The ultimate deep work guide in 10 easy steps

What is deep work?

**What if the**re’s more to you than you’ve allowed yourself to discover. What if you’re harbouring within you talents and potential that you’ve not yet been afforded the opportunity to properly harness and utilise. What if unbeknownst perhaps even to yourself, you actually have within you the ability to do more.

‘Flow states’, ‘deep work’ – these are just terms that you may or you may not be familiar with, but what do they actually mean? What is deep work, why does it matter, and more importantly what can it ultimately do for you with your work, your art, your creativity, your productivity, your business, or indeed, even your life.

Perhaps the best way to describe deep work is by using the words of Cal Newport himself, who first coined the term in his book of the same name. In it, he said that deep work is “professional activity performed in the state of distraction free concentration, which pushes your cognitive capabilities to their limits”.

In other words, it’s a way of working, that’s actually the responsible for generating some of the most inventive and innovative ideas in the history of humanity. And not only that, it’s a way of working that’s actually proven pivotal in the lives and careers of some of the most paradigm-shifting thinkers and innovators and creators, and business leaders in history.

People like Bill Gates, Carl Jung, J.K. Rowling, John Grisham and many others, each of whom leverage this approach in order to do that very best work and make a significant impact on the fields, the industries, the sectors, and the communities that they are a part of.

In other words, that business idea or strategy that you’re trying to develop, that product or design that you’re currently seeking to formulate, that piece of art or that novel that you’re trying to push through to completion… The key to being able to make meaningful progress and advance in each of these endeavours, is to be found in the principles of deep work.

It is the superpower you never knew about, and it’s the means to unlocking your full potential and enabling you to do your very best work.
So we’re going to embark on a journey, an adventure, if you like into the hitherto unknown, in order for you to develop the processes and become more informed about the principles that will enable you to access the full measure of your talent, so that you can do whatever it is that you do – better.

Why deep work matters

The story goes that Charles Dickens was apparently famous for the unapologetic way he would go about rebuffing and resisting dinner invitations from his friends and his associates. It was something that he was doing in order to maintain and protect his own prolific and creative output. 

I’m certainly not going to be suggesting that we ought to disengage from socialising, or become a recluse of some kind, I do think the fact that Dickens was so incredibly insistent and intentional about minimising interruptions and engagements does suggest to us that he may have been ahead of his time in more ways than just one. 

See, studies have now shown that it can take up to half an hour (30 minutes!) to regain focus if interrupted whilst engaged in the kind of deep thinking that’s necessary for doing complex work. It’s the consequence of this phenomena known as ‘attention residue’ – the sort of mini-hangover that the brain encounters whenever is forced to disengage from doing highly focused work in order to go and do something else. 

It hampers our cognitive performance, dilutes our capacity for focus. Which means that interruptions are the enemy. They’re the troll under the bridge. And it also means that actually learning how to develop the kind of practices whereby we can safeguard ourselves against the noise and the clamour of distraction is becoming an increasingly vital attribute in enabling us to do our very best work. 

See, there’s only 24 hours in a day. There’s only seven days in a week. 365 days, give or take, in a year. There’s no getting around those numbers. There’s no negotiating with them. Which isn’t necessarily a problem, but it does make time a currency, a commodity, if you like. And how finite a resource that time ultimately is, makes it the most precious commodity of all. 

So the important thing is not in having more time but rather optimising how we use it. Or as Stephen R Covey said: One of the keys not in spending time, but investing it. And that’s really what deep work is ultimately all about. It’s about deploying and investing our time in the most effective and efficient way possible, in order for us to eke out our full cognitive potential so that we can improve our qualitative and quantitative output. So that we can do better work, and more of it. 

But what does it actually look like for us to build these types of practices into our work life and what are the things that we need to understand or learn or appropriate in order for us to be able to render the very best for ourselves, and to produce an elite level.

The three laws of deep work

There’s going to be three main ideas that are going to undergird and govern absolutely everything that we’re talking about whenever it comes to deep work, and we’ll, we’ll call them the three Ps because, well, alliteration is always a useful and fun thing right?

The three Ps are: practice, protection, and principles.

Let’s talk about practice first, because developing the kind of sustained concentration that’s required in order to do deep work isn’t necessarily easy these days. You’ve got social media notifications, text messages, emails, 20-plus tabs open your web browser.

We’re living in a world which is an information highway. The constant flow of data that we are consuming and interacting with almost continuously isn’t always necessarily a negative. It’s conferred quite huge benefits and positives for us. We have a whole life’s of worth of information available to us at our fingertips now; we can source whatever knowledge that we may desire or require with just a simple click of a button, just a tap on the screen, we can connect and communicate with people on the opposite side of the planet.

We’ve pretty much redefined or transcended a lot of our conventional notions for community by this point. But, for all of these very many apparent benefits that have been conferred to us as a consequence of this instantaneous connectedness that we now experience there is still just as many drawbacks to it as well.

One of the main ones being that developing the ability to do deep work is becoming an increasingly difficult skill for us to master, which is why practice is absolutely key.

