TJ Power

It's actually just before that.

And that would make sense evolutionarily.

If I was trying to actually catch a deer or like an antelope in the wild, I don't need the most opening in my brain once I've got it.

I need it just before.

So I've got the peak level of focus and motivation.

And in a scenario like that, where suddenly you can't pursue the goal that you had been pursuing for a long period of time and you can't get that reward from it, it's very tricky.

The brain can crash.

And this also happens when people win the lottery, when celebrities reach the pinnacle of success.

Yeah, so flow state is this idea of a really deep immersion in a task.

And it was initially really understood and conceptualized by a chap called Mihail Csikszentmihalyi.

And he discovered through watching athletes and musicians and a variety of different domains, people entering really deep states of high performance and focus.

And you see this primarily within the sporting environments.

If you're watching the Wimbledon final, you might see the player is just in this deep, deep state.

state of flow you might see an NFL baseball all kinds of things in that state our dopamine level rises a lot in a really nice healthy and natural way and for humanity originally for our ancestors flow state would have just been a daily occurrence hours and hours of flow state like I love watching this show called Primal Survivor where this guy goes and visits these different tribes that are still here today and the different genders and different age roles have all different functions from creating tools to building to hunting and

But regardless, they spend hours on end just focusing on one thing, a really deep state of focus, not really thinking about anything else.

In the modern world, we're rarely entering deep flow state.

You and I in this conversation throughout an hour as our brain gets more and more immersed in this, that's almost a flow state type experience because our brains aren't currently clicking on our email and WhatsApp and checking Instagram and all kinds of things.

In our day-to-day life, when we are just working on our computers, typically flow state is far from the reality of what happens.

Like if I was trying to write my book, for example, if I write one paragraph and then go on WhatsApp, one paragraph, go on WhatsApp, one paragraph, I'm never getting anywhere close to flow state.

And getting into this deep state of immersion in work or in personal creative activities is really important.