Flow Radio Special: You Have Peak Performance Questions. We Have Answers. Safety Not Guaranteed.

Ned and I are in agreement that we think that ADHD may be an evolutionary adaptation that allows people in the modern world, which is very distraction-filled, to hyperfocus. It may be a way of actually driving people towards flow.

Welcome to Flow Radio. I'm Ryan Wicks, chief of staff at the Flow Research Collective. And today I'm joined by our executive director and bestselling author, Steven Kotler. And our Chief Science Officer, Dr. Michael Mannino. This is a special episode of Flow Radio. We are joined by 50+ of our clients at the Flow Research Collective, and they have come today with the questions, burning questions that they have about peak performance and flow science in application into their lives. We'll be covering physical flow and endurance, attention management, flow and healing and creativity, general flow science, as well as bridging the gap between structure and spontaneity. And we're going to get into a whole host of other topics. So we're really excited for this one. Stephen and Michael, one of my favorite flow questions that came into us for this call today was, um, from one of our clients, uh, Moran. I, I hope you're on the call. If you are, please go ahead and take yourself off mute because you have an incredible story. You're brand new into endurance competitions. You've been training for Ironmans, which you have never done before, but you started out, uh, by doing a swimming competition in Israel where you took a podium spot. You actually won the thing. And Stephen and Michael, the question that comes up is in that Moran points to writing a very detailed script for their competition, which is something that I had never heard of from an endurance athlete. And I know there's some literature out there about, um, boredom Being kind of the enemy in endurance, this crisis moment when endurance athlete finds boredom, what, when they're on the trail or in their swim, um, that could be a really a crisis point.

Not just swimming, sorry. Okay, it was an Olympic triathlon, uh, championship in Israel. And yeah, I just made like 5 pages with all the crucial moments, what I'm going to do in each moment, how I'm going to think, um, all the transitioning between the swimming to biking to running. And it really helped me. Like, I was in flow, I think, for the, for 2 and 2 hours and a half. And I just broke, like, uh, I ran 10 kilometers in the end and I broke my, my record on 10 kilometers without swimming and biking. It was crazy.

Yeah, it's a cool story. Yeah, I— so one, Michael, big jump in, uh, and say that I know nothing about scripting and athletic performance. I can— I, I really don't. It's, um, that's— that it's a new concept that I haven't heard before, but off the top of my hands, I can— I would assume it has some of the same properties of visualization in that it aids pattern recognition. So I would assume there was a lot of, oh, this is not as unfamiliar as I thought because I scripted it out moments, which in my experience consistently keep the challenge skills balance lower, right? Keep you in that challenge skill sweet spot, which to me, like, just listening to this story, that's the first thing I think that it would, it would work for that. I wonder what would happen if you get off script, right? If your body starts to deviate from what you've sort of planned and what happens then, is there— does that screw you up in that situation more? I don't— again, this is— I'm freestyling because I don't know.

I also made a list of problems and scenarios, like what I will do if this problem will come. So we do this, if this problem will come, I will do like that, like how I will behave in real time. If something will happen.

Yeah, it's very spec ops. And maybe SEAL friends would be like, oh yeah, that sounds like mission planning, right?

I've been in the army in Israel. So yeah.

Oh, wow.

Moran, have you found that— are you adding to that list of, of what, of different scenarios that could go wrong for you? Are you finding that that that's expanding as you're continuing to train?

Uh, can you ask again?

Yeah, are you finding that that list of different scenarios that could potentially go wrong for you, things to be ready for, is it expanding? Is it, is it, are you whittling it down? Is it becoming more refined over time?

Uh, yeah, it's helping with the confidence also. Like, I know that even if something will change and will not be exactly like the script that I made, so I will know what to do. Uh, yeah, and I'm preparing on it also.

So yeah, well, one thing I'll add, uh, because it's a cool detail when it comes to athletics— I don't know if it's true across the board, so I've said this before— there was a, in the '90s, flow scientists spent so much of the freaking decade arguing about what we meant by the challenge-skill balance and what factors go into it. And there's actually an entire textbook where like half of the articles are about this question. And one of the really interesting studies on that question was done by Susan Jackson. It's actually on Chick Settlemay High, I believe. It's actually Inflow and Sports, their book together. And they found that with athletes, 81% of what they mean by the challenge skills balance and staying in that sweet spot with professional athletes is confidence. Now, important caveat here is once you get to a level of professional athletes, talent starts to equal out. Everybody's got a massive amount of talent at that level. Talent is much more equal at that level. But once talent starts to equal out at that level, 81% of what we mean by challenge is actually your confidence level, which is interesting. It tells you a lot about sort of the link between mind and body, for sure.

Crazy.

Yeah. Stephen, when I read this question— sorry, Veronica, I cut you off.

No, even though I, I don't think I, uh, I got to my maximum talent because I'm just, I started like one year ago.

Just, yeah.

It's a cool idea. I want to hear progress reports as we keep going. I like, it's a neat idea. Um, this sounds like a really cool living experiment to run at some point.

Um, this, this is a good bridge for us. Uh, Scott Rowley, who's on the call today. Uh, thank you, Moran, for sharing your story. Scott, you were pointing to in your question about flow triggers because that's what we're speaking about right now. Clear goals, about clear goals in skiing. I was wondering, could you take yourself off of mute and share a little bit more about your process there and ask a question to Steve and Michael about it?

Ryan, can you remind me the goal specifically or the question?

Yeah. What I see here that you turn into me is just clear goals in skiing. You had another good question about entrepreneurship and creativity later down the line, but I know how good of a skier you are. You might not count yourself as elite, but I do. So what's your process of setting clear goals in a season, in a given session? How are you thinking about it and conceptualizing it?

