Transcripts
1. Introduction: Think about the
last time that you lost yourself in the moment. You were doing something
you really enjoyed and time just started to melt
away, that's flow. The good news is that we can
recreate flow meaningfully in your life and call
upon it when you want. [MUSIC] My name is Kevin Siskar. Over the last few years,
I've helped hundreds of companies launch and grow. As an investor at 43 North, we invest $5 million per
year in the A companies. At Finta, I'm the
co-founder and CEO of a software company that helps founders automate the
fundraising process. I'm also host of the ambition today podcast where we interview founders and their
startup journeys and how they grow
their businesses. Today's class is all
about productivity today, finding your flow at work. First, we're going to go
over how to define flow. We're then going to take
a look at how you can find workflow already
occurs in your life. We're then going to analyze the themes and talk
about how we can pull objects out of your flow to re-create
them in the future. Then finally, we're going to talk
about how you could take those same exercises and those same strategies and
share them amongst your team. I hope that you walk away
from this class realizing and understanding that unlocking your full
potential isn't a mistake. It doesn't happen by accident,
it happens intentionally. You taking the time back to understand and becomes
self-aware about yourself and how you work best is really something that's going
to pay dividends for the rest of your career. I'd encourage you to upload your project at the
end of the class, upload that worksheet, we'll provide feedback and commentary. You can also post any
questions you have. If you have any discussion or community conversations
you want to have, you can post those as well. Now let's get started. [MUSIC]
2. What is Flow?: In this lesson, we're going
to start by defining flow. What is flow? How does
it fit into your life? Have you been in it in the past? You probably have. Flow is defined as the state of being fully in the moment and completely immersed
in an activity to the point of effectively
disappearing into it. There's no conscious division between the doer and
what's being done. There's only the doing. You've probably been
in flow before, whether you were at a concert,
skiing or snowboarding, hanging out with
a family member, and time just started to
melt away because you were really and genuinely
enjoying what you were doing. We could find the themes from that process when
you were last in flow, start to pull them
out and optimize the environment around you
today to create flow at work. The 2021 Anatomy of
Work report from Asana talked a little bit about why flow could be so
important today. App overload and
context switching is hampering productivity. Entering the flow state, letting the world
melt away while we be productive is
something that can really prevent us from
being distracted and causing us to switch
context constantly. Most people are
switching between 10 apps 25-30 times a day. That impact really hampers, messages and actions get missed, individuals are less efficient, and work ends up
getting duplicated. To back this up scientifically, McKinsey did a 10-year
study on flow. They found that
top executives are five times more
productive during flow. That's a 500% increase
in productivity. To put that into perspective, two hours of being
in flow can equal as much work as a
normal person gets done in a 40-hour workweek. That's incredibly powerful. That's a superpower in
the information age. If you'd increase the
time spent in flow by just 15-20%, your
productivity doubles. In today's knowledge economy, learning how to
harness flow is truly a strategic and impressive
advantage over everyone else. Everyone loves to enjoy the
work and do what they love. Finding out how to
set ourselves up for that success and doing that most often is incredibly powerful. If sheer work happiness
isn't enough, there's a few other
benefits to flow at work. You're going to
be more creative, more productive,
and more present. You're also going to
be less distracted, and overall, you're
just going to be happier with the
results of your work. To follow along in this
class using the worksheet, start to understand
the definition of flow and think about what it means
to you in your own life. In the next lesson, we're going to start to
think about those times, isolate them, and
write them down. [MUSIC]
3. Finding Your Flow: In this lesson,
we're going to talk about finding your flow, and the good news is that
there's a framework to do so. In the next few lessons,
we're going to go through those steps but starting
in this lesson, we're going to
talk about step 1. In step 1, we need to identify your current
flow activities. There are three conditions
necessary for flow. The next action is obvious. You have clear and
immediate feedback with no distractions. You experience a balance between
high perceived challenge and high perceived skill without the task
being too boring. Psychologists recommend
recreating memories of when you've lost yourself
or felt in flow in the past. First, you must
observe yourself. Look at what you're doing and increase your
self-awareness. Pay attention to the indicators that time has started
to melt away. Sometimes where you
might feel flow is playing a game
or a video game. Games are strategically
designed to be not too hard and not too easy and
place you in that flow. Understanding
something as simple as that could be your flow state. Once you realize that
you're in a state of flow, continue to heighten your
awareness around it. Start to notice are
there recurring themes. Are you wearing headphones? Is music playing? Are you writing or gardening? Is there's something
about what you're doing that happens to be a consistent theme across multiple times
you've been in flow. You really want to be self-aware
and clear around that, understanding it
so you can pull it out and take that as a
theme going forward. As you start to
think about times you've been in flow in the past, it could be personal or at work. I know I use examples such as snowboarding or
going to a concert, but maybe it happened
at work as well. You've got lost building that financial model in
that Excel spreadsheet, or setting up a marketing
campaign in HubSpot. Anytime you start to lose
yourself in your work, you're probably enjoying it. Building a new website, optimizing a process, so find those moments, really hone in on them and write them down as part
of this lesson. For me, times that I've
noticed I'm in flow at work are really when I'm being
creative or I'm building. Building a new website
for Finta, our company, or setting up a new
marketing campaign, or setting up some
email automations. Those are all things
I really enjoy. Whenever I'm doing
any of those things, time just melts away. I get a lot done and I'm
incredibly productive. As we think about flow
in the workplace, it's also important to be
aware about our surroundings. If we're in the office, maybe over the ear headphones help us get into flow because it signals to others that were focused and we don't
end up distracted, or if we're working from home, the room or surrounding
environment, maybe sitting outside
on the patio with our laptop could help us induce flow because
that's the place, and the scenery, and the environment
where we focus best. Thinking about the scenery
and these environments is an important part of setting
ourselves up for flow, and understanding where we've
experienced in the past. Keep those themes in
mind as we move forward. Following along on the
worksheet for this class, I want you to take a moment and make a list of the times
you've been in flow at work and make a list of the times you've been in
flow in your personal life. Write those down
and we're going to take those forward into
the next lesson where we're going to analyze them and pull apart the
themes to help you recreate your flow.
