Flow & Focus Masterclass (Part 3)

Before I dive deeper into those techniques, you don’t have to apply them all at once.

You can pick and choose because each of them works and helps you get in the flow.

Technique 1: BREATHING

Right before you start working, you sit down and take 25-30 breaths.

The way you want to do these breaths is each breath should be a sharp 2-3 second inhale through the nose and a sharp 1 second exhale through the mouth.

On your last exhale, exhale all the air from your lungs and hold this for 15-30 seconds.

This technique works because it increases the adrenaline in your system, causing you to be alert and focused. But also, by the time you finish holding your breath, you are focused and calm. Ready to start your work block?

Technique 2: STARE AT A SMALL POINT

Choose a small point on the other side of your room and stare at it for 1-2 minutes.

Feel free to blink if you need to, but try to focus visually on this small point/object.

This technique helps you warm up your brain. It increases acetylcholine and norepinephrine which both increase focus and are essential for getting into the state of flow.

The thing you need to understand here is that your cognitive focus is largely dictated by your visual focus. You will focus on whatever you are looking at.

By using your visual focus before you start doing your main task, you’re preparing your cognitive focus for deep focus work and flow.

Technique 3: DESK SETUP

If you really want to optimize your focus and get in the flow, you should place your monitor/laptop/screen slightly above eye level. You can adjust the height with your monitor stand or laptop stand.

When your screen is slightly above your eye level, your eyes are looking slightly up. This triggers neurons which are associated with alertness and being awake.

Obviously, if you are super tired or sleep-deprived, it’s not going to make you more awake and give you a lot of energy. But it can help you optimize your focus and get 1% better.

Another benefit of optimizing your desk setup is your posture.

Bad posture = bad focus.

Technique 4: WORK IN 90 MINUTE BLOCKS

Your flow blocks where you do your deep work should be around 90 minutes long.

This is largely because of your ultradian rhythms.

You may have heard about circadian rhythm before – your internal 24-hour body clock.

Your body tracks time and does the same with ultradian rhythm.

Ultradian rhythm is when your nervous system goes from the state of low to high and back to low energy in 90-minute cycles.

At the end of this 90-minute cycle, there needs to follow around a 20-minute recovery period where your body can go through that cycle again.

What you will notice after the end of the 90 minutes of flow, is that your performance will start to decline. You will find it harder to stay on task, to do deeper more challenging work.

The great thing about this ultradian rhythm is that you can actually train your body to get into these rhythms at certain times of the day.

For example, you can just decide right now that you want to get into the flow state. Your ultradian rhythm is going to kick in.

What you can’t influence or negotiate tho, is that after 90 minutes you’re going to notice a massive drop in performance. This is largely due to after 90 minutes, your body stores all the neurochemicals that you use during flow and focus – dopamine, acetylcholine, norepinephrine, and all the rest – are used up.

Your body is depleted of these neurochemicals. You naturally start drifting off from the state of focus and your performance suffers.

However, as I mentioned earlier, there is a 20-minute recovery period after which you can re-enter the 90-minute work block and enter focus & flow again.

This is only for a maximum of 4 hours a day. After 4 hours of deep focused work and flow, your brain is fried and you depleted all the neurochemicals for the day. It’s going to be almost impossible for you to re-enter deep flow and focus at that stage.

So when you’re planning out your day and work blocks, plan your flow blocks for 90 minutes.

Ideally, you would work for 90 minutes, take a 20-minute break, and repeat for a max of 4 hours of flow per day.

This is enough time for you to get your highest priority, needle-moving tasks of the day, done.

Remember: Every time you want to start the flow block, it will take you some time to get in the zone. As you know, we have the 3 stages (pre-flow, flow, and after-flow). To get in the pre-flow state, it takes at least 15-20 minutes of discomfort and getting your brain warming up to focus.

Technique 5: LISTEN TO 40HZ BINAURAL BEATS

One of the most common things to do during a workbook is to listen to music.

Not just any music tho. Most people make the mistake of listening to music with lyrics.

The reason why this is a mistake is because we have evolved over thousands of years to hear and focus on words + language. Every time we hear words, we automatically focus on them, and immediately, our attention shifts towards them.

