light switch. You're in the zone, you're out of the zone. It doesn't actually work that way. Most things in the body are a cycle. So you've got these four stages. You've got to move through all those stages to get back into flow.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
But what we've discovered is what used to be this rare experience for people is
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States
we found like our training we have an eight-week digital training right zero to dangerous standard flow training we and we measure everything so the last thousand people who went through the training we saw a 73.82 increase in flow for the last thousand people that's pretty average we see 70 80 increase in flow for most people i'd love to tell you that's my kung fu that we're that good and we're good