Hello friends,
I’m going to go full cult leader today.
I’m going to explain what Flow States are and how you should use Flow State Coffee as a physiological trigger to do creative work.
So what is a Flow State and why is it called ‘Flow State Coffee’?
Well, at the risk of hyperbole, a Flow State is the optimal human experience. No wait...stay with me!
It’s a mental state in which a person performing an activity is fully immersed in a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and enjoyment in the process of said activity.
You can think of it as ‘being in the zone” if it helps.
Recently my friend Abhishek Agarwal shared an article called “contextual flow” in which the author, Zat Rana does a PHENOMENAL job explaining flow.
He quotes the psychologist Mihaly Csikszentm, who recognised and named the psychological concept of flow. Mihaly is the godfather of flow who sums it up as:
“Flow is being completely involved in an activity for its own sake. The ego falls away. Time flies. Every action, movement, and thought follows inevitably from the previous one, like playing jazz.”
I love that.
We’ve all had it. When the work just effortlessly flows from your fingertips at the computer, when you have a perfect practice session as an athlete, or even a great call at work.
There are moments where everything clicks and you’re firing on all cylinders.
The frustrating bit is it’s hard to just enter a flow state at will. They feel rare and it’s much more common to be interrupted by your environment and texts or email.
We live in an age of distraction.
Flow is attention. Flow is focused time. It can’t be bought or manufactured. If you can tap into a flow state even a few times in a week the returns are exponential.
So how can we cultivate flow?
For me, it all changed when I read The Art of Learning.
I love this book. The author, Josh Waitzkin, is the subject of the movie “Searching for Bobby Fischer” who was a world champion chess player AND THEN a world champion martial artist in Tai Chi Chuan.
In the book he illustrates the exact routines that he has used in all of his competitions, both mental and physical, and how he achieves peak performance in two insanely competitive fields.
One of the most important aspects of the book is around physiological triggers.
A physiological trigger is an automatic reaction that triggers a physical response to a stimulus.
It can be a song or a smell or a location or a movement that primes your mind and body to do something. It’s a pavlovian response.
Josh used the Eminem song ‘Lose Yourself’ before every competition as a trigger, so much so that even listening to the song now would cause his pupils to dilate and heart rate to elevate on the spot.
The point is that you can use physiological triggers to cultivate flow.
And so, Here is my ask of you, our benevolent customer.
I humbly ask you to get into the proper mindset when you drink Flow State Coffee.
I ask you to drink it as I do, as a physiological trigger to do creative work.
I would like you to set some sort of creative intention. Whether it’s finally writing that book or starting that business or simply starting a new positive habit like meditation and then tie it to the consumption of Flow State Coffee.
I recently wrote an article on my personal site about this entitled Inputs & Outputs about how I balance productivity and serendipity.
In it, I discuss how I drink Flow State Coffee to trigger that it is time to transition to outputs. To create. Quite simply, it’s time to get shit done. I have a pretty simple routine but in doing it I found that I can hit flow pretty consistently now. My mind knows when that coffees done it’s go time.
The benefits in Flow State Coffee are compounded by this habit and I hope they will be for you too.
I’ll say one more time for the people in the back:
Please use Flow State Coffee as a physiological trigger to do creative work.
I know this was a little kool-aid but I promise you if you set an intention and use this as I have. You’ll be pretty astonished where you are in 6 months. I know I am. NooWave DID NOT EXIST 6 weeks ago and now we’re a profitable, real business.
I cannot wait to see what you create with Flow State Coffee.
I really want to spotlight creatives and we’re rolling out more incentives and exposure for you all so stay tuned on that by subscribing to our newsletter.
Please share what you make with us on social media by tagging us @noowaveco on all platforms.
If you'd like you can always reach out to me and nerd out about Flow States @ Greg@noowave.co or @SFWGreg on Twitter.