Yeah, it was more out of curiosity from, from Steven and Menino here and how clear goals can help amplify performance when it comes to skiing specifically. Steven, you write about, uh, sending it in our country and, um, progressively doing more challenging tricks as the, the season goes on. And I'm curious how visualization and your, your goal stack influenced your progression throughout that season and how you're taking those principles to build upon that momentum as we go into another radical season ahead?

It's interesting. And I— so I— when it comes to goal setting, I have noticed there's a big difference. And I don't know if this is across the line between knowledge workers and creatives. And I fall more on the creative side. And what I mean— what the difference I've noticed is that, for example, knowledge workers like to do things like set financial goals. I've seen this in a lot of people goal setting their high, hard goals. I want to make $1 million and things like that. I could never— I would never do that. That would, to me, be asinine. Like, setting a ski goal— I'm really, really cautious with those things. With ski goals, I'm cautious because, uh, I'm cautious. I season-wise— ski goals are easier than, like, daily ski goals. Like, clear goals on a daily basis are very dangerous for me because I'll set the goal ahead of time, go up at the ski slope, and if the conditions aren't right, if my energy level isn't right, if I'm not like— I, when I'm doing dumb and dangerous things on a mountain, I want to be in flow and performing my best before I'm trying them because I've spent so much time in the hospital, right? So I'm very— it's a very— it's a weird— I'm cautious with setting clear goals on the mountain, um, but I'll— I'm willing to sort of set season goals. But even then, I like— they're— it's too easy to end up in the hospital that way. Financial goals, I find, are the same thing for me. They actually kick up too much pressure, um, they create too much anxiety. So they— I— the mode— I don't get the motivation. I find it demotivating, and it keeps me out of the challenge-skill sweet spot. So I usually set process goals, and even for ski seasons, it's process goals. I want to be better overall And I've got— there's a, there's a bunch of stuff that falls under the heading of better. And I want to progress every day I go to the hill, which means I want to try something on that list perhaps, but I want it to match my energy level and where I'm at and things like that. And I'm really sort of cautious, more cautious that way. Whereas if I'm setting writing goals, because I've met so many of them over the years, I'm willing to set totally crazy, outrageous, insane time— says, like, all the things I won't do with skiing or money, I'll do with writing. I've got so much confidence in my ability to meet those goals. Does that make sense? So I sort of like— I think about it in categories, and I, I'm always thinking about stress levels and how this is going to impact anxiety over time as much as it's going to impact motivation. Because if it gives me a boost in motivation but it cranks up anxiety too much, it's not going to do me any good because the motivation won't get me into flow, and then I'll be left frustrated and it'll send me backwards, if that makes sense. It's a long, complicated answer. Is that useful to anyone?

No, that makes total sense. It definitely res—

it resonates pretty deeply with me as I start looking at the season ahead, and I've got some pretty bold, gnarly zones that I want to go shredding in, and I know there's a lot of dependencies dependencies, I think, are a big thing that you noted too here, Stephen, in that I have team dependencies, like my team has to be really healthy and ready to fire on that day. There's condition dependencies— the snow has to be stable and bomber and ready to go. And if, if I'm just attached to the outcome, that external reward of shredding something gnarly, uh, the probability that I get let down on January 5th when I set the clear goal for is Pretty fucking high, right?

It's really freaking high. But with skiing, I like— since sports, I, you could— I can see it. I mean, I don't even know if you get to do it in bad ball sports because like maybe something like track and field, like where you can control so many of the conditions. But skiing, surfing, especially the things I know how you ski, you know what I mean? I ski similar stuff. You ski way gnarlier stuff sometimes. But like, there's 2 million variables. And the other side is if I'm deep in flow, I don't give a flying fuck if the 50-degree chute is iced over. Like, okay, bring it on. I'm like, I can dance on ice today. Cool. That's inside my talent-skill sweet spot. And almost every other day of the season, that's a no kind of thing, right? And so I want to give my space. I give myself space. And this is just years of observing myself. Kind of as an athlete, um, I, you know, when do I go to the hospital and when do I go home safe kind of thing? And when do I go home actually having progressed myself? And for me, if I'm not playing, I'm not progressing. I can't usually force myself into progress. It doesn't work that almost in anything I do. Play is the gateway to progress for me.

Yeah, I dig that. Thanks, Scott. Shannon Keegan, if you're on the call, I think you've got a great question about swimming. And I wanted to see if you'd be willing to take yourself off of mute and ask Stephen and Michael your question.

Hello.

Hi.

I'm an endurance swimmer. I've done 3 swims over 20 hours, and so swimming is my primary, my most familiar place of flow. Um, and so I'm just kind of curious, in the course we talk a lot about kind of pockets of endurance, and I'm just, uh, starting to dabble in the, um, and getting into the section of like, um, how to have stretches of flow and how to optimize that. But I'm just kind of curious what the research shows as far as like what's possible for enduring flow, I think, is the short answer.

