Initially, the pandemic was about the loss of normalcy.
With any major loss comes grief. With a prolonged change like the pandemic, we shift from a state of grief to a state of languishing as pointed out by Adam Grant in his recent article.
Languishing is that state you’re in when you’re cranking out tasks in a joyless manner. Its the difference between using your abilities and using your talents.
The antidote is flow. Flow is that state you’re in when you’re performing at your best. You may feel you can’t get into flow because you’re languishing, but fortunately its the other way around. Flow sucks up the fog of languishing like a Dyson.
How do you get yourself into a state of flow on a daily basis?
Track your emotional highs - An emotional high is simply any moment where you feel a ‘jolt’ of a positive emotion, even if only for a few moments, or seconds. This has two benefits; Firstly, the data you collect will point you to where your brand of flow resides. Secondly, it improves your detection system so you start to notice the smallest of high’s, even this has a beneficial side effect to well-being.
List every activity you can think of that makes you lose track of time - a distorted sense of time is the most frequently reported characteristic of flow, and it feels good. Watch ghostwriter Caroline Ryder talk about what its like to be in flow when writing.
Derive your ‘spheres of peak’ performance - This brief video may help you. For example, when I look at the activities I love to do so much so that I lose track of time, a library comes to mind.
This is one of my spheres of peak performance. This doesn’t mean I have to physically be in a library, but I can conjure up key elements of a library (reading, research, taking notes, quiet environment, like minded people, studying, etc) and that alone will put me into flow. In fact, if I read a compelling chapter from a really good book, my run is approximately 5-10% faster that day, I kid you not.
Mitigate your flow blockers
This is the kryptonite and we’re all dealing with it. If you have a nice long list of emotional highs from step 1, you’ll have strategies to bypass the blockers.
Beware of Bad Flow - There is such a thing as bad flow, the good news is that ironically bad flow also involves your talents. For example, I love to think. I could think all day long. As a result, I have an urge to lash out if I think someone says something without putting thought behind it. In fact, I still have the feedback I was given as a manager, the person wrote it out on the whiteboard as a formula.
When I’m defensive (D), I act like an ass (=A). I know, not one of my best qualities. I have a visceral reaction. We all have bad flow triggers. Figure out what yours are, determine which talent is being triggered negatively and come up with a switch strategy. I love talking about compelling potential future states. So, now when I feel D=A, I immediately shift from lashing out over the suggestion to saying something like ‘what is the ideal state you’re trying to get to with that suggestion’. Shifting from the present to talking about the future neutralizes this bad flow reaction (work in progress). Here’s a brief video on getting out of bad flow
If you can notice a few emotional highs, detect the underlying patterns, replicate and scale them, you’ll flow right out of languishing.