Steven Kotler, New York Times bestselling author, award-winning journalist, and the Executive Director of the Flow Research Collective, explains the mechanics of getting our biology to work for us rather than against us, the advantages of transitioning from a journalist to a scientist, how to trigger a state of flow, how cell phones are dumbing down our neurobiology, how to be 1,000% more productive in 2 days, why “flow” is not just for athletes and artists, the most common flow state on earth that every one of us has experienced every week, what Buddhists, nuns, and surfers have in common, why struggle and frustration are necessary to achieve flow and extraordinary = average + repetition, and finding moments where the impossible become possible.
Okay, so I have to ask this is just totally random. It's got nothing to do with
Stephanie Maas:anything. So on your chair, is that a blanket?
Steven Kotler:It is a blanket.
Stephanie Maas:Is it to protect the chair?
Steven Kotler:It's literally to protect the chair, mainly because my dog. Well, the dog who's
Steven Kotler:in the office with me is 120 pounds. He's very big. His claws are significant. And he will at
Steven Kotler:least once a day come over, like try to pull me and he destroyed the previous desk chair. So I've
Steven Kotler:learned.
Stephanie Maas:Okay, well, so you want to actually dive into some things?
Steven Kotler:I'll go wherever you guys want to go.
Stephanie Maas:Rockin. Okay, one of the things I think's worth noting is in your group of advisors,
Stephanie Maas:you have 14 advisors on your website, 11 of the 14 are doctors. And a lot of what you focus on is not
Stephanie Maas:just these concepts, and the research that you've done to prove them, put them into action hone
Stephanie Maas:them, whatever is they are backed by this idea of science, medicine.
Steven Kotler:Okay. So at the heart of most of my career, as a first journalist than as an author of
Steven Kotler:writing books about these topics. Then, as a neuroscientist leading international team of
Steven Kotler:researchers into these topics, the progression has been focused on peak human performance. And by
Steven Kotler:peak human performance, I only mean getting our biology to work for us rather than against us.
Steven Kotler:That's all the definition of peak performance is it's getting our biology to work for us rather
Steven Kotler:than against us. And at the heart of that biology at the heart of my work is a state of
Steven Kotler:consciousness, known to researchers as low, you may call it runner's high or being in the zone or
Steven Kotler:you play basketball as being unconscious, you're a jazz musician, you're in the pocket, the lingo is
Steven Kotler:endless. Flow is technically defined as an optimal state of consciousness, a state of consciousness
Steven Kotler:where we feel our best and we perform our best, more specifically refers to any of those moments
Steven Kotler:that we're all familiar with rapt attention, total absorption just gets so focused on the task at
Steven Kotler:hand, so focused on what you're doing that everything else just starts to melt away and
Steven Kotler:disappear. Sense itself self consciousness, the inner critic voice in your head that's always on,
Steven Kotler:it's always telling you, you're too fat, too dumb, too ugly, right? It shuts up. Finally, thank God,
Steven Kotler:time passes strangely, most commonly, just get so sucked into what you're doing that five hours go
Steven Kotler:by, and like five minutes. Occasionally, sometimes it's slow, it'll slow down, you're gonna freeze
Steven Kotler:for impact. And throughout all aspects of performance, both mental and physical, go to the
Steven Kotler:roof. So at the flow research collective, what we do is we study, I'll tell you about why this is
Steven Kotler:the answer to like the science questions, the neurobiology of peak human performance, what's
Steven Kotler:going on in the brain and the body when people are performing at their very best, and flow is a big
Steven Kotler:part of that equation. So the reason, there's so many sort of neuroscientists on my board and that
Steven Kotler:sort of stuff, and the reason we do all this work is this psychology of flow, which was very well
Steven Kotler:established over the course of the 20th century, but the end of the 20th century, they were
Steven Kotler:starting to train people using the psychology. And the problem with training from psychology is
Steven Kotler:psychology is very, very individual. Right? It's shaped by nurtured, shaped by nature, and really
Steven Kotler:fundamental things to peak performance. Like, where are you on the introversion extroversion
Steven Kotler:scale, meaning like, if you're super introverted, I can't teach you anything if there are other
Steven Kotler:people around because you're handicapped, right? Those kinds of things, where what are your risk
Steven Kotler:tolerance is like, and what are they like in different situations, right? People have one level
Steven Kotler:of physical risk tolerance and other level of emotional risk tolerance or sexual or
Steven Kotler:intellectual, take your pick, right? Those are very individual psychology is very individual. But
Steven Kotler:if you go one level down, you go to the neurobiology, neurobiology is shaped by evolution
Steven Kotler:and its constant volume. And so if you're looking to make things reliable, and repeatable
Steven Kotler:neurobiology is your tool. I got very lucky in my career, I started as a journalist, and I was
Steven Kotler:interested in interesting performance. I was also interested in neuroscience, it was a language I
Steven Kotler:sort of spoke, and I probably the psychology I always felt like when I was trying to just improve
Steven Kotler:myself as a writer, as an athlete, as a whatever, I was getting so confused, and they're decent
Steven Kotler:things. nitpicking arguments over crazy little details. And I'm like, none of this is practical.