Oh, all right. That's interesting. So, I wish I had an easy answer for you. And instead, I'm going to give you a complicated, we don't know answer. But let me start at what we could know and then let me tell you all the things that happen on the other side of it. The core neurochemicals at the heart of flow are dopamine and norepinephrine, and they have a peak concentration life in the brain that is 20 minutes long. And so there's a limited supply, which is why on average flow states are like 90 minutes long for most people. But I've seen them stretch out startup teams heading towards launch. Every time they come back to work, it's group flow all day long. It's group flow all day long. And even stories like Jack Kerouac wrote On the Road. Yes, there was crystal meth involved, but he wrote On the Road in a 3-week speed-driven flow state. And it's clearly a flow state. Like, you go back in literature, you're like, okay, I had, without the speed, I had a similar experience when I was writing Small Furry Prayer, where I wrote most of that book over a 3-week stretch. Similarly, without the crystal meth. And that was my experience where every time I went back to work, I'd pop back into flow. And so we've seen all of the, all of those things. What I think is actually happening is that you're not staying in the state consistently, cuz we know it's a 4-stage process and you have to move through the cycle and the neurobiology is kind of undeniable on that one. I think what's happening is that you, one, you can definitely stretch out a flow state longer. And I'll, my simple example is my, you know, what started out as a 90-minute writing work block every morning to match circadian rhythms and your natural kind of focus and alert thing, I've now stretched it out into 4 hours. And if the writing is going well, you know, 3 of them are probably spent in flow. And that's a daily experience. And I could, you know, so I believe it's possible to stretch it out. But one of the things that I've noticed about stretching it out is it's not as high of a high. So, I think there's less— the focus is there and the creativity is there and everything is there, but the dopamine is lower. And I think one of the things that has happened and one of the ways to get there with that is I've become less and less attached to the high that comes along with flow because I found that loving that high actually blocks getting into flow the next time. In a weird way, you ride it too high. I don't like to ride it as high as I used to anymore because I find it's more exhausting. It takes all your dopamine, then it's harder to get back in. So I think there's sort of like a middle path of flow, if that makes any sense, that sort of allows you to elongate it that way. But I also think that tends to work in periods. Like, I see it work for people for a couple of months leading up to a thing, and then there's a period where that's not going to be the case for a while. And the truth of the matter is there's so much more work to be done on, on this particular question. Um, it's, uh, it's also a question of like, how are we— if we define flow by networks alone versus neurochemistry, that might be a slightly— right, that's a, that's a different thing also. And, and right now we don't have a standard neurobiological definition. Michael, what do you think?

Yeah, um, so if we look at this from the perspective of neurobiology at the level of the brain, I think there's a couple of things to mention. Yes, Stephen, I agree with you. There's a lot more research that needs to be done on this. The outcomes of flow, creativity, the optimal performance, some of the physiological outcomes of flow, those might be rather short-lived, I think. You know, and we look at the energy efficiency of the brain, right? Flow can be a, you know, we talk about it as an uber level of cognitive control. That is, the brain goes through these gears and then reaches the highest gear, which is a flow state, which is either this optimal state of cognitive control, a high level, and the brain just doesn't go through, it just doesn't go from like first gear to sixth gear. The brain finds this difficult-to-reach state and it goes through these stages to get to that state. Going through those stages is costly in terms of compute. If you think about the brain's computation and the information processing that's going on in the brain, that might not be optimal for the outcomes of flow, like sustaining optimal performance or more creativity or something like that. Then I would say the other thing is switching activities. Now, I know that's difficult when you're doing an endurance with one sport like swimming, but back to Steven's example, doing writing, then maybe translating that flow into other activities if you have secondary flow activities, and then coming back to that. I have at least experienced anecdotally that I can extend my flow state over longer periods of time, like 3, 4, or 5 hours. If I'm sort of like switching between my favorite activities, it helps me endure longer the flow state. So, but yeah, I agree, it's a cyclical process and, you know, that might have something to do with like getting through frustration and then getting through release and the recovery and things like that. So yeah.

I want to speak into what Michael just said for half a second because it's something I played with because you touched on it. So one of the things I've discovered is since I started sketching again like 3 years ago, and I sort of made a drawing a day for 3 years for a bunch of different reasons, but I wanted more flow activities. I now will do that between tasks. So I'll be in flow writing and like I'll go to drawing, but only for like a 5-minute refresher. Like I make these like lightning drawings kind of thing, it'd be between task switching as a refresher. And Michael is absolutely right, it is— it can really prolong a flow state. Um, yeah, and you might— so that's something to experiment with, folks, right?

Exactly.

Yeah. Can I just, yeah, color this question with a couple things? So in marathon swimming, you kind of— you feed every 30 minutes. You kind of go from this immersed, like, different, like sense-deprived state for, you know, swim— in the act of swimming. And then every 30 minutes you're kind of contacting with humans and re— you know, like it almost refreshes it. So it's been fascinating to me to observe just in my own swims, just like how I think you'd like the reentry to the flow period, you know, like it's intermittent throughout the course of a really long swim. But what's even more fascinating to me is at the end of the swim, I feel like I can be in a flow state for hours, like days after that. I flow kind of like in, like in, in like just like the anything could happen to me. I've had my flight canceled and just been like, okay, you know, like that kind of thing, which is really cool. So I'm curious about one, just the act of swimming, you know, in an easeful manner in like an extended period of time, how much I guess I can promote that as the activity to drive flow, right? And that maybe can be something can be discussed outside this call. I'm sure there's other questions. Yeah, I think that's all I had to say.

One thing that is worth pointing out, and this is definitely true with physical activities, the same Teresa Modley at Harvard found that the heightened creativity and possibly mood that you get in a flow state will outlast a flow state by a day, maybe two. So some of that afterglow effect is that. Um, I find that the afterflight can be very fragile. Like, it'll last, but it's easy to puncture it. Um, if you can maintain it through a canceled flight, I don't know if I have that much skill.