4. Building Your Flow Strategy: Now that we understand
what flow is, and we've started to figure out where it already
exists in our life. Let's talk about in this
lesson how we can analyze those themes and pull them out to re-create flow on demand. Advancing on the flow framework, let's talk about step 2. Step 2 is all about analyzing themes to build a
personal flow strategy. We want to ask ourselves, what themes do our
activities have in common? Where are you and
who is present? What's typically
happening around you when you're in flow? By identifying those
common themes, we can start to take those and design flow into our day-to-day. Some of the main
challenges to getting into flow include task
being too easy, apathy, and sometimes anxiety. Anxiety is pretty common
and something that often induces and increases
anxiety is coffee. Chugging as much coffee as you can and then
hoping to get into flow is something that just
might not be super realistic. Keep your caffeine
intake in mind, be aware and self-aware around your own anxiety levels
and make sure that we're optimizing and
setting ourselves up physically and emotionally to enter flow and be productive. In the last lesson, we highlighted times that we've
been in flow in the past, both in our personal
life and our work-life. Now we want to take a look
at those and start to figure out what themes might be
going out across them. For me, I personally
love to go snowboarding. It's just me in the mountain, I have my headphones in, no one's around me,
no distractions and I do some of my best
thinking on the slopes. When I'm at work, it's similar. I typically have
no one around me, maybe I've even got
out of the office or I have been in the
conference room by myself. I have my headphones in, I got a fresh cup of coffee or a drink or a beverage and I'm
focused and I'm dialed in. You want to start to figure out what are those themes that's recurring aspects of
when you weren't flow in the past and
source those out. Two more examples
that go hand-in-hand across my personal
life and my work life. When I'm walking the museum, I'm always in a great headspace. I'm learning about
historical figures or something amazing
that happened, learning about
dinosaurs, whatever. Then when I'm at work, when I'm learning a new piece of software or I'm adopting
something or trying to understand how to use final premier or challenging
myself in that regard. Those are both great examples
of when I'm learning, I tend to enter flow. Another example of
when I'm in flow, both in my personal
life and work life is, honestly, playing a game. I grew up playing sports and I'm an avid fan
playing them today. At the same time, my email
clients super human, has been incredibly gamified to help me get through
my email very fast. Whether I'm playing games on the field or I'm playing something that's been
gamified in the office, I get a ton of work done. On your worksheet, you have your personal flow states and you have your workflow states. Now, I want you to
make another list of the themes that maybe
go across them. Were you listening to music? Did you have a fresh cup
of coffee in front of you? Was there no one around you? Did you have no distractions? Was your phone in do
not disturb mode? What are those recurring themes that you can pull
out of your life? Highlight those right now. We're going to use those
themes in the next lesson. We'll talk about
how you can take those strategies and embed
them into your calendar and your work going forward to optimizer flow state as
often as you'd like.