Steven Kotler:I don't know what to do with this. And when I got into the neurobiology and figured out you could
Steven Kotler:train from it, it really worked. And we, you know, at the flow research collective, teamed up with
Steven Kotler:folks at Stanford and USC, and UCLA and et cetera, et cetera, and study that neurobiology that stuff
Steven Kotler:and then we use it to train people in 103. Ready countries, which are intensive 1000s of people
Steven Kotler:every month. And this is everything from like just individuals, right? Soccer moms and soccer, dads
Steven Kotler:and insurance brokers and you know, podcasters, and take your pick all the way to professional
Steven Kotler:athletes, members, Special Forces, and then companies or with like Facebook or center
Steven Kotler:audience, blah, blah. The point I'm trying to make is wildly diverse group of people. It's an intense
Steven Kotler:training, you go through with it like a PhD psychologist, as a coach, we see us a 70 80%
Steven Kotler:increase in flow on the back end. And the reason I'm telling you all this stuff is the reason you
Steven Kotler:see so many doctors The reason the neurobiology matters so much as we want this liable and
Steven Kotler:repeating over anyone, anywhere. That's the benefit of all the science. And we're also really
Steven Kotler:big fans of the collective of what I like to call cognitive literacy. If you are interested in V
Steven Kotler:performance, understand what's going on in your brain in your body, when you're actually
Steven Kotler:performing at your best. You're just I'm just arming you with information, right? Like, it's
Steven Kotler:really important to us. And you can actually, it's also fun to teach people neuroscience, because
Steven Kotler:most people think neuroscience is an incredibly difficult thing that they're never going to be
Steven Kotler:able to learn and it's scary and all that stuff. And so it's very empowering to people not only
Steven Kotler:like when you start, you know, hey, this is how your brain works. And people start getting it
Steven Kotler:using neuroscience, this thing that they didn't think they could learn to actually massively
Steven Kotler:improve their performance on a day to day basis. It's a very sort of empowering to watch people go,
Steven Kotler:Oh, my God, I can learn something like this. And I can use it. And I can, you know, impact by day to
Steven Kotler:day life. It's cool. When I came into flow signs, my goal was to put it on a hard science footing.
Steven Kotler:This is what I wanted to do with my life. Because I came in as a journalist, I didn't specialize
Steven Kotler:when I first started looking at the puzzle. And people were having trouble solving. And I was
Steven Kotler:like, that's because the answers are in all these different disciplines. And scientists don't talk
Steven Kotler:to one another. They're like everybody else, they're balkanized in their disciplines, and
Steven Kotler:people don't actually realize how like even neuroscience how balkanized it is into like tiny
Steven Kotler:micro disciplines, and they don't talk to each other, they talk to journalists, who talk to
Steven Kotler:everybody, or, you know, now in our approach, we take a very multidisciplinary approach to
Steven Kotler:neuroscience for this very reason, because I want people from all these different disciplines, so
Steven Kotler:people who don't think like me, people who have wildly outside perspectives, who can, you know,
Steven Kotler:come hammer on my ideas, our ideas, and our research and all that stuff. So long answer.