See, building the capacity to engage in sustained intervals of highly focused cognitive work is really where the treasure is going to be when it comes to deriving our very best insights, ideas and solutions. But building the protections to surround this practice – our second ‘P’ – is going to be absolutely paramount.

Setting aside time, scheduling, informing colleagues and co-workers and friends and neighbours or strangers on the street if you have to. You’re going to need to do whatever it is that you can in order to ensure that those who need to know, understand and realise that that particular time at that particular day is ring fenced. You’re not going to be able to respond immediately to messages during that period.

Now, we’re gonna spend more time delving into each of these first two tenets in more detail as we progress, but this third tenet of ‘principles’ is going to be absolutely key. It’s going to really form the basis on which our whole practice going forward will be built. And there’s a whole suite of principles that we’re going to get into.

But for now, perhaps the most important principle for us to be introduced to is going to be an understanding and realising that when it comes to deep work, well… it’s not just about work.

Deep work isn’t just about work

I know what you’re thinking.


Deep work is about getting things done. Right? It’s about producing ultimately; execution. Outcomes are the sole point of emphasis. But it’s not true.


See, if we’re to fully exploit the tenants of deep work and take advantage of and experience the many powerful benefits that they’re able to render, then this can’t be so much about doing, as it is about being.


Deep work is not just a method. It has to become a lifestyle.


What do I mean by that? See, the story goes that Hermann von Helmholtz, which is not an easy name to say by the way, he was a physicist in the latter part of the 19th Century. A Nobel Prize-winning physicist, actually. And during the dinner to celebrate his 70th birthday back in 1891, he decided to explain his award-winning insights to his dinner guests. And he did so by saying that inspiration never comes whilst you’re seated at your desk.

His point being that after running through or thinking deeply about a particular problem, you would often need at least an hour of what he referred to as “mental and physical renewal” before any good ideas would ever come along. And actually, his best insights often emerged to him whilst he was walking in the sun on the wooded hills.

See, Von Helmholtz belief that deep work, followed by intentional and meaningful intervals of rest, was actually the secret to developing creative insights. And the intriguing or interesting thing about this particular realisation is not just a quirk of some 19th-Century genius’s temperament, but it’s actually to do with a particular aspect or feature of the brain that we can all leverage and make use of.

Attention restoration theory – that’s what it’s called – was actually first discovered by a couple of psychologists back in the 1980s by the names of Rachel and Stephen Kaplan. They suggested that concentrating required the brain to engage in what they referred to as “directed attention” – a particular kind of engagement that is actually a limited or a finite resource.

Think of it like sprinting. Oftentimes the body can do it, but only for limited intervals of time, after which a period of meaningful rest will be required before the body is able to operate at that same optimum level once again. And the same is true of the brain. Concentrating is a finite resource. Once you’ve exhausted it, you cannot perform at the same cognitive optimum full level, which means that rest is absolutely key.

But not just any kind of rest. See, going for a walk like our friend Hermann von Helmholtz was often prone to doing (and like I’m doing right now actually), can be a powerful benefit. But only if done correctly. Walking amidst a busy city street is liable to engage a lot of the same mental processes and neural pathways that we’re actually trying to rest, especially if we’re interested in trying to develop a sustainable deep work practice that we can actually maintain across the long haul.

Whilst walking in nature, on the other hand, as I am right now here in the beautiful grounds of Homewood Hotel in Bath (which is actually one of our FLOWN properties precisely for this reason), actually allows those same mental processes and neural pathways to rest. Whilst also providing just enough stimuli to ensure that our attention is not directed to any one particular thing.

And this isn’t a matter of opinion. At this point, this is actually a scientifically verifiable reality that has been corroborated and demonstrated across a variety of different contexts and studies, each of which have shown that taking meaningful periods of intentional rests specifically in nature, is one of the primary means through which our cognitive capacities can be replenished and restored.

But what’s really intriguing about this and what we’re actually going to discover is that not only is this kind of rest a wonderful opportunity through which we can refresh our cognitive capabilities. When it’s done correctly, it can also enhance them.

The underrated skill of daydreaming

When doctors Scott Barry Kaufman and Rebecca McMillan together wrote a very nicely titled paper called Ode to Positive Constructive Daydreaming, and in so doing discovered how allowing the mind to wander could actually aid what they termed "creative incubation".

Well, it sparked the direction of study through which Kaufman, in particular, would come to discover the very many powerful benefits involved in allowing the mind to switch off from whatever immersive task or problem that it might be engaged with.

Daydreaming, he discovered actually involves a highly engaged brain state that mimics a lot of the processes involved in imagination and creativity, thereby priming the mind to grasp creative insights.

You remember our friend Hermann von Helmholtz, the 19th-Century physicist who cited his nature walks as being the key to his success? So it turns out it wasn't just the mental and physical renewal of those walks that were rendering his creative insights.

In short, allowing his mind to wander away from the task at hand after having thoroughly immersed himself in it afforded his thoughts the opportunity to peruse of a different context and subconsciously invite them to, in Kaufman's words, "incubate". See Von Helmholtz was basically jumpstarting his own creativity, pretty much without even thinking about it.

