Your coffee has gone cold. You forgot it’s lunch time. You’ve missed a call from your mom and a hilariously pointed meme from your best friend. Your noise canceling headphones sit snugly around your head, and your stream of consciousness seems to have stopped dead in its tracks.
You’ve been in a flow state.
Everything feels as though it has slowed down as the work melts from your mind to your fingertips.
It can be difficult to achieve with the world spinning around us. The dog needs to be walked, or we head out with colleagues for an impromptu coffee break. But, a flow state is not an improbable moment that can’t be predicted. In fact, it can be a formulaic part of daily routine.
Abigail Hodge, a software engineer at BookBub, sees flow state like flossing: It’s a habit that can be cultivated and honed.
For Alex Batchelor, director of data at Tamr, flow is a feeling, and it’s one that she treasures.
“Feeling flowy is one of my favorite things and one of the main reasons that I’m in engineering,” Batchelor said. “A flow state is my most creative and productive state.”
When Batchelor was writing code, her work lended itself to going with the flow. Now, as a manager, she tries to bring out the flow in her team by setting them up for success before they even sit down to solve a problem.
Built In Boston sat down with Batchelor and Hodge to find out what their flow states look like and learn their advice to get in the zone, even in a fast-paced, distraction-filled environment.
Tamr is a data mastering platform that provides data product templates so customers can organize their data into datasets. Its SaaS and cloud-native solutions use artificial intelligence, machine learning and human curation to consolidate data.
What does your flow state look like?
Engineering work, and coding in particular, lends itself to feeling flow because it requires deep concentration, remembering a lot of information and constantly solving problems. Engineers solve big problems by working on a series of smaller problems, so there’s a sense of flow built into the structure of the work. Now that I’m in engineering management, I’m exploring other types of work where I feel flowy, like writing and editing or a really good planning session. It’s important that managers have time to get into flow states because a good company requires deep thought.
A good company requires deep thought.’’
How do you personally get into a flow state?
I now spend most of my time helping my team achieve flow states rather than trying to achieve them myself. Personally, I only get in the flow if I’ve slept and exercised enough to feel relaxed and energized. I encourage my team to prioritize self care. Even once the fundamentals are in place, there are only certain tasks where someone will feel flow — tasks that are challenging enough to be engaging but not too challenging to be a blocker. I assign projects that are just the right level of challenging, and I try to remove blockers.
Feeling motivated is a necessary ingredient for flow states. I always explain why a project is important to the company so that my team understands why their work is worthwhile.
What tips or advice do you have for others who might be struggling to get in the zone?
Last year, I received one of the best pieces of advice: You need at least 90 minutes of free time to get into a flow state. That changed the way I work. When I only have 30 minutes between meetings, I do not try to finish something that requires deep concentration. Instead, I focus on smaller tasks, such as sending emails or merging PRs. To ensure I still get that flowy time, I block off 90-minute chunks on my calendar at the beginning of the week and try to schedule all my meetings in one continuous block of time.
BookBub’s products connect readers with expertly curated recommendations for e-books and audiobooks they’ll love.
What does your flow state look like?
Flow state is working on a specific problem for a long period of time — usually several hours — without the distractions of secondary tasks, meetings or a beeping phone. At BookBub, we have useful cultural tools that help enable flow state within the engineering department. We have a designated meeting-free day every week and a general dearth of the dreaded “this could have been an email” meeting. Beyond that, it’s up to individual engineers to figure out what helps them get into flow state, or if flow state is even a useful tool for their work style. Personally, I find flow state helpful if I’m working on a large, complicated project, but less helpful if I’m bouncing between smaller tasks. Starting a flow state session is usually a deliberate choice for me rather than something that just happens. I take purposeful steps to minimize distractions and make sure I have a coffee and my favorite playlist on hand so that I don’t have a reason to step away from my desk and lose my train of thought.
We have useful cultural tools that help enable flow state within the engineering department.’’
How do you personally get into a flow state?
A few months ago, I watched a helpful video about habit-building, which discusses why building a new habit is hard and how to make it easier. To me, flow state is a habit just like any other. It’s the habit of working without distractions. Following some of the techniques recommended in this video has really improved my ability to get into and stay in flow state. The most important method for me is to trick my brain using a trigger, a set of inputs, like sitting down at my desk, muting my phone and lighting a candle, that always results in the same action: working for at least a few hours without getting distracted. Consistency is important here. I always use the same set of inputs as my trigger to go into flow state, and I don’t let myself start scrolling in my designated work area. After a few weeks of doing this consciously, the habit took over, and now it’s actually pretty difficult for me to get distracted after performing the trigger actions.
