Stop Trying So Hard: How to Get Into Flow State
In my last post, I wrote about a skill we rarely talk about:
But there is another side to that idea.
If we need to learn how to stop when work is over, we also need to learn how to be fully there when we're working.
Not checking Slack every five minutes.
Not thinking about whether the work will succeed.
Not constantly asking ourselves if we're being productive.
Just doing the thing in front of us.
That state has a name: flow.
And strangely, the harder we try to reach it, the harder it becomes.
You can't force flow
Think about public speaking.
When people first learn to speak in front of an audience, they often write down every word.
Then they try to memorize the script.
It feels safer.
But when the actual moment comes, something interesting happens.
Forget one sentence and suddenly everything collapses.
Where was I?
What comes next?
What was that exact phrase?
Instead of thinking about the idea, you're trying to retrieve words from memory.
Compare that with someone who deeply understands what they're talking about.
They don't need to remember every sentence.
They know the idea.
So they can simply talk.
They might use different words every time, but the underlying thought remains the same.
That's much closer to flow.
You're no longer trying to perform the task correctly.
You understand it well enough to let yourself do it.
Flow requires trust
I noticed the same pattern in many kinds of work.
When we don't trust ourselves or our process, we constantly monitor what we're doing.
Is this good?
Am I doing it correctly?
Will people like this?
Is this going to work?
Should I change direction?
That internal observer consumes an enormous amount of attention.
You're doing the work while simultaneously standing behind yourself judging the work.
It's like trying to drive while staring at yourself driving.
Of course it feels exhausting.
Flow happens when that observer becomes quiet.
You stop evaluating every individual action and start trusting the system underneath it.
A trader doesn't need every trade to win
Trading is an extreme example of this.
Imagine you have a trading system that you've tested across decades of historical data and hundreds of trades.
You understand exactly why it works.
You know its expected win rate.
You know its losing streaks.
You know its weaknesses.
And most importantly, you know that its edge only becomes visible over a large number of trades.
What happens when the next signal appears?
You execute.
That individual trade might win.
It might lose.
But strangely, neither matters very much.
Because you're not judging the system based on one trade.
You trust the process.
Now imagine the opposite.
Someone finds a strategy online.
They test it a few times.
It works.
They start trading.
The first trade loses.
Fine.
The second loses.
Maybe something is wrong.
The third loses.
Panic.
They change the strategy.
Find another system.
Start again.
And repeat forever.
The problem isn't necessarily the strategy.
They never developed enough confidence in the process to stop reacting to individual outcomes.
I think we do exactly the same thing with work.
We judge our work too quickly
Write one blog post.
Nobody reads it.
Maybe blogging doesn't work.
Launch a feature.
Nobody uses it.
Maybe it's the wrong feature.
Try a marketing channel for a week.
No growth.
Time to try something else.
We constantly evaluate systems using individual outcomes.
And every time the outcome disappoints us, we interrupt ourselves.
Change direction.
Start again.
The result is a strange kind of productivity where we're always doing something but rarely stay with anything long enough to understand it.
Flow becomes almost impossible because part of our brain is constantly asking:
"Is this working yet?"
The outcome is not your job right now
I've found one mental shift surprisingly useful.
When I'm working, I try to separate two things:
the action and the outcome.
The action is usually under my control.
Write the article.
Design the screen.
Talk to the user.
Ship the feature.
Run the experiment.
The outcome isn't.
People may read it or ignore it.
Users may love the feature or never notice it.
The experiment may work or fail.
Trying to control both at the same time creates stress.
So during the work itself, I try to temporarily stop caring about the second one.
Not because outcomes don't matter.
Of course they do.
But there is a time to evaluate and a time to execute.
Mixing the two destroys both.
Flow is not about working harder
This is something I misunderstood for a long time.
I thought deep work meant forcing myself to concentrate harder.
Remove distractions.
Block websites.
Set timers.
Push through resistance.
Those things can help.
But they're mostly about creating the conditions for attention.
They don't create flow itself.
Flow feels almost like the opposite of effort.
You know what you're doing.
The challenge is difficult enough to require your full attention.
The feedback is clear.
And for a while, you stop thinking about yourself.
Three hours can feel like thirty minutes.
You're not trying to be productive.
You're simply absorbed.
That's why some of my best working sessions don't feel particularly disciplined.
They feel almost effortless.
But there is a prerequisite
There's one important catch.
You can't fake this kind of trust.
A trader can't simply tell themselves, "Don't care about the result" when they've never properly tested their system.
A speaker can't magically stop thinking about the script if they don't understand the subject.
And I can't tell myself to "trust the process" if I haven't actually built one.
Confidence without evidence is just optimism.
Real confidence comes from repetition.
You do the work.
You observe what happens.
You learn.
You adjust.
You do it again.
Eventually, something changes.
You no longer need to think about every tiny decision.
The process becomes part of you.
That's when letting go becomes possible.
My current way of entering flow
I don't have a perfect formula for flow.
But I've noticed that my best sessions usually start the same way.
First, I decide what I'm actually doing.
One problem.
Not five.
Then I try to remove everything that makes me mentally jump outside the task.
Notifications.
Random tabs.
Small things I suddenly "need" to check.
But there's another kind of distraction that's harder to close:
thoughts.
Things I need to remember.
Ideas unrelated to what I'm doing.
Something I'm worried about.
Something I should do later.
These are especially dangerous because they feel important.
So instead of trying to suppress them, I write them down.
That's one of the reasons I use Zen Journal while working.
Not to write a beautiful journal entry.
Sometimes it's literally one sentence.
A thought appears.
I put it somewhere.
Then I return to what I was doing.
The thought doesn't need to disappear.
I just need to trust that I don't have to hold it in my head anymore.
Maybe flow is the art of not trying
There's a book title I love:
The Art of Not Trying.
It captures something that sounds contradictory but feels increasingly true to me.
We often improve by trying harder.
But after a certain point, trying becomes interference.
A good speaker stops trying to remember.
A good trader stops trying to make every trade win.
A good writer stops judging every sentence while writing it.
You build the foundation through deliberate effort.
You test.
You practice.
You understand.
And then, when it's time to perform:
you let go.
Maybe that's what flow really is.
Not maximum concentration.
Not maximum productivity.
Not squeezing more output from every hour.
It's reaching a point where you trust what you've built enough that, for a little while, you can stop watching yourself work.
And simply work.
