This is a blog about "flow." Flow is an optimal state of consciousness, a peak state where we feel our best and perform our best. Researchers now believe flow sits at the heart of almost every athletic championship, underpins major scientific breakthroughs and accounts for significant progress in the arts. From a quality of life perspective, psychologists have found that the people who have the most flow in their lives are the happiest people on Earth.
Most of us have at least passing familiarity with flow. If you've ever lost an afternoon to a great conversation or gotten so involved in a work project that all else is forgotten, you've tasted the experience. In flow, we focus so intensely on the task at hand that action and awareness merge. Time flies. Self vanishes. Performance, both mental and physical, goes through the roof.
In Abundance, Steven Kotler and I explored how exponentially-growing technology combined with three other emerging forces gives humanity the power to solve the world's grand challenges and exceed the basic needs of every man, woman and child on the planet over the next two to three decades. While abundance is highly likely, it's not guaranteed. We have to create it first. For entrepreneurs working toward abundance, what's most important is flow's implications on motivation, creativity and learning -- three skills that are absolutely critical to thriving in an exponential world. Researchers describe flow as "the source code of intrinsic motivation," meaning once an activity starts producing flow we will go far out of our way to get more of it.
Most of us have seen this at work. Startups are incredibly high-flow environments. Flow has driven my career -- passion and creativity triggered in a project for one business becomes an "inspiration generator" that catalyzes new breakthroughs in another entrepreneurial venture, and so on. Startups that don't generate large amounts of flow are startups doomed to eventually fail.
But it's not just startups. A ten-year study by McKinsey found top executives in flow were 5x more productive -- a 500 percent increase in performance. Most of us would trade quite a bit to just be five to ten percent more productive!
Flow's impact on learning is equally profound. In DARPA studies, military snipers trained in flow acquired new skills and new knowledge at a rate 230 percent greater than normal. Other studies have found a 500 percent increase in learning. We've all heard about those 10,000 hours to mastery -- flow radically shortens that path.
But the most important skill we entrepreneurs are going to need to create a world of abundance is creativity. We must be able to change and innovate at incredibly high speeds, skills that require creativity. Here, flow plays an even bigger role. Study after study has found that flow massively amplifies creativity. In preliminary research run by the Flow Genome Project, most people report a 6-8x improvement in creativity. More impressive, Teresa Amiable, at Harvard, discovered that people report being more creative the day after a flow state, suggesting that not only does flow boost creativity in the moment, it actually retrains the brain to be more creative over the long haul.
Flow is immensely powerful, but how do you get more of it? Luckily my brilliant friend and co-author, Steven Kotler has documented this in his new book, The Rise of Superman: Decoding the Science of Ultimate Human Performance.
In Rise, Steven breaks new ground, giving an incredibly thorough and fun-to-read overview of the science of flow, including a detailed description of the 15 flow triggers that allow anyone anywhere to massively increase the amount of flow in their lives.I found the book so useful that I have bought copies for my friends, family and teams. I'd like you to consider getting and reading this book too. I don't get any personal benefit from promoting Steven's book, other than the joy of sharing a GREAT book with you and making you as a reader of my blog, smarter and more capable.
Steven is running an incredible pre-sale campaign with 45% off the price and a bunch of prizes (NOTE: Amazon is his publisher, and this is one of Amazon's *big* books of the year -- they want to make it a NYTimes bestseller so they are offering this 45% discount until midnight on March 3rd). More details on a huge array of additional prizes and benefits for ordering. Take a look here: http://riseofsuperman.com/rise-rewards/
If flow is the source code to intrinsic motivation, and inspiration and ambition are key drivers of big, bold thinking, then mastering flow could be one of the best development decisions you make for yourself as an entrepreneur.
Warmest wishes,
Peter H. Diamandis
Santa Monica, CA
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