Picture someone who sits down to draw at seven and looks up at ten. Three hours have gone and they did not notice. Nothing interrupted. This state has a name, flow, given to it in 1975 by a psychologist, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. It means attention held by one thing so fully that time goes quiet.
Hard enough→Clear next step→No switch→Flow
Flow needs three things, in this course's words. A task hard enough to need the whole beam. A clear sense of what the next step is. And time with no switch in it, because every switch sends the beam away and it has to find its place again, which lesson 1 counted.
A hard guitar piecephone off
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A feedan hour
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A film and messages
Which of these can a person be in flow doing?
Watching a film while answering messages.
Not yet. Two things that need thought take turns, from lesson 1. Flow needs the beam in one place.
Scrolling a feed for an hour.
Not yet. No clear next step, and nothing hard enough to hold the whole beam. Time passing is not flow. A feed takes attention; it does not hold it.
Learning a hard piece on the guitar, with the phone off.
Right. Hard enough, a clear next bar, no switches. All three conditions are there.
Work
↓→
Interrupted
↓→
How long?
↓→
Back to it
In 2005 Gloria Mark's team shadowed office workers with stopwatches and timed what happened when a piece of work was interrupted by a call, a colleague or a message. They measured how long passed before the person got back to the piece they had left. In between, they did on average about two other things.
Slide the marker to your guess. In that 2005 study, how many minutes passed before interrupted work was picked up again?
Slide the marker to where you think the answer is, then press Lock. Nothing is scored.
1234
your guess · 0 min
the answer · 25 min
0 min30 min60 min
100 min
22020 min
34040 min
46060 min
Your guess: —
About twenty-five minutes, and that counts only the work picked up again the same day; some was not. The interruption itself takes a moment. Getting back takes about twenty-five minutes, with other things done in between.
Picture an hour of deep work. Each interruption costs the way back: ten made-up minutes, more than lesson 1's one minute, because an interruption drags you into other things first. Move the interruptions and watch the deep minutes left.
Deep minutes60 minutes, made up
Finding the way back0 minutes, made up
Interruptions in the hour: None
No interruptions: sixty deep minutes. This is the hour flow needs.
Deep minutes40 minutes, made up
Finding the way back20 minutes, made up
Interruptions in the hour: Two
Two interruptions, twenty minutes finding the way back: forty deep minutes.
Deep minutes20 minutes, made up
Finding the way back40 minutes, made up
Interruptions in the hour: Four
Four interruptions: the hour is two thirds way-back and one third work.
Deep minutes0 minutes, made up
Finding the way back60 minutes, made up
Interruptions in the hour: Six
Six interruptions, one every ten minutes: the whole hour is spent getting back to where the work was.
How many interruptions an hour leave less than half the hour for deep work?
Two.
Not yet. Two cost twenty minutes and leave forty, which is more than half. The frames show the half-way line falling between two and four.
Even one. An interruption ruins the hour.
Not yet. One costs ten minutes in this rule and leaves fifty. The cost is real and it adds up; it does not take the whole hour at once.
Four or more.
Right. Four way-backs at ten minutes each is forty minutes gone and twenty left. With Mark's twenty-five minutes instead of ten, two would already do it.
Move the control.
With the leverswitches
vsvs
Without itflow possible
Silence, read as mechanism, is an hour with no switch in it. An hour with the phone in another room has neither the lever from lesson 2 nor the cue from lesson 3 in it. Neither is a virtue. They are the conditions flow needs, and they are made by taking things away.
Each card is a way of spending an hour. Can flow happen in it?
One card at a time. Tap the pile it belongs to.
Card 1 of 6
Writing a story with notifications off
Writing the same story with the phone face up and buzzing
Running a hard route you know, with no music and no phone
Coding with a chat window open on the second screen
Cooking a hard recipe for the first time, phone in the other room
Watching short videos
Writing a story with notifications off → Flow possible
Not yet. Possible. Hard enough, a next sentence to find, and no switch in the hour.
Writing the same story with the phone face up and buzzing → Not in this hour
Not yet. Not this hour. Every buzz is a switch, and each one costs the way back. The task is the same; the hour is not.
Running a hard route you know, with no music and no phone → Flow possible
Not yet. Possible. The effort holds the beam, the route gives the next step, and nothing interrupts.
Coding with a chat window open on the second screen → Not in this hour
Not yet. Not this hour. The chat is a lever that pays sometimes, and each glance is a switch out of the code.
Cooking a hard recipe for the first time, phone in the other room → Flow possible
Not yet. Possible. New, hard, the recipe says what comes next, and nothing in the kitchen switches the beam away.
Watching short videos → Not in this hour
Not yet. Not this hour. Nothing holds the beam for more than a clip, and every clip is a switch.
3Flow possible
vsvs
3Not this hour
Right. Three and three. The test is not the activity; writing appears on both sides. It is whether the hour has switches in it.
Phones in a boxtwo hours
↓→
A roomno switches
A library opens a room where phones are locked in a box at the door for two hours. Using this lesson, what does the box provide?
Two hours with no switch in them: the condition flow needs, made by taking one thing away.
Right. The box removes the lever and the cue for two hours. What is left is the quiet an hour of deep work needs.
Nothing a person could not do by not looking.
Not yet. They could, and the lever from lesson 2 makes that hard. The box removes the lever instead of asking the person to resist it.
A punishment for using phones.
Not yet. Nobody is told off and nothing is judged. A thing is removed, and the hours that follow have no switches in them.
Lesson complete
Flow needs a hard task, a clear next step and an hour with no switch in it.