Stephanie Maas:You commented on something in there, I think is super true. You mentioned the
Stephanie Maas:idea of this biology, neuroscience. You know, some people just have fears around it. I think a lot of
Stephanie Maas:it's intimidation, you know, it just seems so foreign. It's almost like it's so language. So
Stephanie Maas:specifically, when you talk about, hey, getting our biology to work for us, not against us, can
Stephanie Maas:you put some legs under that table for me.
Steven Kotler:Let me give you a bunch of really simple examples. So flow states have triggers,
Steven Kotler:preconditions that lead in more flow, you will more flow in your life triggers or your toolkit,
Steven Kotler:there are 26 known triggers, there are probably way more, that's just what we've discovered. So
Steven Kotler:far, they all have one thing calm, flow can only show up when all of our attention is in the right
Steven Kotler:here, the right now on the task at hand. That's what all the triggers do. They were a bunch of
Steven Kotler:different ways neurobiologically, but they drive our attention into the now on to the task at hand.
Steven Kotler:So this tells you that one of the first triggers the most obvious trigger is complete
Steven Kotler:concentration. So when we train this, some of how we teach people about concentration is manicuring.
Steven Kotler:The environment, part of our biology is that we have a salience detection system, when novelty
Steven Kotler:shows up in the world, we notice it, right, this kept us alive. The problem is, we have cell phones
Steven Kotler:that are literally designed to abuse this, right. They've been built, designed to resemble slot
Steven Kotler:machines and how they try to get your attention. They use novelty to try to get your attention. We
Steven Kotler:are not more powerful than this is hardwired biology, we're not going to win that fight. So we
Steven Kotler:teach people to practice distraction management, turn everything off ahead of time, right? Manicure
Steven Kotler:the space because you're not your biology is going to win, you're not going to win this war, you
Steven Kotler:literally are not going to win this war. How long should you completely concentrate on the task at
Steven Kotler:hand? There's another question, right? And there's an actual precise answer to this. You gotta start
Steven Kotler:by starting right. If you can get 10 minutes, 20 minutes, 30 minutes, it's fine. And let me
Steven Kotler:emphasize something here. When we talk about flow is peak performance. One of the things that goes
Steven Kotler:through the roof is productivity. And we know this so McKinsey giant business consultancy went around
Steven Kotler:the globe, they spent 10 years trying to figure out how much more productive executives are in
Steven Kotler:flow than out of flow, on average was 500% more productive. So this means you get to work on
Steven Kotler:Mondays, but Monday in a flow state to Tuesday through Friday off, you get as much done as your
Steven Kotler:steady state peers two days a week in flow old days, which is difficult, but you're 1,000% more
Steven Kotler:productive than the competition's huge boost in productivity, okay. So you will get time back for
Steven Kotler:your life by I've manicuring a space for complete concentration. I'm asking you for time, we're all
Steven Kotler:busy, right? Everybody is busy, you're gonna end up being so productive in this time that you'll
Steven Kotler:end up with getting time back. But research shows that you want 90 minutes to 110 minutes for
Steven Kotler:complete concentration. Why 90 To 110 minutes? Well, it turns out, as I said, you want to start
Steven Kotler:by starting, you get 10, if you can get 20. But the brain has a built in focusing slot, that's
Steven Kotler:nine out of 10 minutes long. Well, that's weird. No, it's not. Why because we know we go through
Steven Kotler:sleep cycles, sleeping cycles, they're 90 to 110 minutes long, that's a REM cycle, that's a full
Steven Kotler:sleep cycle, just like we have a sleep cycle, we have a focus wake alert cycle, it's the same line.
Steven Kotler:So it turns out that as you train yourself to kind of focus and Biller, it's very easy to build up to
Steven Kotler:this 19 or 20 minutes, you have to get longer, there's all kinds of stuff you have to kind of
Steven Kotler:sort of do to extend beyond that. But to learn how to focus that long, it sort of built in. So these
Steven Kotler:are just simple flow examples of getting our biology work for us, rather than against us.
