There are 24 hours in a day, but it’s so easy to feel like we never have enough time. Not just time for the little things, but especially for the big things like your big bodacious dreams and your passion projects.
And your big bodacious dreams and passion projects deserve to take up space on your calendar.
The reality is that the busier we are, the more we need to save time in our schedule to not just do the thing, but to get into flow state with the thing. When we are pulled in a million directions, when our to-do list is never-ending, when our idea sparks outnumber our capacity to act on them: the smartest habit you can have is one dedicated to finding flow.
And the easiest way to do that, I predicted, was with a daily dose of it!
But first, what is flow state? It’s that elusive mental state where you get in the zone and all your best work gets done. With ease.
The Daily Dose
I’ve been running a Friday flow state session for the past year. It’s an hour of focus + connection that I call the Friday Sessions. It works out to be 40 minutes of collective co-working where we all work on our own thing, stay on camera, and time flies while we are each focused on our one thing. And once the time is up, we connect! We share and show what we are working on, and we connect over what came up for us in the session. We delight in the afterglow of flow.
It’s not just accountability; there’s some sort of collective magic that happens where time flies, things get done, and we’re all in it together!
I have dabbled in many different versions of creating that same space on a daily basis, but nothing quite came close to the collective magnetism and magic experienced on the Friday Sessions.
So I created the thing I craved: a Daily Dose of Focus. Offered it to anyone else craving the same sort of feeling of flow and momentum, and committed to 3 weeks of it!
The agenda is pomodoro method meets ecstatic movement, if you can even imagine it. The pomodoro method is 25 minutes of deep focus followed by a break. In our case, the break is for dance.
And it works because it triggers flow in the mind, followed by flow in the body.
Flow on flow, baby! And it’s so nice that we do it twice!
And then we linger longer in that flow afterglow in what I refer to as the Afterparty. We come off mute, we share, we connect, we show and tell, and if there is something to launch or ship or hit send on, we make it a whole thing! It’s like the fireworks at the end of our collective pursuit. We ooh and ahhh and are lit up by the lit-up-ness of others.
And if you haven’t experienced this, you need to!
My Whirling Dervish
The biggest challenge I encountered over these 3 weeks was actually the week I was on vacation. It wasn’t a challenge to find the time. I loved having a little “me” time in the middle of the day, and it was easy to carve out.
Instead, it was a challenge to quiet my mental chatter about everything that I “should be” doing during my flow state time. The “should be” list was long and mostly meaningless. Like forgotten tasks that suddenly rose to the surface now that I had this one dedicated hour: pick me, choose me, don’t forget about me! Like a little running checklist of unimportant, not-urgent things, all vying for my attention at once. And it was sabotaging the precious and magical flow state I was trying to access.
So I took a beat. If you are familiar with IFS Parts Work or have ever seen any of the Pixar Inside Out movies, you will understand. I recognized this as a part of me. Not a bad part, just a part trying to get my attention. It was new to me, and I immediately called it my Whirling Dervish. It would tell me that flow state and deep focus is for other people who don’t have 100 things to do. I should definitely be doing many things at once, and only once I get alllll those things done should I luxuriate in this world of flow state. To my Whirling Dervish, flow state was idealism; multi-tasking a long, shallow to-do list was reality.
I got to know this Whirling Dervish part. It wasn’t wrong that I had a long to-do list. And I love that it wants to keep me from missing something important. But while it is really good at keeping a running list of what is undone, the problem is that it lacks context. It has no method of prioritization; it is incapable on its own of organizing tasks by importance and urgency.
So I invited it to my vacation. Thank you Whirling Dervish, you’re right. And also, you aren’t going to take my Daily Dose flow sessions hostage. It was clear that everything running in a loop in my mind just needed a place to land. So every morning, before the day of fun in the sun (+ 1 hour of focused flow) rushed in, I met with this part of me by opening up a journal and writing down everything it wanted me to remember.
It turns out the list wasn’t even that long, but because it didn’t have a place to land, it was just running in an overwhelming loop. And every morning, my Whirling Dervish part was invited to vacation where it could just be free to express itself through this stream-of-consciousness journalling practice. And then I never heard from it again the rest of the day. And my Daily Dose sessions got to be what they were designed to be. No multi-tasking, just the magic of focused flow.
The 5 Hour Week
Tim Ferriss popularized the concept of the 4 Hour Work Week, which is actually not about working a 4-hour week. It’s about getting as much done as possible with as little time and effort as possible, using productivity techniques and hacks.
This is not that, but maybe it’s adjacent! It’s asking the question:
What if 5 hours of focused-flow each week is all you really need to move from dreaming about the thing to actually owning it? With your time, with your energy, with your focus.
During the 21 days, most of the time I was doing more than 1 hour of focus each day. Because the list of things I need to do in my business is long. But the Daily Dose sessions were the most powerful and where I made the biggest moves.
And during that week of vacation, I attempted the 5 Hour Work Week. I wasn’t sure how it would go. Would it take away from the vacation vibes? Would it give me fomo if the family was doing fun stuff without me? Would it take me out of the present moment?
There was only one way to find out, I had to try it for myself.
And the results are in: I LOVED IT! It did not take away from my vacation. It felt like “me” time. It oddly felt like personal freedom in a week of going with the collective flow. It was fun! It was energizing! And some days, as soon as I was done, I stuck a popsicle in a glass of rosé and proceeded to the pool immediately, as if I had earned it. Because I did!
Try It For Yourself
I am onto something here. And I’m going to shout it from the rooftops! If you want to experience it for yourself, you now have the framework to go experiment with it. And if you want to do it together, here are some options:
The Micro Dose: If you are curious, come experience the magic for yourself! Once a month for the rest of the year I will run these free sessions with guided prompts to help you access flow state. The next session is on the new moon, July 14, for a Mid-Year Reset.
The Daily Dose: Try it for a week! I’ll be hosting week-long daily focus sessions, the week of July 20, July 27, and August 3. Sign up for one week or all 3. Less than the cost of a group fitness class and arguably more meaningful! Sign up for one week for $50, or all three for $125. This is your invitation to the magic of the 5 Hour Focus week.
Imagine if that thing you are working toward had 5 hours of your undivided attention. What could happen?!?
And I believe that our habits should be making us hotter, richer, smarter, or healthier. And if they’re not, it’s time for better habits. Building a habit of focus is what makes us smarter, but a habit of flow state hits all 4. Don’t believe me? Try it for yourself, even if on your own. This newsletter is dedicated to sharing my own experiments with habits, rituals, and tuning my frequency to attract opportunity (instead of chasing it). If it lights you up, there’s more where this came from.
This is soo much fun! I know because I experienced it first hand for the past year 💚 Highly recommend!