It's the brain’s way of exiting the room in order to reenter through another door in order to get a different, alternative angle or perspective on things. Which is why, going for walks, or even allowing your mind to be occupied by fun discursive tasks like our FLOWN Quests, for example, can actually be such an incredibly valuable key.

It triggers our imaginations to fire in new ways. And so that logistical knot or problem that you've been trying to solve, that product or design that you've been trying to generate fresh ideas and insights for, that creative block that you might have hit, actually walking away from the desk, allowing yourself not to think about them for a while and daydreaming instead or allowing yourself to do these fun discursive tasks.

These can be important keys to enabling you to actually render insights that you would not be able to arrive at any other way. See, daydreaming doesn't just allow our cognitive capacities to rest and refresh, it actually enhances them. But the more important question really is: why?

How does this work, exactly? And most importantly, how can we make it work for us?

The hidden value of exploration, part I

Here's one that I bet you've never heard of: cognitive disinhibition.

See, way back in 1952, back when we still had trains that run on time and doors that you could leave unlocked (in some parts of the world anyway) and back when the Wizard of Oz, just a mere decade on from its release, still represented to us the height of the cinematic experience (to some of us, it still does).

Back then that Ernst Kris, an Austrian psychoanalyst and art historian as well, first suggested that especially creative people manifested what he termed "an ability toward regression in service of the ego".

Which was basically just an elaborate way of saying they know how to get in touch with their inner child.

Now, this is an idea that Colin Martindale, the professor of psychology at the University of Maine at the time, later developed an interest in. He wanted to isolate what the brain was doing when people engaged in problem solving or creative behaviours, so he began a series of experiments in the 1970s in order to monitor the brainwaves of creative people in order to prove Kris's theory.

In the end, he wasn't able to do this, but what he did discover allowed him to develop a theory of his own: 'cognitive disinhibition' – A key trait and attribute of creative people.

Your brain has a series of mental filters for blocking things out in order to keep your consciousness from being overrun. See, wherever you are, whatever you're doing – walking down the street, driving a car, listening to music, watching engaging and insightful video content – your brain is being bombarded by stimuli, sights, sounds, memories, experiences, motor functions, language. It's a lot to fit in. If your brain was to offer all of that up to your conscious awareness, it'd be like trying to fill a boat with a lake – you'd sink.

So your brain doesn't do that. Instead, it screens everything for relevance and then pushes whatever it deems unimportant out into your subconscious, leaving you to have very weird dreams about it later.

So this is part of why you can sometimes fail to hear somebody who's sitting right next to you if you're concentrating on something else. It's why you can sometimes forget that your glasses are resting on your forehead. Your brain is limiting things, trying to make things manageable, filtering. This is what academics refer to as 'latent inhibition' – the latent inhibiting of internal and external stimuli.

Now, cognitive disinhibition is basically the opposite of that. It lowers the threshold for how relevance is determined. It broadens your attention and lets more in. So you think of it like a mechanic who has a tendency for hoarding even seemingly irrelevant tools. It makes for a far messier toolbox, but also for an infinitely better equipped one.

This is why Dr Scott Barry Kaufman, our friend, says that imaginative people have messier minds. In short, those who are creative are more prone to allowing their attention to digress towards seemingly irrelevant things. They daydream more, which it turns out, is actually a superpower. But as for how and why, well, that’s down to a little word called 'bissociation'. 

The hidden value of exploration, part II

Researchers dating all the way back to the likes of Lev Vygotsky and John Piaget in the late 19th to early 20th Century have always defined creativity as the ability to combine diverse elements in novel, but usable ways.

You know, kind of like an inventor who looks at electricity and sound waves and sees a telephone, or who looks at the telephone and computers and sees the internet, or who looks at the internet and telephones and sees phone apps and… you get the picture.

The point is that what allows an idea to be creative, isn't necessarily its constituent parts – few of those will actually be novel or original anyway – but rather, as with cooking, it's more about the recipe or the method by which those parts are brought together.

Kind of like what Mark Twain once said: "All ideas are secondhand consciously or unconsciously drawn from a million outside sources." Meaning that creativity and originality, are what happens when new relationships are found for combining known and seemingly unrelated things.

And this is what academics refer to as 'bisociation'. Now, being more cognitively disinhibited actually allows you to take full advantage of this particular aptitude. It allows for there to be more ingredients in the pot, more potential combinations more, cross-pollination of ideas and thoughts and experiences and perspectives.

Which is why it's such a key attribute of the creative personality. What's really intriguing about it is that this particular temperament or sensibility isn't fixed, it's not necessarily innate. It can be cultivated, developed. It can be trained.

Novel and diverse experiences – everything from the places that you visit, to the people that you surround yourself with, to the activities that you engage in, to the books or the information that you consume and read – all these things have the ability to actually make you more cognitively disinhibited and thereby prime you to be more potentially creative as well.

This is why Dr. Kaufman actually says that "openness to experience is the strongest predictor of creative achievement". Meaning that being open to new ideas and being open to trying new things isn't just the way in which we can develop a more varied or diverse lifestyle. It's actually something that we can do in order to establish a platform by which we can do more effective, more innovative and dynamic work.

