“Flow” is a hyperproductive mental state characterized by complete involvement in the task at hand. Athletes, musicians, and other performance-based workers crave this “zone” that produces some of their best results with less effort. Flow state is the antithesis of multi-tasking, it is the application of all your mental and physical resources toward the accomplishment of a single task.

If you aren’t working in a flow state, you aren’t working at your potential. Digital workers – ranging from graphic designers and writers to programmers and database admins – can harness the power of this psychological state to produce better work, more of it, and in less time. You can also learn to enter this state intentionally rather than by chance and you can learn to stay in it longer.

What follows are tips and suggestions that encourage entering the flow state and staying in it till the work is done. However, keep in mind that your attention should never be on entering the flow state. This would actually make you very unlikely to enter Flow because your attention needs to stay on the task at hand and nothing else.

Remove the necessity to think about time: Have a reliable way of bringing yourself back to self-awareness when necessary. For instance, have an iCal pop-up reminder for appointments or set a timer on your cell phone. Whatever system you choose, you need to have complete confidence in it’s ability to bring you back to reality so that you can let go of any thoughts pertaining to time, your schedule, and obligations for the day.

Create a trigger: By linking the sensation of being in Flow state to a trigger, eventually the presence of the trigger alone will make you significantly more likely to enter flow state. Each time you enter flow state in the presence of that trigger, you are strengthening the connection.

• Decide on a trigger:
  • A smell: Make sure it is a smell that the company will continue to produce or buy a lot of it at once.
    • Scented candle
    • Incense
  • A ritual:
    • Stretching
    • Meditation on a particular subject
  • A sound: If you pick white, pink, or brown noise, only use that noise during flow work. In other words, don’t use it when you are falling asleep. Dedicate the noise to flow work.

Know exactly what you are doing: In order to focus, you’ve got to be clear on what you are trying to accomplish. Deciding what you are working on gives you permission to ignore everything else until later. Deciding what you are going to accomplish makes it harder for you to justify quitting until the goal is reached.

Find motivation for the task: In order to focus, you need to have sufficient reasons to begin working on the task, to devote all your mental resources to it, and to continue working on it after you’ve made sufficient progress to justify stopping.

• Where to find motivation:
  • Connect the task to a larger goal
  • Imagine what it would feel like to want to do the task
    • Pretending will create the same feeling.
    • Once you have it, get to work, don’t question the legitimacy of it.
  • Think about how nice it will be to have it done
  • Imagine what the end result will look like
  • Tie the task to your values
  • Think about what the end result will bring you
  • If all else fails, scare yourself (“If I don’t get this done…”)

Start working: Allow the transition into a deeper and deeper flow state by staying focused on the task at hand and giving yourself positive feedback as you work. 

• If searching for motivation does not naturally transition into beginning the task, start brainstorming ideas about the task.
• If this does not transition into starting the task, just start working.  
• IMPORTANT: As you work, allow yourself to become more and more energized and motivated as you make progress and produce good work. This will deepen the flow state.

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In a job where multi-tasking is an inseparable part of the job, such as virtual assistance, any tool that helps you more closely focus on what you are doing becomes priceless. Obviously, eliminating distraction is a key part of focus so stumbling upon the free Think app by Freeverse was a valuable find for us.

The app does one thing and does it well – it blacks out everything except the window you are working in, the dock, and the bar at the top of the screen.

The Think app is one of those beautiful, intuitive apps that make you glad you are using Mac OS X all over again. Remarkably easy to use, it keeps things simple while doing everything that you expect it should. You can change the background color, the opacity of the background, switch between apps, and close the program all from a small toolbar that fades into the background when not needed.

I’m sure there are keyboard shortcuts for switching between apps but I have not bothered to look into it because having to mouse to the app’s toolbar in preparation for window switching prompts an important thought: “Should I really be multi-tasking right now?”

Related posts:

1. Using Fluid to save frequently used web apps as “real” Mac apps
2. Leopard’s Spaces plus Parallels equals seamless switching between OS X and Windows

We use a lot of web-based applications so an application like Fluid, which allows you to create Mac apps out of web apps, is extremely useful to us here. Especially when it works flawlessly… which it does. After testing out Mozilla’s Prism, Fluid was clearly the better app of the two though their function is identical.

At first I wasn’t sure how useful this would be but after I got used to change in my workflow I’ve become convinced that Fluid is priceless. Basically, the greatest advantage is just being able to access these web apps from the dock instead of having to pick the right browser window and then find the right tab.

Unfortunately, I have not been able to get the dock badges to work with our Gmail accounts. Perhaps because we use hosted Gmail?

Related posts:

1. Leopard’s Spaces plus Parallels equals seamless switching between OS X and Windows

With the release of Leopard, I was pretty disappointed that Spaces was not more useful to me. I just couldn’t find a way to fit it into my workflow… at least not a way that made my life easier. So, I was very pleased to finally find an extremely useful use for Spaces…

Being in an environment where we have to switch between OS X and Windows, anything that makes this easier is welcomed.

By moving Parallels to it’s own “Space” and then putting it in fullscreen mode, switching from Windows to OS X is as simple as control + arrow key. It works flawlessly and it keeps the window out of the way reducing open window pollution.

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