I frequently give Crazy Busy masterclasses at corporate wellbeing events. Cash is spaffed on yoga, massages, kombucha, vegan buffets and of course mindfulness. These definitely make us feel a bit better. But their impact is wiped out if you spend the rest of the week anxiously trying to catch up, swimming against the endless tide of emails, messages, and meetings.
We’re missing a trick. The simple and free joy of intense concentration. It’s called flow, being totally immersed in a task. (It used to be called ‘getting on with your work’ in pre-digital days.) Think of musicians lost in music, a runner’s high, or just being absorbed in a great book. We lose all sense of ego, appetite, and critical inner voices. Instead we focus on one significant task at once and do it well.
In a ten-year study conducted by McKinsey, executives reported that they were five times more productive when they consistently worked in a flow state for a day a week. As Steven Kotler of the Flow Genome Project points out, that means they get more done by the end of Monday than their steady-state peers did in a whole week.
And it feels great. Not only do you get the satisfaction of ticking off your priority tasks, working in flow releases a whole cocktail of pleasure chemicals. Dopamine, serotonin, endorphins, oxytocin, norepinephrine and anandamide. More fun than a Downing Street party. What better well-being gift can you give your team? A hit of High Intensity Work. It costs nothing, just leadership permission to allow people to work asynchronously and without interruption.
Is a full day in flow a leap too far? The same McKinsey researchers said that if we could all just increase the time that we spent in flow by 15-20% overall workplace productivity would almost double. Think about the difference that would make. Two hours a day, even ninety minutes of focused concentration.
Talk to your colleagues about killing some meetings to create flow time. Let me know how you get on.
This article is abridged from Chapter 8 of The Crazy Busy Cure. It explains how to set up the conditions of successful flow working and gives references to the studies mentioned if you want to look them up (great procrastination right there).