Which means that exploration matters way more than what you might think. But you want to know what else might matter more than what you might think? A good sense of humour. 

Why you need to laugh more, part I

By now you’re perhaps beginning to understand and appreciate the role that lifestyle plays in enabling us to do our best work. How being more open to new ideas and experiences ultimately deepens our capacity to produce, which is why we have our FLOWN Almanac or Quests, for example.

These things are not just a resource for interesting tidbits of information or activities that we can enjoy participating in, they’re actually a tool that we can use in order to enrich and enhance the fruits of our deep work practice. Speaking of which, I wonder what you'd say if I was to tell you that humour can also play a significant role in all of this.

See, think about your standard knock-knock joke or some witty one-liner. What you're perhaps beginning to notice is that what allows the punch line to work is that there's usually some kind of double meaning or implied gap, and it's been left to the audience to connect the dots between.

For example, I used to work in a shoe recycling store – it was soul-destroying. Or I'm trapped in a same-sex relationship, the sex is always the same. Or I can give you the cause of anaphylactic shock in a nutshell.

Admittedly, I'm definitely no comedian and all jokes are actually courtesy of the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, so I take no credit or blame.

My point is that what allows a joke to be funny or, depending on your take perhaps just mildly amusing, is that two notions have usually been brought together in a surprising or humorous way whilst crucially being left for the audience to infer the connection. So do you see? It’s bisociation again.

And so, the play then is in the associative work that you, as the hearer has to do in order to get the joke. So this is why humour is so often so incredibly culturally specific, it's why a joke ceases to be funny the moment that it requires explanation because it can only work by relying upon what the audience is able to infer, the link that you, as the hearer, are able to create.

Now, as you might imagine, with there being this kind of strong parallel between the workings of humour and those of creativity, it inevitably leads to there being a relationship between the two.

What's really interesting is that it's not just that creativity is able to generate humour, but humour and more specifically laughter has actually been shown and proven to enhance and empower creativity, making it a tool that we can actually integrate into our own working practice.

Now, of course, the most obvious questions to emerge out of this will be how exactly do we do this? Or perhaps more interestingly, just how far do these benefits of humour go?

Why you need to laugh more, part II

Back in 1976, Avner Ziv, who's now a psychologist at Tel Aviv University, devised a series of experiments to ascertain the relationship that exists between laughter, creativity, and problem solving.

He took 282 year 10 pupils or 10th graders depending on which side of the pond that you're watching this from, and he had them perform a series of exercises in which they’d be required to respond to verbal stimuli using speech. And they had to do so in a way that required them to exercise 'divergent thinking', which is a key indicator for creative potential.

So they'd be asked to provide as many probable outcomes as possible to an improbable situation, in response to the introduction of a new variable. For example, a house is on fire; a homeless man arrives first on the scene. What happens next? Or a woman drops her purse, a child notices it on the street, what happens next? That kind of thing.

What's interesting is that Ziv discovered that those subjects who were asked to listen to a humorous recording directly before doing the exercise performed significantly better than those who didn't. Why? In short, when we're invited to find something funny, we're actually being asked to employ the same bisociative style of thinking that we use whenever we're trying to generate a new idea or solve a problem.

We're being required ultimately to bring two notions together in a way that is compelling or coherent or in the case of humour, amusing. We’re ultimately being asked, albeit somewhat sneakily, to create. And so humour then, an exercise in the same neural pathways that are deployed in creativity, actually primes us, conditions us to be creative, which is a conclusion that the science so far more than backs up.

Which means that humour or making fun a point of focus isn't just the way in which we can stimulate our own emotional or mental well being, it actually provides a platform for us to do more dynamic and innovative and creative work. Which means that humour and play, well, it may be time that we took these things a little bit more seriously.

Why you need to take play more seriously

Okay, so play is just about fun, isn't it? It's a source of pleasure, confers no further benefit other than that, right?

Wrong.

According to Boston College Professor Peter Gray, play is actually a state of mind that is uniquely suited to high-level reasoning, insightful problem-solving and creative endeavours. Studies have actually now shown that play, alongside releasing endorphins, is actually responsible for promoting the release of a hormone known as brain-derived neurotrophic factor, which is a key element in the development of new neurons within the brain.

Which basically makes play the body's way of incentivising the adoption of problem-solving and learning brain states. It compels our neurons to keep firing in new and engaged ways. Which is a fact that may be behind the correlations of improved sleep, memory and cognitive performance that are often associated with bouts of play.

By now, a lot of the benefits are well understood by many of the more progressive and innovative companies out there, which perhaps why design firm Ideo, for example, have been known to feature minibus meeting rooms. It's why the artists at Pixar have been known to work out of wooden huts and decorated caves. It's why Google's main offices include not only  a beach volleyball court but also a giant dinosaur skeleton with pink flamingos perched all over it.

All these things are done in order to create a more playful environment, to facilitate the kind of mental space that is best equipped for engaging the imagination and solving difficult problems. Because play, in actuality, isn't just about fun. It's actually a mechanism that can empower our cognitive capacity and capabilities.