Another, another one more comment on this. So it, I mean, if you think about, um, some of the, the neurobiology of, of falling in love and being in love, which Helen Fisher has done— Stephen, we've talked about this before, you get a whole— I mean, you're in love, that, that, and which, by the way, has similar neurobiology to doing cocaine. Studies have shown actually similar, similar neurotransmitters, similar networks involved and things like that. But if you're, if you know, you imagine like all of these chemicals are released in your brain when you're first falling in love, and then sort of, you know, different kinds of chemicals, neurotransmitters take over. After that initial, you know, lust, quote unquote, lasts, and then other chemicals take over for longer periods of time, like oxytocin, which is about trust and closeness and things like that. So I think there's an analogy in the research of endurance and flow that we'll probably find with some of the different kinds of, you know, neurotransmitters taking over.

Wow.

But that's love and endurance sports. That's, that's an interesting bit of speculation. All right, let's get to the next question. That's interesting.

Yeah, that's cool, Michael. Thank you, Shannon. Shannon, really quick, uh, I did drop a study that I found, uh, for you into the chat, and I'll make sure that you get it in school. Uh, but the basics of it was just that mindfulness practice assisted college swimmers in their performance. So something to check out there.

Thank you very much.

Yeah, you're very welcome. All right. Michael, that— what you just shared with us, man, has me so curious. I'm going to start digging down a rabbit hole because of you.

By the way, the hallucination, I mean, it's dopamine and norepinephrine. And then endorphins and some serotonin. It's the same profile as flow. You just get more neurochemicals in flow too. Yeah, yeah.

And I was also thinking about the runner's high. Like there's been some, Stephen, we talked about this. There's been some, or John, you know, endocannabinoid release, which we now know and we also speculated and that's sort of being proven out in our paper, first few seconds of flow and how that factors out into longer marathons and ultra marathons and things like that.

All right. Uh, Wesley, Wes, Wes Fab, I believe you're on the call in Sydney, Australia. You had a, you had a really interesting question. You know, neurodivergence, Stephen, just keeps coming up in conversations that we're having. Um, so number one, I thought it would be worthwhile. I love your perspective on it. Um, I think it just really, for me, just kind of centers the conversation. Uh, but Wes, you were talking about, uh, some questions you had about ADHD. And we'd love to hear from you.

Great to talk to you guys. Thanks for your time. Yeah, it's just that constant, like, flipping out onto something else rather than getting through the struggle and dropping into the flow. And so for me, you know, I think that's why snowboarding for me changed my life is I ended up working for Burton, Volcom, traveled the world. Because it's the first time in my life where I was in a setting and the noise dropped away and it just, I was like, didn't even know I could get into that space of just being present in the moment. And, um, yeah, it's, it's interesting because that last comment you made on oxytocin, I wonder if like repeated flow experiences attached to say for me dropping in to a run of powder or wave, over time I build a relationship with it and I'm falling in love with that sport. Like the oxytocin— I'm sure it's not oxytocin, but sometimes it feels like that. And then that enables my ADHD to drop away and I can really focus on that. And I'm trying to bring that obviously to what the world more traditionally would call productivity. And sometimes it doesn't land. So I feel like I need this real existential experience to anchor and keep me on track. Otherwise, the distractions and the noise are there. And, um, the work I'm trying to do with PNCC is to take people on immersive trips in snowboarding and surfing with elite athletes and give them a taste of this. But then after what I heard you just say, I'm wondering if I'm gonna take them too high into the peak of flow. And it should be a more mellow sort of longstanding thing. So yeah, anyway, there's a lot there, but I just, I find that flow's really powerful for me with ADHD, but I can just get excited about too many things and then I'm not staying on task.

You wanna start with that, Stephen, or?

Sure, I can. So there's a lot of stuff here. Let me start at the top with neurodivergence, then I'll speak into ADHD, and then I'll talk about the surfing and snowboarding thing for a second. So I said this earlier in the week to a group I was presenting to where there was a neurodivergence question. I am very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very suspicious of that term. And the reason why is if neurodivergence is a real thing, then there has to be a normal, there has to be a baseline, there has to be a comparable. And there's not. There's no comparable, there's no baseline, there's no normal. There's no person we point to and say, yeah, that's normal. We should all be that. Like, No, it's all made up. There's no normal. And on top of that, similar things around questions of we're also always all the time massively chemically altered by the air we breathe, by the food we eat, by the relationships we have. Everything is altering our neurochemistry all the time, and there's no baseline normal. So under those conditions, How does that term actually make any sense? Okay, that aside, I think we all have slightly different brains, but I will say that Ned Hallowell, who is the Harvard researcher who coined the term ADHD and is an old friend of mine, was on my board of my first company. Ned and I are in agreement that we think that ADHD may be an evolutionary adaptation that allows people in the modern world, which is very distraction-filled, to hyperfocus. And it may be a way of actually driving people towards flow. Certainly, man, the instances of ADHD in high achievers is significant. And the incidence of ADHD in high achievers who have long-term success using flow to manage their focus. Um, boy, is that, is that everywhere, right? Every, just every discipline I've ever been in, that is a repeated experience that I've had. Um, but on a last front, when it comes to the idea of taking people surfing or skiing and giving them like real peak experiences, the only— like, that's awesome and that's cool and that's neat But always remember, what works for you is not going to work for other people, right? Personality doesn't scale. Biology scales. And really extreme experiences work for people who have really high risk tolerances and usually actually are a little more extroverted, right? Because you're taking a group out. So I'm really introverted and you put me in a group and you put me in a high pressure situation and it's worse for me. I'll perform even worse. I don't like— that's like a public display. I don't like that experience at all. So to get the experience you want for your customers, I would literally be really rigorous in my application process. I wouldn't take everybody. I would look for people who— right. That's how I would think about that. And that's about who you're taking on as clients. And Also, as a, you know, from personal experience, don't you— I mean, run the experiment with lots of clients also, right? Like, learn, learn, learn what all those things mean. Definitely don't just take my word for it. Run the freaking experiment, of course. Um, but that's sort of the high to medium to low level way I think about what, what you just said, Michael. Do you— is there stuff I missed in there?

