Aim for Flow (aka Multi-Tasking isn't real)

Productivity Principle #6

This is part 6 of a multi-part series exploring the principles of personal productivity, with the goal of making it the last thing you’ll ever need to read about the topic. If you missed it, you can read part 1 here, part 2 here, part 3 here, part 4 here and part 5 here.

A few years ago, there was a TED talk by a Hungarian-American psychologist named Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi that went viral. In that talk, Dr. Csikszentmihalyi introduced the world to the idea of the “flow.” Flow is that magical state that occurs when you get lost in whatever you’re doing. It’s what we call “being in the zone,” or if you ever played the classic arcade basketball game NBA Jam, it’s what they were describing when the computer announced, “He’s on FIRE!”

Regardless of what you call it, if you want to maximize your effectiveness, your goal should be to get into the flow state as often as possible, for as long as possible, because the flow state multiplies your effectiveness.

I know from tracking my own writing that I consistently average 500 words written per hour. However, if I get into flow state, it’s not uncommon for me to break over 2000 words. I challenge you to find me any other “hack” that will 4x your output.

The best part is that getting into flow is simple. Unfortunately, simple isn’t the same thing as easy. To achieve a state of flow, all you need is a single block of uninterrupted, focused time.

That means you’re only working on one thing at a time, and you have no distractions.

By now, there has been enough written on the topic that most people should be convinced that multi-tasking isn’t real. When you’re multi-tasking, what you’re actually doing is constantly switching from one task to another really quickly. That may seem like the same thing at first blush, but the key difference is flow. It takes time to achieve flow, and every time you switch from one task to the other, you’re restarting the clock on getting into flow state. What that means is that it’s actually impossible for most people to ever achieve flow state in a modern working environment that includes email notifications, Slack pings and group WhatsApp threads (not to mention barking dogs, crying babies and daily visits from the Amazon delivery person). Every time you divert your attention to that instant message, for even a single second, you’re exiting flow state, and you now have to take the time to get back into it. And chances are, before you can ever get back, you’ve already switched again.

This is the part in all productivity literature where I quote you the numbers that the average person checks email 9,876 times per day, and spends approximately 68.3% of their work time on a messenger platform, or looks at their phone on average once every 14.2 seconds (disclaimer: I completely made up those numbers, but they’re probably pretty close). We’ve all heard the data. They’re disturbing, and yet most of us do nothing to change our behaviour. Why? Because we haven’t realized the consequence.

The consequence is a life where we can never focus on anything for longer than a few seconds. While there’s a whole host of other problems with that, for the purposes of our discussion here, what that means is that it’s basically impossible to ever achieve that magical state of flow.

Applying the Principle

The solution? Pretty simple really. Turn off all your distractions for a period of time.

I know you have a million reasons why you can’t:

• “My job requires me to be available on Slack all the time.”

• “I have kids at home that are constantly distracting me.”

• “If I don’t respond to Kelly within ten minutes, she’ll never forgive me.”

I call bullshit on all of them. Yes, some people can do this more easily than others, but every single person can find 25 minutes of uninterrupted time. You may need to wake up a bit earlier, or put a fake meeting in your calendar, or hide in the bathroom for thirty minutes. But where there’s a will, there’s a way.

Why 25 minutes? The 25 minutes is lifted from the Pomodoro technique. Which was originally devised as a study technique whereby its creator, Francesco Cirillo would set a tomato-shaped kitchen timer for 25 minutes (fun fact: pomodoro is Italian for tomato), and for those 25 minutes he would focus exclusively on one task. No phone, no talking to people, no getting snacks. Just that one task. At the end of the 25 minutes, he would take a 5 minute break. During this 5-minute break, he could get up, go to the bathroom, grab a snack, do whatever. This 25 minutes of work plus 5 minutes of break is referred to as one pomodoro. After the first pomodoro, he would start another cycle of 25 minutes of work and a 5 minute break. After four consecutive pomodoros (2 hours), he would take a 15 minute break. And after four more pomodoros, he’d be entitled to a longer break…

When most people first hear about the pomodoro technique they assume it’s only useful for students who can lock themselves up in a library, or for robots. Or maybe robot students. But, here’s the thing about the pomodoro technique: It’s a system. And systems are meant to be adapted to suit your needs. The principle that underlies it is that of being in flow for as long as possible. So, as long as you keep that in mind, you should feel free to adapt the pomodoro technique as you see fit.

I’ve used the pomodoro technique for the majority of my career (I wish I’d known about it in University), going so far as to keep an actual kitchen timer in my office (it’s a stainless steel egg, not a tomato). But here’s my dirty little secret: I’ve never been able to do a single set of four straight pomodoros. Ever.

And that’s never bothered me, because I learned early on that if I could get even 2 full pomodoros into a day, I’d already be far more productive than the vast majority of the people around me. That’s right, just one hour of truly focused work was all it took for me to be a high level performer. If I got two hours of truly focused work in a single day, I was probably in the top 1% of all performers.

I’m not bragging, and I’m not special. So, how is that possible? Remember the example I gave earlier about 4x’ing my writing output when I was in state of flow? That means that two hours of focused work is equal to 8 hours of “normal” work. Between the meetings, emails, Amazon delivery guys, and discussing last night’s episode of the Bachelor, how many people do you think are actually getting in 8 hours of work per day?

I guarantee that if you can truly commit to locking your phone away in a drawer, turning off all your notifications, closing your door, and focusing on a single task for an hour you’ll be amazed at how effective you can be.

What Comes Next

Once you’ve seen the power of the flow state, start playing with the time. When I can, I prefer to do 50-minute work sprints rather than 25, because 25 feels too short, and I feel like I’m supposed to be taking a break just as I’m getting going. Also, a 5-minute break isn’t enough time to do much of anything other than stretching your legs. But that’s just me. Test out different combinations and see what works for you.

The next principle is closely related to the flow state, but it’s different enough that it deserves its own space. And that’s what I’ll cover in my next email!