"You looked so locked-in, and we could only see half of your face, so... we weren't sure if it was you or not."
I was sitting at a table against the wall of this coffee shop called Speeder's, making a few tweaks to some web design for a client meeting later in the morning. Unbeknownst to me, I was being watched. More accurately, I was being analyzed. A couple friends were trying to determine if I was the hunched-over guy staring intently at his laptop. Apparently, this guy was holding his coffee mug in mid-air, frozen in that awkward spot between taking a sip and setting it down. But he was too preoccupied to notice.
Surprise! Guess who?!
Yep, it was me. And I can't fault their logic one bit.
"We ultimately decided that, since this mustached guy in a hoodie was so immersed in something like that at 7:30am, it had to be you."
Since their guess was correct, we got to spend a few minutes catching up. But as they left, I couldn't stop thinking about how focused I must've looked for them to hesitate so much before coming over. As someone with ADHD, I used to think focusing took luck. It doesn't. I thought finding flow state was like finding bigfoot. It isn't. Which is why, coffee hanging mid-air again, I thought back on how learning to create flow state had felt like learning to surf.
Now, I'm not very good at surfing (yet), but surfing's a much better metaphor here than snowboarding, which I am good at. Before you can surf a wave, you have to paddle out past the "break", or the place just off the shore where waves form and crash. It's hard work. Then, once you're there, you need to learn how to time the swell, paddle, and stand up on your board. Once you've done all that, you have to ride the wave. The trick is to aim for where you want to be, but to act from where you are.
So, this morning at Speeder's, I'd read my book before opening my laptop. Then I journaled. Once I began working, I pulled up the web design project with the goal of fixing one word on one page the client had provided feedback for. After that, I focused solely on the next thing on my to-do list. Again and again. Before I knew it, I was so focused that I was hard to recognize.
When finding your flow state, what's the first thing you aim for? Does your first step point in the right direction?
onward.
-dmac