No, I don't think so. I mean, um, there is some research on the relationship or the intersection of ADHD and flow. Um, you know, we know ADHD amplifies novelty-seeking, um, distractibility, impulsivity, um, especially with like decision-making, um, and, you know, and, and, uh, and things like that. So they're hyper-focused, right? And so I think there are ways if you understand your own flow triggers and the flow triggers of your clients, let's just say, external and internal flow triggers, then it really behooves you to double down on aligning the appropriate flow triggers and the, the activities themselves, like qualitatively speaking, not quantitatively speaking, with those qualities that ADHD sort of you know, and I agree with everything Stephen said, but yeah, like double down on hyperfocus, novelty seeking, minimizing distractibility to minimize cognitive load. So that's some of my recommendations. There's very little science and research on that. There are a couple of studies, people are working on that, but there's still a lot of conclusions that people are still drawing.

I would also like to point out, because I've seen in the chat that people have pointed at Gabor Maté's book, and as I said when we talked about trauma, I think Gabor Maté is a very nice man and we have a lot of friends in common. Um, I think his science is very questionable. He's making huge sweeping overarching conclusions of a study that was done with less than 100 people, and that— and, and, and not a lot of people have duplicated his results, and huge amounts of the population disagree with him, except et cetera, et cetera. But he's captured the trauma narrative along with Bessel van der Kolk, somebody else whose science I don't like at all, and I've spoken into that. So I just always, you know, anything that's useful, I'm fucking happy as hell that it's useful to people. I really am. I really am. Like, I don't— like, you know, there's lots of stuff that doesn't make sense scientifically that is incredibly useful to individuals, and I'm for it, right? I really am. I just like to point out that with some of that stuff, you have to sort of grain of salt around what we know and what we don't know is just how I like to think about it. And of course, I'm a curmudgeon. I think asshole might be the other term, but I'm going to use curmudgeon today.

Stephen, let me just comment a little bit on your comments about neurodivergence. I agree. I think there is no, I think everybody's, there's a, like we have to look at neurobiology as a spectrum, a gradient of things. The brain is a self-organizing complex adaptive system. And there is no normal, you can do studies with quote unquote healthy controls and neurotypical people based on the question that you're asking. right? And if you're asking a different question and testing a different hypothesis, then you would focus the lens there. And you can't do between comparisons with like, sometimes you can, like systematic reviews.

But let me, I mean, the problem, neuro, even the neurotypical, like what does that fricking mean? Like if you had trauma as a child and your brains work differently or you have addiction in your family, like all these things would be on that. Nothing isn't— nobody gets out of here alive and nobody, nobody's brain works normally, like, at all. Everybody's broken under the hood in some which way. And neurodivergence is a way of saying, oh no, I'm special and I'm a victim. That's what I see people doing it. It's a way to, like, kick off responsibility, and I'm not down with it.

I'm not. I am not disagreeing with you at all. I agree with 100%. Everybody's brain is different. Nobody gets out of here alive. But then there is something called the DSM, right? The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual.

Insurance companies can get paid for lactation reimbursement. It's fine. But like, let's talk about what it's used for. Insurance companies use that so they can get paid. That's what that is.

Very big controversy about how things get classified in there. Very, very big. Very, very sure, for sure.

Um, but it reminds, it reminds me of like, I have this analogy where you stand at a beach and you go, wow, isn't that beautiful? And I think to myself sometimes I'm, I get into this point where I'm going to count where all the pieces, grains of sand are and make sure that they're on the right spots when I come back tomorrow. It's, you know, the right place. You would never do that. You just like look at the big picture. And I think that's the same with the brain. It's so complex. Like trying to work out if the grains of sand are in a different spot. Who cares? You look at it, it's a beach, it's great, whatever. Like, I think we get caught up in the minutia too much.

It's also— Michael, Michael says something really important that I think is the real empowering fact here, which is our brains are complex adaptive systems, right? What do we know about peak performance? What do we know about resilience? All those things. What's at the center of all that? Adaptive flexibility. What do you give up when you put a label on something? Yeah, adaptive flexibility. That's exactly what you're giving up. That to me is not an okay trade from an individual empowerment standpoint. Like, I don't know why you would give up the very thing that gives you power and that we know is what the brain is. The other problem I have with labels is, and this is the problem I've had with the social justice movement, And by the way, nobody has been more for the causes of the social justice movement than me. I've spent my life fighting for all of those causes, but all the different labels people want to put on themselves at this point, the brain does us/them divisions all the time. That's what it does, right? The first thing the brain does when it sees movement, the most primitive thing we can do as living systems is it says, is this thing like me or not like me? Because if it's like me, maybe it's my friend, or maybe I can fuck it and reproduce. And if it's not like me, either I should run away or maybe I should go try to eat it. That's fundamental division. So the minute we put a label on something and say, this is not me, or this is me, we start creating prejudices and biases. The very thing all these terms are supposed to remove are actually creating and worsening the very problem. And that's just simple neurobiology. And I'm not even like, this isn't even whiz-bang shit. We've known this since the '70s. Like, I'm not— we're not cutting— this is not cutting edge or anything. This is like really old freaking news. So I don't like— we have these arguments that I'm just like, wow, this is really debilitating. Um, but once you put a label on something, you can simply raise funding and you can do a lot of things that you can't normally do. It becomes very political and from a peak performance standpoint.

