Week 7, 2025 - Flow

Song of the week:

Thoughts

A few years ago I bought a yoga mat. I've never done yoga before. As I write this, I have yet to do yoga. I don't see yoga in my future. Though as I cross the threshold of 40 years of age, I probably should take it up to give myself some flexibility that used to come naturally as a younger fella.

I bought it from a company called 'flow state.' Which is a clever name for a yoga mat company. But that's not why I bought it. I bought it because the design was by a Dublin artist named Masser who I admire the work of. I have an original of his hanging above my bed from many years ago. Long before he was cool, doing buildings and what-not.

Before, the mat actually hung (because it has two very handy holes to hang it with) in my home office. When I moved my home office upstairs to the attic, it was a bit awkward to hang so it instead adorns the space that I stand and sit at my desk.

Which is fitting. Not because I do yoga. But because I very quickly and easily alter my 'flow state' there. My wife is firmly, extremely firmly, in the ADHD spectrum. I am on the other side of that particular house. Not so far that I can't be slowly, but surely, trained to recognise human condition, emotion and react accordingly. But enough that it doesn't come naturally. And having a wife that is curious about human behaviour and who has an ADHD specialist therapist to talk to a few times a year means I become part experiment, part student.

So, my flow state. It sort-of blows my wife's mind how quickly I can just get to work. Like as long as the right app is open on a laptop, my flow state can be instantiated. She can't do that. In fact, when she gets into the right flow, she has to capture it and get all of the possible work done while there, lest she lose the flow state. Which is why she can regularly wind up working until 2am, at which point her body will give up on her mind's behalf.

For me, there is a switch. I work a lot because I like working. But also because I have a very strong relationship to my future self; so try to clear the decks for Tuesday Kevin on Monday. I also have an incredibly busy job, so doing so is fairly important for the plethora of people who regularly rely on me to be in a flow state that benefits them, their partners, their customers, etc. etc.

It's why video games are mostly a thing of the past for me. At least lengthy story-driven ones. I can't really put them down because I'll be annoyed at myself for not completing some section of it or getting to the next level of achievement. I'll have let my future self down because Sunday Kevin will have to go back and do the same thing that Saturday Kevin did, but somehow better. That's not really an issue books tend to have. So I read more than I game.

The other two things that really kick me into some sort of flow are connected but also not really connected. One is music. Which is probably a bit obvious. Music can set the tone, your mood and even change a space you're sitting in. I love to play vinyl in my office because it forces me to stand up after a few songs to flip it over to the other side or change discs. And it sounds so warm and vibrant. The other is clothing. I'm not exactly a fashionista, but wearing a hoodie has such a different vibe to a blazer. It changes my mood, expected outcome and even how others perceive what I'm doing; even if I'm literally doing the same thing.

Flow state is important. And it probably took 15 years of my wife studying, poking and prodding me through an ever-present vicarious therapist for me to really understand my flow state superpower. Harnessing it has been so important for the last few years, particularly with kids. It's not about work-life balance, it's about where your attention & focus is. Being able to alter the flow state for your various scenarios (work, downtime, kids time, wife time, etc. etc.) is really, really important.

Go figure out how you best get into your flow states. I think for most people there are two basic ones (work and not work). One is easy, one is hard. Learn to wrestle with the hard one and make it work for you. Note that the hard one isn't always the work one. For me, downtime is hard, for example.

It might take music, clothing, not having a phone nearby. Who knows. But spend the time to figure it out and you'll reward future-you with many good times.

Photo of the week

(via my flickr)

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Published on: 14th February, 2025

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