Work, flow, and where magic happens
There are more complete definitions of the state of "flow," what I connected and felt true the most in this state are as follows:
- your brain, in all its magnificence, is bought to focus on one task
- the easier the task, the easier it is to achieve this state of flow (eg: people do some of their best thinking when washing dishes)
- the true power of flow is when you bring it to bear on more complex tasks, specifically that require multiple parts of your brain to collaborate (eg: writing, drawing, building products, learning, and in general acts of creation and synthesis)
In certain ways, I liken it to your brain engaging it's "deep learning mode." Athletes train extensively to be able to react to baseball in less than 0.3 seconds. Your brain cannot analyze the ball, send signals to all the muscles to start the swing and effectively connect in that time. Instincts honed over years of training kick in and a pro-player's muscles react before a normal person has even analyzed the ball. This is a form of deep-learning, consistently training to do extremely well at that one thing.
This "deep-learning" state then is a narrowing of perception, where you create the conditions that the brain feels safe, engaged and peaceful; so it can suspend it's need to monitor "root threads" and bring all that bandwidth to the task (user threads).
Analyzing my own flow:
I find it hard to achieve flow when I am at home, it doesn't matter which room, how peaceful it is but I have find that my best work rarely happens in the comfort of my own home. Binaural-beats help, but randomly. Instead, I find I do better work when I am at any place that is not home.
Cafes were my favorite places to go to work, I like white noise (crowd chatterings) that I can tune in and out at will. I like the access to coffee, seeing people work and people watching when taking a break. The pandemic fucked that up.
Replacement candidates and their review:
- Roof - I have a pretty cool view of the city from the roof of my Bernal Hill apartment. It does get windy up there, and wind is not easy to work around. At night, with all lights off, in the black of the night, with little light-specs shaping the scenery, a hot green tea and a blanket to keep the chill at bay, has been conducive to achieving something close to a flow state. (Disadvantages) Only able to do this at like 11pm at night.
- Stairwell - literally the stairwell outside my apartment, because any place but my room.
- Walk in closet - very small, just enough for me to sit and trick myself into disassociating from my room that lies less than 5 feet away. Thank god I am not claustrophobic. Tried this a few times, and so far it has worked.
- A corner tea shop on the streets of India - I did some of my most important applications for school from a street store, where I would sit on a chair by the sidewalk and work on my laptop while a steady stream of daily laborers would come to drink tea, grab bites and take breaks from their work. They would stare, but soon enough I became friends with the regulars. I did some of my best work there.
I think I associate home with distraction, the enjoyable kind - family, roommates, entertainment, reading, things that take me out of the moment. Meditation has been helping, it allows me to be present and makes getting into flow state more achievable. I need to double down on that, and in the meantime figure out the set of circumstances that are able to trigger flow at will. Wouldn't that be convenient?