It results in a massive distraction. Not every word is going to grab you or take you out of focus, but every 10-30 words will. They will grab your attention, you’ll end up focusing on the music and you’ll be out of flow.

If you listen to music with no lyrics, this won’t happen.

Instrumental music, and cinematic (from Hans Zimmer for example) can work really well too.

From a scientific research perspective, 40Hz binaural beats are great for focus. This frequency increases focus by increasing both dopamine and acetylcholine.

There is also some evidence that shows that listening to 40Hz binaural beats when you’re feeling distracted or struggling to focus before you start working can actually help you get in the zone faster.

Technique 6: CAFFEINE

Caffeine increases your focus due to mainly increasing dopamine, but also the adrenaline system as long as the dosage is correct. Too low caffeine won’t do anything to you, but too much caffeine will cause anxiety and jitters which will ruin your flow state.

The dosage depends massively on you as a person. What size you are as well as your tolerance levels. However, a general range for caffeine dosage is around 100-400mg.

If you don’t drink caffeine regularly, don’t just go and pour 400mg of caffeine and drink it. You’ll have a horrible experience full of anxiety, and panic attacks and it won’t help your focus.

Start at 50-100mg if you’re not a regular caffeine drinker.

If you are caffeine-adapted, you drink caffeine regularly, try anything up to 400mg. Start with 100mg and if it doesn’t do anything, increase the dosage to 200mg. If it works, stick with it.

Timing-wise, you can either take your caffeine 20 minutes before your work block or drink it during your work block.

If you are experiencing jitters and anxiety no matter what, you can supplement with 100-300mg of L-theanine to counteract it. L-theanine increases your serotonin levels and it helps you stay calm and relaxed. It also increases your dopamine levels so it will help you get into better focus too.

If you don’t know how to use caffeine properly, it can ruin your sleep. With that said, use it as a tool. Not something you need to do.

If you feel like you have to drink coffee to get through the day, you have deeper issues such as your sleep quality and nutrition.

Rule #1: don’t consume any caffeine in the first 90 minutes of being awake. This prevents any afternoon crashes that you might experience. When you wake up, your body has a chemical called adenosine. This chemical makes you feel tired and sleepy. When you postpone your caffeine intake, you’re helping your body to naturally clear the adenosine from your system, and that will prevent you from having energy crashes/dips in the afternoon.

Rule #2: drink your last cup of coffee 6-10 hours before bedtime so the caffeine in your system is gone and you can sleep well without interruptions.

Technique 7: INTERMITTENT FASTING + BLOOD SUGAR LEVELS

The main physiological mechanism affecting the stability and general state of alertness during the working day is the regulation of blood sugar.

Constant spikes and crashes in blood sugar are a significant factor in mood swings. Hypoglycemia (low blood sugar) in particular can cause anxiety, irritability, and edginess, usually preceded by a significant drop in cognitive performance.

Maintaining a constant level of blood sugar reduces hunger pangs and helps achieve a stable state of alertness throughout the working day.

The effects of various foods on blood sugar levels have conventionally been described using the glycemic index (GI). It represents the change in blood sugar caused by the food compared to a reference value (glucose solution).

A diet of food with a fairly low glycemic load and insulin index represents the preferred option for both health and mental alertness. Foods with a high insulin index should be consumed after exercise to replenish the glycogen reserves in the muscles and liver with insulin.

Intermittent Fasting - Yay or Nay?

Intermittent fasting means fasting for a significant proportion of the day (16 hours) and consuming the daily intake during the remaining eating window (8 hours).

IF has been practiced by entrepreneurs for a long time. I used to fast for years – skipped breakfast, drank black coffee, and ate my first meal around 12-1 PM.

It gave me the mental clarity, energy, focus, and alertness needed for deep work. However, after years of fasting, I started to see a change. I started to get jitters, my blood sugar levels were too low and I couldn’t focus anymore.

And it’s for a reason. Here is what studies show:

A new study finds that if you don't eat something in the morning to kickstart your day, you could have a higher risk of heart-related death (Fox 11).

Participants who never consumed breakfast compared with those who consumed breakfast every day had hazard ratios of 1.87 (95% confidence interval: 1.14 to 3.04) for cardiovascular mortality and 1.19 (95% confidence interval: 0.99 to 1.42) for all-cause mortality (Jacc Journals).

