Get more sh*t done every day

Life doesn’t need to slow down.

Your mind does.

Time seems to be elastic these days.

Some days feel like an entire week compressed into 24 hours, while others vanish in a blink. On days when I wake up to write early, it often feels like I live 2-3 different lives in a single day.

Maybe you’ve experienced this from time to time. Have you ever found yourself so absorbed in something that the world fades away? You dive in, and next thing you know, hours have gone by and you hardly even noticed?

This is what psychologists call "flow state," the peak of consciousness where we feel and perform at our best. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, the founder of flow psychology and author of an upcoming book on my TBR, Flow, describes it as the merging of action (what we are doing) and awareness (what we are paying attention to). It's that state of complete concentration where time bends, and we feel a sense of effortless control.

There are 22 “triggers” that can increase the likelihood of entering a flow state, and I may write a future newsletter on the phenomenological breakdown of flow, but the "Golden Rule" is this: We pay the most attention when the challenge only slightly exceeds our current skill set.

When I first learned about flow, I wasn’t sure what to make of it. It sounded like this mystical, elusive state or an otherworldly “woo-woo” experience that maybe held some anecdotal evidence, like telepathy, but not necessarily practically attainable. But the truth is, artists, musicians, philosophers, scientists, writers, and athletes have been chasing this state for centuries. They speak of a place where mind and body synchronize, acting without much conscious direction or input, and unlocking abilities far beyond the norm. Csikszentmihalyi recognized this pattern in the 1970s and created an entirely new branch of psychology.

What he and his successors confirm is that flow is a skill that, like shooting free throws, can be practiced and mastered. It can be learned and honed through practice: experience —> understanding —> automatic replication.

Think of language acquisition. As children, we babble and experiment with sounds long before we understand grammar and punctuation. This is why young children can engage in conversations. We learn by doing, by feeling the language in our mouths, and only later do we attach logic and structure.

Music is the same.

(As a brief aside, the more I reflect on my experiences with music, the more aware I become of the intricate links between the art and metaphysical concepts like flow and presence.)

I know most of you have probably never sat in front of a pipe organ or even witnessed its full power first-hand, but bear with me because this is going somewhere.

Let’s start with something you’re probably more familiar with: the piano. The piano has one keyboard with 88 keys and 3 foot pedals (that don’t actually make new sounds, just change the sounds of the keys up top). Your hands move left to right across the keyboard and you press keys straight down and that’s pretty much it in terms of the mechanics of how to play the instrument.

Compare that to the organ. Most organs have at least two separate keyboards for your hands and an entire keyboard of foot pedals. Some organs, like the largest in the world in Atlantic City, have 7 separate keyboards just for your hands!

If that weren’t enough, most instruments produce one characteristic sound and the only real alterations you can make are in articulation (how each note is played) and dynamics (how loud or soft the sound is). With piano, this is relatively simple. If you press a key with great force and release it quickly, you get a loud, short sound. However, no matter what you do, it will still sound like a piano, and any piano in the world will, more or less, sound the same.

The organ, however, has multiple stops (all of those switches you see flanking the keyboards in the image above) that fundamentally change how the instrument sounds. Some stops mimic the sound of other instruments, like the oboe and bassoon, while others imitate the sound of the human voice (vox humana) or even percussion instruments. Theater organs can have all manner of bells, whistles, slapsticks, and practically anything else you can think of.

Playing the organ demands coordinating multiple keyboards for your hands, alongside a keyboard of foot pedals (played with your heels and toes of each foot). Beyond the mechanics, you must also learn how to select and combine different stops that change the sound.

Oh, and did I mention that each stop has an English, French, German, and Italian name and there’s no rhyme or reason to how a stop gets named?

Curious to see the organ in action? Watch this video of arguably the most famous piece of organ music ever written, Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D Minor performed on the largest instrument in the world.

You can also learn more about how the organ actually works and its wide array of capabilities from Anna Lapwood in this video.

Each organ is completely unique in color pallet and nomenclature further complicating the playing process. When giving a recital, part of the organist’s preparation is in registration, deciding which stops to pull to get the exact sound they’re looking for on that specific instrument - a process that can take hours beyond just practicing the actual music.

If your mind is boggled just reading that, try sitting down to play it! Even simple scores have a separate line for your right and left hands and feet. If you try to focus on every element, every note on the page, your mind overloads, and the music falls apart.

To succeed, you have to release something, and practice therefore becomes the art of discovering what you need to pay attention to.

This, my dear readers, is how life works.

Too often we get caught in the trap of trying to manage everything, juggling a million tabs in our minds until focus shatters.

Maybe you’re feeling like you have a million things to do every day and somehow none of it gets done. Have you ever used phrases like “I’m up to my eyeballs in work” or “so busy I can’t see straight?”

These are signs that you’re crashing and burning while playing a Bach fugue. You are too busy thinking about everything that you actually end up focusing on nothing.

In tennis, you have one focus and the goal is simple: hit the ball over the net, inside the court, one more time than your opponent. Nothing else matters. You don’t get points for looks or finesse. Focus singular.

The same is true in music and in life.

Maybe your daily to-do includes a laundry list of 15 high priority tasks. You jot them down, put sticky notes everywhere, and set reminders in your phone to get it all done.

On the surface, it's chaos. How do you actually accomplish it all?

Focus.

If your mind is racing with item #15 while you're stuck on item #3, nothing gets your full attention.

Our days are lives in miniature, a continual dance between focus and release. Yoga is focus on the body and a release of tension. Meditation links a focus on breath to a release of thought. Music is discernment of focus and release.

Focus isn't about bearing down and building mental concrete walls. The moment you build those walls, the monkey mind, as the Buddhists say, tries to climb them and escape.

True focus is releasing what's not needed.

As you move through your day, notice what's clouding and clogging your mind. Can you release it? Literally say, "This thought isn't helping me right now, so I release it," or, "I'm working on X; I'm releasing Y." When the distraction returns, release it again. And again. And again.

This is how you cultivate and hone flow. It is the optimal state of focus where we amplify the results of our action beyond reason.

Here’s how you can experience flow this week:

1. Identify a Challenge: Pick a task that stretches your abilities, but isn't overwhelming.

2. Eliminate Distractions: Silence your phone, close unnecessary tabs, and create a quiet, intentional space.

3. Set a Clear Goal: Define how long you are working, what you want to achieve, and what your success criteria are.

4. Focus Intently: Give the task your undivided attention, letting go of other thoughts. Anytime something else comes up, acknowledge it with the recognition that it can wait.

5. Experiment and Pivot: Pay attention to how you feel and adjust your approach as needed. Try different combinations of activities to set your mind towards flow. For me, I go for a short walk outside to get the thoughts going and I play a “Concentration” playlist while I work.

If you're ready to dive deep into accessing your flow state and transforming your work into intentional, deep work that propels you forward, let’s talk. In one hour, we will identify the "leaks" in your focus and how to get you into a flow state whenever you need it. Click below to schedule your session, and let's optimize your focus, productivity, and well-being.

Until next time, live uninterrupted.

~Coleman

If you’re interested in learning more about flow, here is a great video breaking it down further.