one of flo's triggers is known as
immediate feedback this is one of the
reasons action adventure sport athletes
had such an advantage because right
immediate feedback either set your ski
edge on that
hill or you're on a face for a death
slide to the bottom of the car right
it's immediate feedback so in writing
what i discovered for example is editors
don't do a hell of a lot of editing
they're really busy so you get them that
once twice you've written books you know
what it's like right they jump in
five months in and they give you some
notes and they you see them again in
five months and maybe you know what i
mean it's
not what you need so i have um i have a
guy on my staff
michael who you've met
who's my editor and he reads almost
everything i wrote usually uh two or
three times a week
and he gives me what i call the minimal
feedback for flow so i have discovered
for me and my writing so my watch words
are
never boring never confusing and never
arrogant and i've discovered by the way
when i make certain kinds of errors for
example if my writing
is really fancy i'm using lots of fancy
language in my writing usually what that
means is um so that would be an example
of my writing is arrogant right i'm
using and what that means is i haven't
done enough homework i haven't done
enough research so i'm trying to cover
up what is a lack of knowledge with
fancy writing and sometimes i don't even
notice i don't know that i haven't done
enough research i only know it when the
fancy writing shows up but i have to
usually have somebody pointed out to me
so i figured out that my for my as a
writer the minimal feedback or flow that
i need is is it boring is it arrogant or
is it confusing and so every couple of
days michael reads whatever it is that
i'm working on it answers those
questions for me that's the minimal
feedback for flow so i tell people is
in your work situations obviously you
can't get that kind of feedback from
bosses very often people are too busy
find a feedback buddy find somebody to
work with in your life who can give you
that kind of immediate feedback because
if it's quarterly reviews or yearly
reviews it's not enough to generate flow
you want to really shrink down those
feedback cycles as much as possible
i'm a big believer in exercise try i i i
exercise at least six days a week um and
usually for a couple of hours minimum
like i'll go for an hour long hike with
my dogs in the morning and then i'll go
to the gym in the afternoon or twice a
week i uh for me
i need action sports i have to hurl
myself down mountains at high speeds um
i have so there's a recovery period
recovery is really important for flow so
i have a
infrared sauna in my house that i use um
and i do uh box breathing every every
day in the infrared sauna um and one is
blind box breathing box breathing is
just it's a kind of mindfulness um it's
called box breathing because there's
four sides to it so you inhale let's say
it's five seconds inhale for five
seconds hold it for five seconds
exhale for five seconds hold it for five
seconds and box breathing
and then you do it for six seconds and
seven seconds and the reason i find box
breathing with the navy seals train is
the mindfulness technique they use and
the reason is not only is it a good so
any kind of mindfulness training is
training focus so it's all going to help
with flow right all meditation training
is going to help drive flow in the end
i like box breathing because it's two
things so when you exhale all the air
from your lungs and you hold your breath
which is what you do on one side of that
of the box right you exhale and then you
hold your breath so if you do that for
over seven seconds for most people it
depends how good their lungs are it
automatically induces a fight or flight
response right your brain goes holy crap
there's no air in your lungs panic and
what you have to do is you have to learn
to focus through the panic right and
which is one of the secrets especially
in action sports or some of the martial
arts like learning to focus through the
panic is how you achieve flow it's a
really good flow skill and it also so
you're doubly down regulating the
nervous system with box breathing the
other thing is it's a complicated enough
system that if you're even if you hate
meditation and mindfulness anybody can
learn to do it because there's enough
going on there's some challenge there
right so i a big believer in that and
the last thing i do that the less kind
of flow tip i'm going to give you guys
so
another flows triggers is
creativity flow not only amplifies
creativity creativity triggers flow and
what really triggers flow is pattern
recognition the linking of ideas
together okay so if you want to create
pattern recognition you actually have to
feed the brain ideas and the problem in
the modern world
is that most of us tend to specialize
and when you specialize right the ideas
you're getting there's not enough
distance between the incoming ideas and
older ideas to create pattern
recognition so i tell p people who are
really interested in this you should
read 25 to 50 pages a day
preferably in a book and there are
reasons i'm not going to go into it here
but non-fiction outside your core area
in something that you're curious about
and just interested about and what
you're doing is you're loading the
pattern recognition system you're giving
yourself kind of the basic necessities
for pattern recognition and if you don't
do that you can't make those connections
so you're denying yourself some of the
flow that you can have
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