That’s just one side of it.

Let’s look at what is happening in your body when you restrict food.

When you restrict food or you skip a meal, you should tap into your liver stores to release glucose into your blood to ensure your cells are getting enough energy.

When you’re restricting foods and your liver doesn’t have what you need, that’s when you release cortisol.

Glucose is the preferred energy source of the cell. The liver and muscles store the glucose and release it into the bloodstream whenever the body needs it.

However, during fasting, this process changes. After about 8 hours of fasting, the liver will use the last of its glucose reserves. At this point, the body enters into a state called gluconeogenesis, making the body transition into fasting mode.

If you’re not giving your body what it needs it will reach for the backup system. The backup system is a system that is essentially your body eating its own tissue.

That’s why muscle retention and building muscle while fasting is kind of impossible and hard. The first molecule to go is protein synthesis — activating the stress hormone.

A lot of entrepreneurs claim (I did too) that they have more energy when they fast. Well, science shows that it’s important to learn the difference between real raw energy coming from your cells, and forced spotty energy coming from adrenaline and cortisol. When you fast, you’re using “fake” energy to push you through.

My client was intermittent fasting for a long time, but later he noticed he didn’t feel as good during deep work. He had jitters and cortisol was rising.

So we switched to eating breakfast and everything changed for him.

If you physically can’t eat food in the morning or you want to find a balance between fasting and eating, try Bullet-Proof Coffee.

• 1-2 cups of high-quality fresh coffee.

• 1 tbsp of grass-fed butter/Ghee.

• 1 tbsp of MCT Oil.

• ½ tsp of Vanilla (optional)

• ½ tsp of Cinnamon (optional)

• 4 tbsp of hydrolyzed collagen protein (optional)

• Additional Ingredients (optional)

  • L-Theanine

  • Cordyceps

  • Lions Mane

  • Chaga

You’re going to feel incredible when you drink this in the morning. After that, feel free to eat your meal around noon. Don’t forget to drink enough water – especially mineral water.

Technique 8: VISUALIZATION

This technique will help you get in the pre-flow state while also helping you stay in the flow while you are already in the zone. Visualization is a powerful tool. Your brain doesn’t know the difference between experiencing something in reality or imagination.

If it’s very hard for you to sit down and do flow blocks, you can use visualization to experience that behavior before you even start. The more you can see something in your mind, the more real it becomes. You can train yourself to do anything this way.

Here is how it works in practice:

• Before you sit behind your desk, you sit somewhere quiet.

• You close your eyes and take a couple of deep breaths.

• Be in the moment, scan your body, and don’t react to your thoughts.

• Visualize yourself struggling to get to work, struggling to start the flow block, and doing that activity you’re trying to avoid. Be as clear as possible.

• Then visualize yourself conquering that struggle. Feel the emotions of struggle and pain of doing so (it’s going to be like this at the beginning).

• Visualize yourself getting to that desk, opening your laptop, and getting to work with ease and effortlessness. Like a 2.0 version of yourself. Feel those good emotions.

• Open your eyes and take action.

This is how you prime your brain to do any activity that is new or uncomfortable with ease. This doesn’t apply only to flow and focus. You can use this tool to help you get out of bed and wake up on time every morning or stay consistent with exercising and eating healthy.

Visualization is used for priming mainly, but it can be effectively used to slay internal distractions and stop compulsive behavior. Wherever the urge or an impulse appears to do something distracting during your flow blocks, stop doing the task for a moment, close your eyes, do a couple of deep breaths, and then observe that impulse. Don’t react to it, don’t judge it. Just observe like clouds in the sky. You can ask yourself: where is this coming from?

You don’t have to find answers at that moment, that’s not the point. The point is to observe your thoughts instead of exposing them to distractions. What’s really going on with you? Do you have an impulse to go on social media because you’re stressed and anxious? Why?

Asking yourself Why 5x can help you get clarity and identify the root problem.

Once you observe your thoughts and get a better understanding of what’s going on, the next final step is to visualize yourself conquering your urge/impulse and going back to your task with ease. Feel the struggle of not grabbing that phone, but also feel amazing because you managed to slay that distraction with ease and you go back to work. Open your eyes and continue working.

Stay tuned for the last part of the masterclass!

Miriam