Do you suffer from a lack of focus and boredom due to routine? Are you constantly distracted while doing important tasks like studying or working? Or do you simply want to be happier in your daily life? What if I told you that you can enjoy every moment of your daily life, even the routine ones, or even while doing household chores you dislike? Yes, I didn’t think it was possible either until I read the book Ikigai: The Japanese Secret to a Long and Happy Life by Héctor García and Francesc Miralles. Here’s what I learned.
Hello! Welcome to Lotus Flower Blog. I previously published an article on how to find the meaning of your life and live a long and happy life through Ikigai. You can check the article here. In that article, I mentioned that doing what you love leads you into a state of flow and immersion in the process. But how can we create that state while performing our daily tasks? Keep reading!
What is the Flow State?
In Ikigai: The Japanese Secret to a Long and Happy Life, the authors describe the flow state as a condition where you are fully immersed in an activity, in perfect harmony with the experience. It consumes all your focus to the point where your “self” dissolves, and you become one with what you’re doing. During these moments, your thoughts and emotions are at peace, free from distractions and negative feelings. You don’t feel the passage of time; it’s as if you’re enjoying the moment forever, like flowing with a stream instead of resisting it.
The Power and Importance of the Flow State
Entering a flow state helps train focus, enhance creativity, and foster inner peace, along with feelings of pleasure and happiness in life. It also enables you to complete tasks like studying or working faster without being constantly distracted or anxious. Most importantly, it helps you discover what you love or your own Ikigai – the meaning of your life! As the book says, “There is no magic formula for finding happiness or living according to your Ikigai, but one key ingredient is the ability to access this state of flow, and through this state, to have an optimal experience.”
Conditions and Strategies to Achieve Flow
Here are the conditions for achieving flow that we need to secure to enjoy this state whenever we want:
- Knowing what needs to be done
- Knowing how to do it
- Awareness of your progress on the task
- Precieving the challenges of the task
- Preceiving the necessary skills
- Freedom from distractions
As for the three strategies and practical steps presented in the book, they are as follows:
Strategy 1: Choose a Task Filled with Challenges (but not too difficult)
The first step is to select a task to work on, but carefully choose it. If it’s too easy, it will lead to boredom because it’s trivial, and you’ll abandon the task. If it’s too hard, it will trigger feelings of anxiety because it’s almost impossible, and you’ll give up as well! However, if the task simply has some challenges, you can enter a flow state and enjoy what you’re doing.
Strategy 2: Ensure You Have a Clear and Tangible Goal
It’s essential to define the goals you hope to achieve before starting your tasks, whether it’s studying, working, or other activities, to avoid getting lost. Ask yourself, for example: What are the essential pieces of information I need to master while studying today? What specific goals do I need to expand for my upcoming work meeting? It’s necessary to have a clear goal to enter a flow state but without becoming obsessive—just keep it in mind. Avoid vague goals that cause confusion and waste time and effort on meaningless tasks, leading to mental blocks. Also, avoid being obsessed with results, which causes you to focus on goals rather than striving to achieve them, also leading to mental blocks.
Strategy 3: Focus on One Task
Recently, there have been many videos and articles online about how to multitask, thinking it saves time. However, science has proven the opposite! After many scientific experiments, researchers found that multitasking significantly impacts memory over time, in addition to feeling overwhelmed from trying to juggle everything at once. Therefore, one of the basics of deep focus while performing a task is ensuring you’re in a distraction-free environment. Additionally, you need to maintain control over what you’re doing every moment.
How to Enjoy Your Daily Tasks Through Flow?
Now, regarding our main topic in this article—how to enjoy our daily and routine tasks through flow—this requires mentioning the term “micro-flow,” to transform moments of doing unwanted tasks into fun and enjoyable moments. By using all the techniques mentioned above to quickly enter a flow state and enjoy full concentration, we must train our mental abilities by practicing meditation. There are many types of meditation, but the goal is the same: to calm the mind, observe our thoughts and feelings, and focus on one thing. And here’s an important tip I loved while reading the book: “One of the most common mistakes when starting meditation is worrying about doing it the right way.” Also, try to find your own style while performing these tasks and change it periodically to always enjoy it! And remember, the journey is just as important as the destination.
And here we are at the end of the article. I hope you enjoyed it. Don’t forget to save it and share it with your friends if you found it helpful. Let us know your thoughts in the comments, as well as your previous experiences in entering the flow state.
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