Now, of course, we can’t all create or integrate decorated caves or whatever else into our workspaces in order to facilitate more playfulness. So what can we do to take advantage of this and other deep work principles, and thereby build a practice through which we'll be able to get the very best from ourselves, do better work, and have a ton of fun, whilst doing so?

What is deep work

Dive into this Edition of the FLOWN Academy to learn how to set goals and stay focused over the long haul.

Why you need a fresh perspective and how to get one

Why learning to recharge is a superpower

'All truly great thoughts are conceived whilst walking...' so said 19th-century German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, who apparently used to work for 2-3 hours each morning before taking a long stroll by the nearby lakes. Every day, like clockwork.

See, Nietzsche was as regimented with how he spent his time away from the desk as he was about the time he spent at it. And he's not the only one... 

Albert Einstein, Ludwig Beethoven, Marie Curie, Nikola Tesla

Scientists, writers, musicians, it doesn't matter. Pick any great thinker and you'll find someone with a meticulous strategy for spending intentional and structured time away from their work. It just so happens there are many compelling reasons behind why they were right to do so...

Studies show that over-exerting focus drains energy, impairs self-control, compromises decision-making and reduces overall productivity.

Meaning that when it comes to getting the best from yourself - *breaking* from focus is an especially important tool. But *only* when done correctly...

The reason is that when 'idling' the brain is activating old memories, travelling between past, present and future to rearrange and recombine our ideas, experiences, perceptions. It's how we conjure novel insights, solve problems tune into the experiences of others *and* imagine the future. Leading to significantly better decision making, collaboration, ideas and focus.

It's basically the brain's way of upgrading you into your most productive and engaged self. Like a *real-life* 'power up'.

And the keys to accessing this state more readily? Positive constructive daydreaming. Mindfulness. Journaling, and, like Nietzsche said, walking.

These are practices all proven to fuel the brain's capacity for focus and creativity; all whilst boosting your overall wellbeing.

So, if you want to do better work and feel good while you're at it, you need to *fuel your focus,* not just use and abuse it. You need to recharge as much as you work. 

If you want to learn more about exactly how to do this then... well... you're in the right place.

How to avoid brain fog and stay mentally fresh

How to love your brain and boost your work

There is no transcript for this content. New Academy features are coming soon!

Three ways to kill distraction and reach your goals

What is the Hawthorne Effect?

So... the Hawthorne effect... I know – sounds like the title of a Dan Brown novel, right? 

The term actually derives from the Hawthorne Western Electric plant in Cicero, Illinois, where the effect was first observed.

...

See, back in the 1920s a study was carried out to determine how changes to lighting would affect the productivity of workers at the plant. 

In the end, the impact turned out to be minimal, but at first it was difficult to tell. The results were obscured by what researchers later recognised to be another far more powerful effect. 

The effect of being *observed...* what came to be known as the *Hawthorne Effect*.

...

You see, it turns out there's more than just beauty in the eye of the beholder. There's *productivity* too.

Studies show that the feeling of being watched is a [powerful motivator](https://hbr.org/2020/05/we-work-harder-when-we-know-someones-watching), and not in a creepy way - yes we [work harder,](https://guilfordjournals.com/doi/abs/10.1521/soco.2017.35.5.585) but we also [think more deeply, are more creative](https://guilfordjournals.com/doi/abs/10.1521/soco.2017.35.5.585), and even feel what we are doing is [more *meaningful](https://hbr.org/2020/05/we-work-harder-when-we-know-someones-watching)* when we have an audience.

It's why sports teams find an advantage when playing before a crowd, especially a supportive one. It's why your favourite music artist often performs better live on stage than cooped up in a studio.

Which presents a dilemma... Because we know working without distraction allows us to focus more easily, and yet working in isolation can undermine our ability to consistently work *well*.

So, how do we bring these two together to get the best of *both* worlds?

Well... funny you should ask.

...

FLOWN Flocks. Virtual co-working spaces that allow you to work in the silent but companionable presence of others - free from distraction *and* isolation. Kinda like a library, only way cooler. 

Along with being able to state your goals for the session among a community of fellow workers - a practice proven to boost the likelihood of meeting your aims by 65% - Flocks offer the *perfect* way to find your flow.

So, join a Flock now, connect with like-minded others all over the world, and *get more done, more easily.*

How to set new goals

Learn how teaching your brain to notice and connect your experiences is a powerful way to boost creativity and problem solve.

What you produce is personal

"Much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on..."

Those are Steve Jobs's words, delivered during a 2005 commencement speech to the graduating class at Stanford University.

Jobs was explaining what had become for him a long-honed working theory on the mechanisms of creativity. For Jobs, creativity was all about ‘connecting dots’ as he called it; finding new ways to combine established ideas. The cognitive equivalent of remixing, if you like.

Although Jobs has been possibly the most notable proponent of this idea, it didn’t originate with him.

As far back as the 1940s writers and creatives like James Webb Young were espousing the doctrine of what has since come to be known as bissociative thinking.

He said the ability to generate new ideas basically comes down to:

"the capacity to bring old elements into new combinations... the ability to see relationships."