I just think it's a positive role too.

You can do science too.

It plays a positive role in one sense. Not, not, I totally agree what you're saying, but explaining something like flow process. So for me, uh, I read Csikszentmihalyi's book on a boat trip in Indonesia like 10 years ago. And I never, like, I, I like the fact that some, I kind of had an explanation for it, but then when I came across what you did with Art of Science, other Art of Impossible, and this course, it's helped me finally realize for the last 10 years I've had imposter syndrome because I'm trying to grind shit out like everybody else does and go, oh my God, these are my people in a sense of I can drop into a flow state. And literally in the last few months, my imposter syndrome's dropped away and I've gone, there's another way to get to performance that works really well for my brain. And yeah, I just wanna say like different people are gonna come at your work from different angles and I hear what you're saying about the labels. Anyway, thanks so much. Appreciate it.

You're welcome. Yeah, I see it, right? I see the discussion on labeling and what is the alternative. And one, I don't know because I often like in conversations, if I need to introduce myself in shorthand, I'll tell people I'm an old punk rocker from Cleveland. And that's as much of a label as like neurodivergent, or take your pick, right? Um, and it's a shorthand and allows me to sum up a lot of things about myself. But I, like, I mean a very, very— I don't mean what most people— like, whatever your version of punk rocker is, it's probably not what I mean by the term, right? Um, curmudgeon is laboring, Ross. You're right, go home. We don't need you on this call anymore. I'm done with you.

I will, I will, Stephen, I will agree with you about the label. But it's like, you know, beliefs, right? You've heard the phrase, I have strong opinions, but they're loosely held. I mean, labels are, you can do science with labels too. And it is a double-edged sword in like everything in biology, by the way. But I will say, I just want to bring up a study that might be relevant for this conversation that is actually relevant for the The previous two questions that we talked about too, and Stephen, we reviewed this study. This study came out questioning some of the frameworks that people are using to test flow in labs. They wrote up a new study with new kinds of methods and new techniques and a new checklist to get better results for flow research. There is good results, but there's some, as we know, everybody knows, there's some conflicting, as in everything. Flow is relatively new. Flow neuroscience is even more so. So in this study, what they did, one of the main things that they did was they looked at, like for example, the challenge-skill balance. We talk a lot about the quantity, right? It has to be 4% and there's a quantitative aspect to getting the challenge-skill balance right to get into flow. But there's also the qualitative aspect. What type of challenge is it? And back to your, Stephen, about point about biology scales, personality doesn't scale. That was the whole point of this study. They were trying to look at more personalized aspects of getting people into flow because flow experiences can be qualitatively different for different individuals under different conditions with different strengths, with different values and different kinds of flow triggers. So, and now we're extending this to ADHD in this conversation, right? Not just healthy controls that were done in these studies. So it really is, this paper is excellent and the research is making great progress, I'll tell everybody. About, um, changing and optimizing and adjusting the methodology by which not we— not only people get into flow anecdotally, and we train that here at the Flow Research Collective, but the way they're doing it in research, right? Doing basic science. And that's really a very good thing. Stephen, you've been saying this for— this is all, all your work is, is based on, like, what about the task that you're doing? What about the intrinsic motivation you have for the task that you're doing? you know, and so on and so forth. What about your brain networks and, you know, how things are different in your brain versus your brain? All matter, right? And now the science is catching up to that. So that's really good.

Right on.

Thanks, Michael.

I'll be sure to get that study. Yeah, that's a great— those are good points. And that's a great study.

Yeah. Mercedes, you had— Mercedes Guzman, you had a great question about using Oh yeah, okay, go ahead.

Sorry, Philip, that's really funny.

Yes, by the way, I want to find out—

share that. Mercedes, uh, you had a great question about using flow states, uh, to nurture creativity and healing, uh, which I think that this is a really important question. Uh, there was an important study that released that dropped earlier this year in nature, especially about healing. I was hoping you could take yourself off mute and, uh, ask a question.

Yes, I make the question and I don't remember what I wrote, but yes, a flow state and healing. I heal— I am a master on healing the inner child. I do— I've been doing this for 20 years and I get into flow when I am in the healing process. And my question is, um, when you are in those states of just connectedness— because I do this through, uh, Zoom— is that, is that the flow state, or is just a spiritual connection? Um, the people feel this transformation because I take them to childhood regression And when they are in that stage, I can see in their eyes the connection that they're doing through that regression. So is that a flow state? Is that a spiritual state? Is that something that we can increase? I can increase? What is your take on that, Stephen?

