What is a Flow State - And Should You Be Tapping Into Yours?

How can we, as creatives, streamline our mindsets to focus solely on one task?

For many it may come easy, but more often than not - there are too many thoughts, or ideas up there going on, distracting from the task at hand. I didn’t write for God knows how many years. I found it hugely difficult to sit down and get down a thought, plot or an extract of a ‘to never me completed’ chapter, without overthinking the words on the paper.

Luckily, during my wonderfully insightful degree during my strangely insightful time at university, I was introduced to that of the Flow State - and a handful of other great tricks stemming from it.

What is a flow state?

Everybody has heard of the saying ‘getting into the flow of things’ - and this is just that.

Being in a cognitive state of ‘flow’, is essentially when one is directing their complete attention and focus to a singular task or activity,

The concept of being in ‘flow’ comes from areas of positive psychology, often overlapping with ideas surrounding mindfulness - the term was introduced back in the 70’s (could’ve guessed), by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi.

How, as a writer , can i enter a flow state?

Tapping into your flow state as writer can be massively beneficial to both your professional practice, and your personal prose.

Here are a few ways you can get into the ‘flow’ of things:

• Write a timed journal : Set aside ten minutes for yourself, in a quiet space with no distractions, and give yourself a topic. The topic could be anything - but don’t make it a whole task create.

  Here are a few I use :

  How did you feel about yesterday? What are your plans for today? What’s a childhood memory you treasure most? Tell me what your dream future looks like? Walk me through your future home - what do you envision?

  Once you have chosen a topic, set the timer for ten minutes and don’t lift your pen of the page! Because you have allocated yourself such a short window to answer such a big question, you will feel driven to get as much down as possible - make sure you write with intention. Once the time is up, you’ll be in the writing zone…

• Don’t overwhelm yourself… Avoid loosing the joy that writing brings you by stopping putting so much pressure on yourself.

• Create a writing ritual : Be it setting up your sacred space, using a special pen - or even wearing a specific pair of socks, create a ritual that you associate with your writing practice.

• Stop mid flow! Keep that excitement by setting a cut off point. Leave your station where you can be raring and ready to pick up from!

The above are my personal favourite ways of tapping into my writing flow, but of course there are many other ways to do so - it’s up to you to find a remedy that suits you best…