Fast forward to the 21st century. We’ve got esteemed neuroscientists and psychologists like Nancy Andreasen boiling the creative temperament down to pretty much the same thing - ‘recognising relationships’.

In other words, there’s little to no debate on how creativity works at this point. Discovering and recognising relationships between things is key. But how exactly does someone get good at doing that? How do we build that particular mental muscle?

Turns out there are a few ways... But to understand them, we need to return to Jobs’ original quote.

He said:

"Creativity is just connecting things...”

What makes someone creative is the ability “to connect experiences they’ve had and synthesize new things.”

Do more. Think more.

Explore new things, and develop a mindful habit toward the experience of doing so.

This is about intentionality.

Your life feeds and flows into your work, and vice versa. What you produce is personal.

The more we experience, the more dots we have available to connect. The more thoroughly we think on what we’ve experienced, the more likely we are to see how to connect them.

Those with a creative temperament recognise this reality and use it to their advantage.

But what does this look like in practice? Where and how do we start building this more explorative lifestyle?

That’s what this edition of the Academy is all about.

What's the problem with weird

Smash the narratives... there's more to you than you realise.

There is no transcript for this video. New features are coming!

The secret to mindful creativity

How to know more and think better

Knowledge is power... so goes the adage. But people never say what kind of knowledge, do they? Which, as it turns out, is important, especially if we're talking about the power to create and produce.

Fun fact – one alluded to by cognitive neuroscientist, Lera Boroditsky.

She discovered that if you ask German and Spanish speakers to describe a bridge (which happens to be grammatically feminine in German but masculine in Spanish), German speakers are more likely to say the bridge is 'beautiful' or 'elegant'; stereotypically feminine words. Whilst Spanish speakers are more likely to call the bridge 'strong' or 'long'; what might be considered stereotypically masculine words.

See, our language shapes our perceptions, frames our attention. It orients the way we experience the world.

The more languages you know, the more options you have available for how to think.

And it just so happens when it comes to creativity and productivity, knowledge works the exact same way.

Being exposed to divergent ideas, insights and experiences has been shown to improve creative output and problem-solving.

It acts as a counterpoint to whatever area of expertise you may have by disrupting patterns of thought and keeping you from what academics term 'cognitive rigidity' – so that you can deploy your skills and experience in more inventive and impactful ways.

No wonder people like Elon Musk, Ajit Singh, Mark Zuckerberg and Oprah Winfrey all swear by their strong reading habits.

Reading literally rewires your brain, increases the connectivity of brain tissues, boosts imagination, empathy and creativity. It basically helps you to know more and think better.

Now, we can't all read 50 books a year like Warren Buffet or Bill Gates, but being exposed to divergent learnings in a more bite-sized way can still render powerful benefits.

Cue the FLOWN Almanac – an assortment of serendipitously served learnings, anecdotes and bits of trivia designed to furnish your grey matter and get you thinking a little more widely.

It offers the kind of divergent reading habit that’s proven to help promote creativity and keep rigid thinking at bay.

Time to read a little deeper, darling

Why how you start your day matters

So... early bird? Nah... Night owl?

Of course you are, who'd be anything else?

I'm teasing of course, but it turns out it's a question that may be more important than you think.

[Studies show](https://hbr.org/2016/07/how-your-morning-mood-affects-your-whole-workday) there can be a cost to getting up on the wrong side of bed – a big cost. 

In fact, your early day mood is a critical factor in shaping the quality *and* quantity of your output over the course of your entire workday. And, if not handled right, can result in a 10% drop in productivity, *and* a sizeable downturn in the overall *quality* of what you produce.

Which means when it comes to consistently doing great work, how you start your day matters... a lot. 

Practices like meditation and journaling have been shown to boost everything from memory to immune function, and even your mood. While, according to research, setting and sharing your intentions is proven to improve the likelihood of meeting your goals by as much as 95%.

No wonder the likes of Ariana Huffington, Tim Ferriss and Oprah Winfrey all swear by these practices...

So imagine a 20-minute facilitated session – accessible from wherever you are – that guides you into doing all of these verifiably effective exercises, right at the start of your day.

Those tasks you've been putting off, those looming deadlines you've struggled to meet. What if consistently practicing these exercises, with expert guidance, and in the presence of like-minded others, could help to change all that?

That's what FLOWN Take-Offs are all about. Using effective science-based practices to start your day in the most powerful and meaningful way possible.

So... why not see for yourself. Sign up to join a Take Off now.

It's time to discover a new way to think and work.

Have we forgotten how to play, or is it that we don't know how

Connect to create

Learn how escaping your desk and embracing the outdoors can unlock new levels of focus and creativity.

Time to go natural

André Jaumotte once cited being present as an important part of play and exploration, things good for creativity, he said.

In his work — the aptly named; On Conditions for Creativity and Innovation — he describes a formula gleaned from his own study of creative people, summarising the journey to a new idea like this;

First, The mind is immersed in the problem

Then, Rest is taken away from the challenge

And then the solutions and ideas emerge

In other words — work, rest, then revelation.

The equivalent of looking for the proverbial keys and then, exhausted, finally giving up and taking a break to do something else, only for those keys to mysteriously emerge when you’re no longing trying to seek them out.