So, uh, I'm gonna stay away from the inner child side of that because you and I are just going to get into a long argument about that that we're going to ignore. So we're going to leave that alone. But let me talk about what I can speak into with some knowledge. And I'm so glad you brought this up because it's actually a caveat to where we started about the length of flow states. This is the great book on what you're talking about is called Helper's High. So in the, I want to say the early '90s, this is one of the, this is when we started to figure out that flow was showing up a lot of other places outside of like art and sports. And Helper's High was one of the major books. I'm blanking the man's name who wrote it all of a sudden. But they discovered there's an altruism-triggered flow state known as helper's high. And one of the very strange things about it is it will outlast flow state. So you want to talk about a really long flow state? It'll last a really long time. And it seems to be based on what I've always said or thought. And Paul Zak, who's one of the world's leaders on scientists on oxytocin, neuroscientist on oxytocin, is a friend. We've talked about this. I think it may be— so oxytocin doesn't show up in individual flow. We know that it does show up in group flow, and it may be— that may be what extends flow out. Back to what Michael said earlier, oxytocin is one of the things it does, right, is it makes strong feelings persist over time, right? That's what it's sort of doing over with trust and bonding and that sort of thing. So there may be some I've always wondered if there's some chronological lengthening function that comes along with oxytocin, which definitely underpins helper's high. So that's definitely the experience. On the spiritual front, I can't answer the question because those— I don't know what is flow and what is spirituality. Is flow not the most— I mean, for me, flow is the most spiritual experience I can have. Even I don't know. So I don't draw those lines exactly. I don't know. I don't— thank you. It is Ellen Loox. I don't know how to think into those things. And the only thing that I want to caution you about, because I see this— fuck, I see this all the time with coaches and healers and psychologists and a whole bunch of— and teachers. And there's studies on this. And if you read— I think it's Csikszentmihalyi who did the original work, and I think it's in his textbook on flow and education. And adult development. But there's this thing that happens very commonly with teachers. So leaders in flow drive their teams into flow because flow is contagious. Sometimes I've noticed with coaches, with healers, with teachers, we know also when teachers are in flow, you would think their students would be in flow, right? And it turns out that's not true. Oftentimes when teachers are in flow, their students aren't in flow. And the reason is the challenge-skill balance. I know lots of whiz-bang shit about flow. So for me to get into flow while teaching it to you, I got to be out on the cutting edge. And I've lost all of you as my students. You have no idea what the fuck's going on, and you're nowhere near flow because I'm talking about computational neuroscience and I'm speaking a language that 11 people on the planet speak, and you're totally lost. I see this with coaches when they love their system, and I see this with healers where sometimes they're so high in flow that they have completely lost their clients. And I've been on the other end of that where somebody is working on me and they're having this crazy flow state. And afterwards they're like, did you feel all that? I spent the whole time feeling lonely and isolated and like this was a freak show. And what was I doing? I was wasting my money and I'm bored and they're having some cosmic experience at my expense and they think they're healing and it They're high on their own supply in a sense. How would you—

how would you—

I don't know. How would you guard against it?

No, but how would you help somebody like— because I see your point. I have been in the end where the, the person think that everybody's saying hi, and I'm like, please finish it now. So how will— would you coach me on that because I don't want to get into that, that I am in high and maybe the person is just saying, please finish. What would you tell me?

Yeah, I— so this is one of the reasons that I— so, um, this is one of the reasons I'm sort of cautious around the riding the high too high with flow, because that dopamine starts to distort perception a little bit. Scott was right here. I think there's close listening, deep listening, a lot less talking, right? A lot less talking. Because one of the things that happens is talking, especially when you're in flow, you get a lot of pattern recognition, which produces even more dopamine, which takes you even farther away. So I sometimes will guard against it that way. But I always find that for me, and I don't know if this is everybody, but for me, I'm always suspicious of myself when I'm in expert mode and I find myself resistant to asking questions and resistant to like, you see me, if you contradict me, I'm usually really open and immediate. But if I go into expert mode and I'm not, and I've got something out of fixed mindset around it, that's always like, those are the signs that I'm you know, out of whack with the situation that I sort of look for. And it's, yeah, there is, it's, it is a tricky one, though.

But I needed to hear this, Steven, because I was in that end this past weekend with a person. And he was in flow. And I was just so tired.

You've been on the other end of it. You're like, what the fuck, right? Like, Thank you. I used to, yeah, I saw it a lot with—

But I love what you say, expert mode. A lot of let's talk less and listen more and not be the expert mode. That, oof, you answered my question. Thank you.

Good.

Okay. Then I was useful.

How do you experience this? You're a professor. You're in the classroom. You're teaching neuroscience. You're teaching AI. To large, very diverse, you know, students.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Stephen, when you mentioned that, I was thinking about my own experiences. I'm like, I, um, I can tell you even this past semester I've been in flow teaching and totally in flow, lost track of time, everything. And, and I, I don't know if my students were in flow as well, but But there are times, like back to the mismatch between the challenge-skills balance. That's what you said was one of the causes. The challenge is too great for the students. The challenge is just right for them.

Yeah, yeah.

I mean, what's boring for a teacher, you know what I mean, is probably what their students really need.

And then there's been the times that I'm on the board teaching and I'm, you know, and I'm getting really animated and and passionate and very enthusiastic about the subject that I'm talking about. And I'm like, does this make sense to everybody? I see everybody looks like, like this. And so I can actually see it and then I'll turn, bring it back down. And I was gonna mention this too, 'cause I was thinking about this, try and get in sync with my students because there is a lot of research on this idea of synchrony between teacher and students and among students themselves that actually improve learning outcomes, working memory, education. This is part of the whole field of educational neuroscience. The other thing I'll say, just speaking to some of the science here of healing and flow states, a couple of things I jotted down. First of all, really interesting, Stephen, you mentioned altruism. There's this notion of interoception, which we talk a lot about at the Flow Research Collective. That is being sensitive to what's going on inside your body.

Right?

You're being sensitive to your heartbeat, the temperature in your body, the pain, the emotions you have, all of these things. And it has been shown that, um, that there's a correlation between higher levels of interoception and mental well-being, mental wellness, altruism even, and healing too. So, um, there's a very real connection between your, your interoceptive sensitivity and awareness and your ability to get in sync with others and, and promote healing. So, and, and just the, the idea of your parasympathetic nervous system, which is the rest and digest and the more calming, uh, aspect, um, and that, and I'll be having altruistic behaviors, wanting to heal others and wanting to help others and volunteering and that kind of thing. So there's a— that is— that's a factor that plays into just human performance in general. Some of the research shows that And then the last thing I'll say, Stephen, we talked about this study before. This is not so much like sort of psychological healing, but I'm sure it extrapolates to that. But there's a whole field of what's called psychoneuroimmunology. And this is the relationship between the brain and cognition.