5. Embedding Your Flow Strategy: Now that we've done step 1 and step 2 of finding your flow, let's talk about step 3, embedding those themes and those strategies into your
day-to-day life going forward. This is going to allow you to optimize your chances of finding your flow in the future and increasing your
productivity in the long run. There are two main ways to embed your flow strategy
into your day-to-day life, either at work or at home. The first is habit stacking, and the second is
visible habits, both of which I'm going
to give credit to [inaudible] at super-human
for coming up with. Let's first talk
about habit stacking. Habit stacking lets you leverage your existing habits to improve your processes and create better new habits that let
you enter the flow state. For example, maybe after your next team meeting at 1.5 hours calendar block to counter, that just says focus. Make sure that when
that time comes, you pour yourself a cup of
coffee or whatever you need, you find a quiet room, you
minimize distractions, put your phone on
do not disturb, and just start to focus
on getting work done. In fact, taking blocks of
time and blocking them off on your calendar can
be incredibly powerful, and not only helps me focus, but it prevents anyone else from scheduling a meeting
or putting something else on my calendar at that
time that could take me away from where and what I
intended to be working on. In my last class activity today, we also went over
this a little bit, but think about how you
could take the hours or days of your week
and break them up to intentionally focus on
different things such as maybe hitting inbox zero
on e-mail on Monday. We're taking all
your meetings on Tuesday so you can focus on work exclusively on Wednesday,
Thursday, and Friday. Visible habits are easier to
maintain than unstated ones. With a visible habit, something as simple as taking those themes that
we've highlighted, you now have a strategy and
sharing it with your team. This is something
we do at 43North. We share our visible
habits with each other. We understand when people are more likely to be
in the flow state, so maybe we don't disrupt it or distract and we really understand how to communicate
best with one another. We also can hold each other accountable and help each other. With habit stacking
and visible habits, you can embed your flow strategy into your personal and work-life dramatically increasing the
odds that you can enter flow and dramatically
reducing distractions. Let's look at our worksheet. Let's take a moment here to write down and highlight
all the things that you can do to build your habit stacking and
your visible habits. Try to list out three
or five of each and then think about how you can
add them to your schedule, add them to a calendar,
and told you so. In the next lesson, we're going to talk
about how you can take the strategies that you've
put in your own life, and how you can help everyone on your team also find their flow, making a contagious and multiplying the effects
and productivity boost.
6. Encouraging Flow on Your Team: In this lesson, we're
going to talk about taking the strategies
that you've embedded in your own life and making them contagious amongst your teams. In a world where work
transcends in the hybrid, keeping everyone on the
same page is critical. So being aware of your teammates' optimal work
environments is important. Especially today, a lot of
companies are now hybrid. When someone really wants
to focus or going flow, maybe they work from home. When they're in the office, they still need to find flow and they still need
to be productive. So making sure that you're not distracting
or tapping someone on the shoulder or really
taking them out of flow if they look
to be deeply in focus, it's just something
to be aware of and also something to encourage
for when you are in flow. Think about how you
and your teammates in your office or
at home or remote, can all set each other up to succeed in each of
those scenarios, because it's going to be a
little different in each one. That's really as simple as thinking about what
are the triggers or signals to other teammates that someone might
be going into flow. Maybe that's, they've gone and grabbed a diet Coke
from the fridge or their favorite drink or they put on over-the-ear
headphones. Really whatever we can do
to help people optimize and share the signal that they're about to
enter the flow state. Give your teams the permission
to enter the flow state, be productive and
focus on the work and make it clear to everyone else that that's what they're doing. Really, especially when you
think about visible habits, I would recommend having everyone on the
team write down and share and then I would encourage you to put all that on
one piece of paper, print it out, and give a copy
to everyone on the team. Put a little picture
of everyone's head shot next to it and their name, and then what their
visible habits are. Hey, when I have headphones
on, please don't bother me. When I have this
drink in front of me, I'm really focusing right now, or this snack or something, or maybe it's even a sign, something very obvious, and keep it on everyone's desk. Start to remember and make a
common place so everyone in the office knows when and where each person
is going into flow. What do you think
about habit stacking and how that can be
contagious to your teams, use your shared calendars. Many workplaces use Google workplace or
wherever and you could see your colleagues' schedules
and their calendars and so don't be afraid to block off time on your own calendar. Put a hold, put a focus time
after that team meeting. Hold to it, don't let people
schedule meetings over it. Doing that can really help you increase your
productivity and prevent other people from
infringing on your time and forcing their to-do
list to be yours. Really think about how you can use those shared calendars to your advantage and
clearly define those focus periods
using habit stacking.
7. Final Thoughts: Thank you so much for being here
for Productivity Today finding your flow. To leave you with
a few thoughts, I just want to stress this, time is the most precious
resource we have and choosing how we spend
it and optimizing time is really important. Tapping into flow is
something that gives you a massive
strategic advantage. If two hours per week equals a 40-hour work week
for a normal person, because you've
managed to tap into flow according to
that McKinsey study, then you could in theory, do a year's worth of
work in two weeks, in 13 days of non-stop, eight-hour flow per day. Now I know that's not
entirely sustainable, you can't stay in flow
for eight hours a day, but the point is this, tapping into flow
and finding it in your work is
incredibly impactful. It'll give you a strategic advantage on how productive you are and how efficient you
can be and most importantly, you're going to enjoy
doing your work, you're going to be happy, you're going to be
more fulfilled, and you're really going
to be in the moment. As we conclude this class, I just want to reiterate, upload and share your class project, post any questions you have
in the discussion board and also share your class
project with the team. Communicating and sharing
that amongst your team is the best way to make
flow contagious. Thank you so much
for being here, I can't wait to see
you in the next one and stay curious everyone. I'll see you in the
next Skillshare class.
Kevin Siskar, CEO, Finta