This is Charles Darwin connecting the dots of what would become his theory of natural selection whilst strolling through verdant woodlands and dreamy meadows.

Isaac Newton recognising the law of gravity whilst relaxing beneath an apple tree.

This is 19th century physicist Hermann von Helmholz stumbling upon his award-winning ideas whilst, in his words, ‘walking in the sun on the wooded hills.’

You see what these three all had in common?

They were outdoors, in nature, when they arrived at their best ideas.

Just so happens this isn’t mere coincidence, it’s science.

Spending time outdoors, especially in nature, has been shown to significantly boost wellbeing, and lateral thinking. A specific type of creativity that leads to those sought after ‘aha’ moments we all know and love.

That’s right, you can actually prime your brain for generating better ideas and discovering insights.

But how exactly do we do this? I mean, what are the best proven ways to go about integrating time in nature into your daily working practice?

Learn how in this edition of the Academy.

Natural wonders: boost your focus in 40 seconds

Ode to the outdoors

There's no transcript for this content. New Academy features are coming soon! 

Let nature bring you home

How to Quest best

What if I were to tell you that you'll have better ideas, and more of them, when walking?

Let me tell you about the work of behavioural scientist Marily Oppezzo

In one of her studies on this stuff, she gave subjects 4 minutes to come up with as many alternate uses for a common everyday object as possible - a standard divergent thinking exercise, a way to measure creativity.

But, here's the kicker... she had some groups do the test whilst seated, others while walking on a treadmill, and others she had take a turn of each.

The seated subjects? They did fairly well, averaging about 20 useable creative ideas per person.

But the walkers – well. They almost doubled that; and that while only walking on a treadmill in a windowless room.

What's intriguing is those who did the test walking, and then again whilst seated, still benefitted from the residual effects of that initial walk. It boosted the brain's resources in a lasting way.

Combine this with the proven benefits of - mindfulness, daydreaming, and being outdoors and you have the perfect cocktail for more focus and better thinking.

So, try this... Pick a problem you need to solve. A new design, marketing strategy, or blog you need fresh ideas for. Intentionally think about it, perhaps write down the challenges involved, or just run through them in your head. Then do a Quest... Now, return to the page. Work, and enjoy the extra mental energy and creative juice.

It's a key part of building a deep work practice you'll be able to sustain and enjoy. But don't take my word for it. Follow the science, try it for yourself.

Why Quests work and how to use them

Experience the extraordinary amongst the ordinary


I think that there are there are many times when I'm facing a challenge, be it a work challenge or a life decision challenge, where I try my hardest to solve it cerebrally. I have spreadsheets where I have multiple columns with different weighted averages, where I try to make important life decisions on a spreadsheet. I have decisions for work that I've tried to make by writing long lists and analyzing and speaking to lots of different people. And in the end, in almost all cases, what I've had to do is put it aside and go for a walk in the woods. 

After 11 years of running my last company, Skimlinks, I chose to step down. And suddenly I had this very organized list of diverse experiences and learnings that I wanted to experience and do. But it was particularly the travel, as it always seems to be, that became the source of my greatest revelations and certainly the source of my future path.

I remember hiking up to Machu Picchu and exploring a lot of other Incan ruins. I was trekking in this beautiful, light filled arena of boulders that were thousands of years old and were drenched in history. And something momentous started to happen. I would get these like... it's too hard to describe, like a plant growing through my brain that needed to burst forth. 

And I suddenly had these... That's how I'm going to do my future culture. That's why I need to design my future culture in this way. And, oh, I know. Now I suddenly understand why my path as an entrepreneur going forward is so important. And there's nothing that can explain how wild and raw these moments were. Again, moments that were knocking this cerebralness out of me and putting me embodied, making me sense the world, making me feel the world, making me spiritually connected to something larger than myself.

It wasn't just me, and I wasn't somehow a magical being that was experiencing these rather weird spiritual moments, despite being a very pragmatic person. No, this is a very known phenomena that's been happening for hundreds of years to artists, to scientists, philosophers, entrepreneurs, to all sorts of people. That think or create for a living. What the concept of deep work showed me is that there is a lot of science behind what it is about where you are physically and what state you get yourself into mentally that are key ingredients for the human potential to flourish.

It sounds really odd. It sounds really woo-woo, but that's... It's very hard to describe transcendent moments, especially if you're a rationalist, without sounding slightly woo-woo. Even if you can't get away on a regular basis, there are still ways that you can get out and experience nature and the creative power of nature, even if you don't live in a countryside.

Sometimes when you go for a walk in your neighborhood, this is a path that you have trodden dozens or hundreds of times. And so very often what will happen is that you just don't notice the space around you. It's familiar. There's no surprises. So your mind just sort of switches off and you stop experiencing the world around you.

But what happens if instead you go out into nature with the deliberate intent to spot unexpected things that you've never noticed before? If you go out there and say, right, what can I see around me that I have not seen before? What am I smelling? What about my hearing? What am I hearing that I don't normally notice? What's beneath the sounds that I normally focus on?

