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I am a basketball fan, professional mostly. My son and I root for the Golden State Warriors, which was ridiculously fun for six years, then not so much the last two, except for watching Stephen Curry play some of his best basketball ever this season, at the age of 33. The past month his performance reached otherworldly levels in points, assists, shooting efficiency and accuracy. Other players marveled at this like fans themselves, as they also struggled to contain him. The sequence below, in which he literally goes past all five opposing players to score,1 sums up how he’s been playing:
This is what it looks like when someone is performing at their peak, when decisions and actions (honed by hours hours of practice and execution) occur automatically, purely in the specific moment. Here, Steph Curry is deep in the Flow State,2 the best feeling a player can have, but also something very hard to access and maintain.
From a professional perspective, Flow makes our best work our most enjoyable work. It allows us to apply our accumulated experience and strengths at their peak. But our hyper-connected workplaces, with all their pinging and slacking and reply-alling and zooming, provide fanatically anti-Flow environments that pull us to the surface and the superficial all day long. We are swimming against a rapidly rising tide.
So here are three interesting things about regaining your attention and ability to dive deeply and achieve some Flow.
1) This article about Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, considered the first to identify and research Flow, provides a comprehensive primer that includes the main characteristics. It’s little light on how to get there, though. (Csikszentmihalyi’s Ted Talk has more depth.)
2) Cal Newport has written extensively about what he calls Deep Work, a type of effort that includes Flow-state activity. This article outlines the key components to constructing an environment conducive to “going deep.”3 It’s a valuable lesson on how structure and repetition can enable higher levels of performance. (I recommend buying Newport’s book to truly dig in.)
3) Because they burn more energy than surface-level tasks, Flow or Deep Work require preparation and planning— time outside work becomes an integral part of the process. To help that part of your life, The Harvard Business Review outlines key considerations for getting the most of your “Me Time.”
BONUS LINKS!!!
B1) If you’ve ever wondered why all this so-called “innovation” seems focused on making money via scaled gossip and food delivery, check out this amazing weed-killing laser robot thing…it might restore some hope in human ingenuity
B2) “To look marvelous is to smell marvelous,” or something like that…and DS&Durga can help you sound marvelous as well with their fragrance playlists
B3) I spent an hour or so last week in the Time Machine, watching some of the documentary “Woodstock”…SO MUCH hair, adoringly retro slang (“Groovy, man!”) and amazing performances (watch Sly and The Family Stone if you’re having a bad day)
Keep in mind, those traffic cones he’s weaving through are some of the best basketball players on the planet.
I have experienced 2-3 of these moments…during approximately 25 years of playing basketball. These were strictly earth-bound and pedestrian…but they felt amazing.
I find the ritual aspect the easiest to implement. Listening to Wynton Marsalis’ “The Midnight Blues” triggers my mind to calm itself and focus.