Have you ever been involved in an activity when you thought you were lost in time and did not care about anything else but the task in hand? Consider a hobby such as painting. Imagine yourself when you are so absorbed while enjoying the painting process that you don’t realise you have been at it for 5 hours. Psychologists recognise this as being in a state of flow. When you are in flow, you are extremely productive and focused. You may easily achieve three times more than your normal rate of activity just because you are so focused.

The natural questions is how to take advantage of this phenomenon? Can you artificially put yourself in the state of flow? What steps should you take to achieve this?

To answer these questions, we need to examine ourselves when we are in the state of flow. What do we care about and what do we ignore? Once we know the main qualities associated with this state, we can put ourselves in a state of flow by artificially following these qualities.

When you are in the state of flow, the following apply:

• We forget the past and think only of present.
• We accept our tools and resources

In other words, if you want to be in the state of flow, focus on the present as much as you can and don’t care about what happened before or what will happen next.  Try to avoid saying “What if” and “If only”.

Besides, accept your tools. It is what you have, use them and get on with it. You can never imagine a painter, who is in a state of flow and is continuously moaning about his brush!