We want to stay in that moment? Stay in that sublime state where you're not really leading with your thoughts or your rationality but you're letting intuitive connections happen. These kind of little mental games that you play are incredibly powerful ways to detach from your cerebral side again and tap into those moments of awe. It's being able to experience the extraordinary among the ordinary that is at the heart of a creative practice.

And again, like meditation, this is something that you can develop by deliberately stepping outside and saying - What can I experience? What can I notice that I hadn't noticed yesterday.

Get out to get it done

Discover how to use play and mischief to do your best work

Play and productivity

Better problem-solving, productivity, creativity *and* better wellbeing. Enhanced resilience, memory, immune function, general health, relationships *and* work-life.

And all for the price of a little giggle now and then... intrigued? You should be...

...

When Renowned Soviet psychologist Lev Vygotsky began to note the relationship between play and creativity in the early 1900s he was [among the first](https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10400419209534424) to do so, citing play as the primary way to promote ‘**cognitive, social, and emotional development in children’.**

However, it’s play theorists like game designer and author Jane McGonigal and psychologist Samuel West who’ve more recently opened the door of discovery into how play in adults can serve to enhance the creative capacities of the brain, specifically in the workplace. 

Everything from doodling, to games, to listening to or watching a comedy sketch directly before a work task - all have been shown to render powerful effects, often doubling the creative output of subjects, with one paper stating the

> ‘[evidence](https://academic.oup.com/applij/article-abstract/28/4/518/204277) that humour not only contributes to the construction of effective workplace relationships but also... intellectual activity directly relevant to the achievement of workplace objectives.’
> 

In other words, becoming more intentional about fun and humour in both  professional and personal contexts is a scientifically proven way to get more done, both individually and collaboratively.

Fun works. So why aren’t we having more of it?

Children apparently laugh up to 300 times a day. The average adult, a measly 15 times a day. 

Which, I guess, makes sense. As we mature our humour grows in sophistication as the brain centres become more complex.

Which means in order to top up our laughter count and get the best from ourselves we need to become a little more intentional about leaning into play - especially at work.

But how exactly do we do this?

What steps can we take to begin integrating a little more play into our working day?

Flow is fun is flow is...

The fun factor, and how to use it

OK, so fun matters. And a lot more than we’re perhaps used to thinking it does - alongside boosting health in multiple ways, play and laughter help to sharpen creativity *and* focus. 

But now we’ve been enlightened with this knowledge, what do we do with it?

How do we go about building intentional ways of bringing more fun into our work lives so that we can work better, smarter, *and* feel good while we’re at it?

Well, funny you should ask... 

Here’s how to... give way to play in 3 easy steps.

Step no. 1 Watch more comedy...

Especially when working on creative solutions.

Yeah... research shows that laughter triggers brain waves [similar to those associated with meditation](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/laughter-may-work-like-meditation-in-the-brain/) - pulling you into the brain state best suited to being creative. 

Which is why watching or listening to comedy directly before tackling a complex task has been proven to improve problem-solving and divergent thinking - both key components of creativity. So... try this... [hand to camera]

The next time you find yourself with a creative block to unplug or a tricky problem to solve, set aside an hour to work on it. 

You’ll spend the first 45 minutes working on the task then the next 15 watching or listening to something that makes you laugh. 

I’ll even add suggestions you can use in the transcript of this video - let’s hope your humour’s as strange as mine.

Afterwards return to your work, and, without overthinking, list out whatever ideas or solutions immediately come to mind. 

It’s a simple yet highly effective way to loosen the cords of convention and prime your mind to discover insights you wouldn’t arrive at otherwise.

Step no. 2 Frame work as play

Not always easy, I know, but it *is* highly effective. Play is a proven cognitive catalyst. Not just in terms of creativity, but also motivation and productivity as well. 

One of the ways you can tap into this resource is by gamifying your experience of the working day. That means plugging into the child within to imaginatively frame the work you’re doing as something other than what it is. Something playful. 

It can be as simple as playing heroic adventure-style music while you work, or creating a points-reward system for the various tasks that you’re to complete. 

This may sound simple or even silly, but not to those working in the field of motivation science.

Creating games around our tasks taps into one of our deepest psychological needs - mastery. It also helps to build what thinkers and authors like James Clear have referred to as the motivation habit.

End result. We get more done *and* get better at doing it.

Step no. 3 Play more games.

World of warcraft, Ludo, Charades - whatever’s your jam. The science is clear. More games = more creativity, more focus, *and* improved wellbeing. Especially when those games are a consistent and planned part of the workweek. 

You see, this isn’t about just allowing play to serendipitously find you whenever it can - this is about valuing it, setting aside the time to do it the same way you would for focused work.

See, when it comes to focus and creativity play is a proven superpower.

Add to that the proven impact of laughter on reducing stress hormones like cortisol and epinephrine, and you pretty much have the perfect way to strengthen both your body *and* your mind.

Allowing you to do better work, more of it, and have plenty of fun in the process.

What’s not to like?

Learn deep work. Change your life.

What is deep work

How to set new goals

Connect to create

Get out to get it done

Focus, fun and foolery