Disco baby.

And the immune— I knew you were going to say that. And the immune system. And so, and so there's something called social psychoneuroimmunology. And so that is like this social cognition aspect of the coach, the psychotherapist, and the client and getting in sync and immune systems aligning and that having an effect on better therapeutic outcomes. So very, very interesting research that has been done on that. And then one more interesting study on wound healing. Which might not be totally relevant to this, but it is healing. So I wanted to mention it because it's such a fascinating study, but it has to do with time perception, which is also involved in flow. And so what this study showed was really exciting. They showed that your wounds heal quicker if your perception of your time is quicker, and the slower your perception of time, the slower your wounds heal. So this can— this has a real impact into our physical mind-body connection, number one, but also your physiological ability to heal physiologically and your ability possibly to get into flow to change the perception of your time.

So you think that's true for psychological wounds? Like somebody who's going through a heartbreak or divorce, like if they're like, God, this drags out like this, do you think the heartbreak lasts longer? I think it's that physical wounds.

No, no, I think it's, it's completely bidirectional. So you have this external event that then changes your perception of time, but if you can control your perception of time by getting into flow, then you can control or have an effect on the ex— the effect of that traumatic event. 100%.

Okay.

Yeah, cool.

I just want to mention that I don't— I have not been in a doctor for the past 30 years. Any doctor. So I know how it is to heal myself and wounds and my children even. So thank you, doctor.

And Steve, no problem. And Stephen, you mentioned this, I'm stealing from you. You're like, you, I've, you know, you have a traumatic breakup, go jump out of a plane.

And yeah, I have said that. I'm talking about the override. I guess you're right. I hadn't thought about that as a time perception. Interesting thing. All right, on to the next question. Again, we'll go down the rabbit hole and take nobody with us.

Yeah, so Stephen and Michael, I wanted to, uh, I know we've got to wrap things here. I got to get you both off to other places today, but I was wondering if you could end with us because there were some questions I saw in the chat about, you know, how do you two think about the balance between an individual and a group flow state? Are you two actively seeking group flow opportunities throughout your calendar? Is that something you're planning for? And really, what are the, I guess, the benefits of both? You know, flow begets flow begets flow. But is that something that you're taking into consideration when you're looking at your week and the different flow opportunities you have?

So I've actually been giving this— I've thought about this a lot lately. I've been in— I've had a lot of conversations about this. So I have to get in group flow. Twice a week when I work with Michael Wharton, my, my editor, right? And we have all kinds of rituals. I mean, we've worked together for 25 years now, so we've, we've got all kinds of rituals to guarantee this. What I've noticed is, and Michael says the same thing, so both of us are, are, will use to get into a really deep flow state. For me, it's skiing is required, or it's going to be a group flow experience with Mike. What I've found is if I'm not getting into group flow and I'm not getting into macro flow with skiing, micro flow won't cut it. And sooner or later, um, I'm gonna end up burning out or, you know, just getting too stressed out, something along those lines. So I have found the thing that I think about is I think of group flow as a form, as like a primary flow activity. It's that strong of an experience for me. So when I'm trying, when I'm— that's how I sort of think about it, um, that I need, you know, I need that depth of flow on a weekly basis, otherwise there's going to be problems. Um, so I balance it that way.

Yeah.

How do you think about it, Michael?

Yeah, I'll say in, in planning, I try to get as much interpersonal flow, let's call it, because I, one of my main flow activities is ping pong, as Stephen knows, and table tennis. And so my partner, we get into flow doing that as an activity.

Is this you and Dori?

Yes. So if Dori ever watches this, Dori Clark, who wrote an amazing book called The Flow Mindset Game. Hi Dori!

Shout out.

An amazing, amazing person. Yes. So yes, that's great. So I try to plan that as much as possible just because it's flow amplified. And yeah, Stephen's totally right. It's like the greatest feeling on earth when you say that. And then, so I think, and a lot of my work is on social neuroscience and social cognition and interpersonal synchrony. And as a founder, you know, we reviewed this paper called Founders Flow flow. We actually interviewed Corinna Pfeiffer and her student who wrote a book, uh, wrote a— did a study on founder's flow and, uh, team flow in entrepreneurs. And so, um, really fascinating work there. So I, I highly recommend trying to like intentionally plan social flow, collective flow, interpersonal flow, um, in your activities, uh, for sure.

And Rye and I do that too when we ski together. We have very specific sort of rituals, which I, you know, in our country talks a great deal about, like, those rituals and how we thought about that. Yeah.

And in my family too, and my family dynamics, and with my daughter and with my wife as well, like, we have activities that we do, like listening to music together and dancing. So those are very playful, as Stephen mentioned before, but they're definitely approaching that, that interpersonal flow aspect. So those are huge.

Right on. No, I really dig hearing that from both of you. I think it's a perfect place to, to end our Ask Me Anything session today. Thank you everyone for being on the call. Stephen and Michael, as always, thank you so much. Please, folks, check out Flow Research Collectives Flow Radio. It's our podcast. Uh, I love doing it with these two gentlemen here, uh, and the guests that we bring on are just tremendous. So thank you, all of you on this call today added to that. And, um, have a wonderful New Year, and we'll catch you after the holidays. Take care.

Happy holidays.

Happy holidays, everybody. Be safe. See you in the new year.