Steven Kotler:Another one is you want to start your work session, your complete concentration session. And
Steven Kotler:of course, with your circadian rhythms. This is a no Duff for most people. But like, I wake up at
Steven Kotler:four o'clock in the morning, that's when my brain does its best work. I'm married to a night owl,
Steven Kotler:we're all a little bit different. And if you can, if your job permits it, you want to start your
Steven Kotler:work session in accordance with your circadian rhythms, practicing distraction management on the
Steven Kotler:front end, and with this 90 minute slot.
Stephanie Maas:Fantastic examples and super relevant, which brings me to another thought. And
Stephanie Maas:I think based on your tenure in this industry, it seems like please correct me if I'm wrong, it
Stephanie Maas:seems like in the beginning, there was so much of this studied around especially athletes, you know,
Stephanie Maas:really getting them to get to the next level. And then I would say over the last 30 years, maybe...
Steven Kotler:It was athletes, and it was artists, and the fault lies with both myself and
Steven Kotler:were probably the two great popularizers of flow ideas. And Mike checks me I started out as an
Steven Kotler:studying rock climbers in his initial study group, and he dancers and artists. And so that got into
Steven Kotler:the literature. And then I made it worse because I wrote it on about athletes and flow. And when we
Steven Kotler:heard about it the most, it was also, like Jimmie Johnson in the 90s co opted chicks and the idea to
Steven Kotler:bring the Dallas Cowboys a couple of Super Bowl victories and got a lot of attention. A couple
Steven Kotler:other things happen in sports. So like, it got the attention. But you're absolutely right. In fact,
Steven Kotler:if you go back to the early research on flow, early research, who gets the most flow? In the
Steven Kotler:early research, there were two things that showed up. One most common flow state on Earth is reading
Steven Kotler:period. So reading is the most conflict in earth. And let me give it let me take it a second one
Steven Kotler:because this is even crazier. Is it going to the bathroom? No. Flow examples, these will say, like
Steven Kotler:I meet people on you know about airports, they're like, oh, yeah, the executive director, the flow
Steven Kotler:research collective, we're obviously an organization of plumbers. So okay, bad joke is
Steven Kotler:side. Second most common flow said in this early research, I don't know if it's still true. So
Steven Kotler:there's two versions of the flow, there's individual flow me and a flow state you and a flow
Steven Kotler:state or this group flow, it's a shared collective virtual flow state could be interpersonal flow to
Steven Kotler:people lost in a great conversation, group flow to flow fourth quarter comeback in basketball, or
Steven Kotler:football, or a great rock concert band is totally comes together, or Communitas. This is flow, it
Steven Kotler:scales huge when you go to a rock concert, and everybody merges with the music near all clapping
Steven Kotler:and sank. And that's Communitas. Right? It's float scale. So the most common besides reading is
Steven Kotler:interpersonal flow to middle managers in an office environment, have a conversation at work, they get
Steven Kotler:so sucked into the conversation that a couple hours go by. So neither of those examples, as you
Steven Kotler:can imagine, involve artists or athletes. And it was so hard until we got a language around into
Steven Kotler:that all the neurobiology until all this stuff came up. You know, whose flow mystical experience
Steven Kotler:was. I mean, that was the first question. I looked at it my very first book on flow. I was talking to
Steven Kotler:surfers, and they kept saying yeah, every time I'm in a tube, I become one with the ocean. I just one
Steven Kotler:with the ocean, which like, that just sounds like a wild ass Misool experience. And today we can
Steven Kotler:talk about these things out loud. Go back to the 80s and 90s and try talking about like, among
Steven Kotler:serious people, right? You're just gonna get laughed out of the room. But Dr. Andrew Newberg,
Steven Kotler:my first mentor had just done the very first brain imaging to image Tibetan Buddhists and Franciscan
Steven Kotler:nuns during ecstatic meditation when they felt the nones would feel one with Jesus and the Buddhists
Steven Kotler:were one with the universe. And I called him because I saw his research I registration was
Steven Kotler:like, dude, am I what we're seeing with the surfers in this like state that I think we're
Steven Kotler:calling flow is that the same thing is going on? And he to his amazing credit, said, Well, I don't
Steven Kotler:know, but it sure sounds similar. So let's find out together. And that was my sort of gateway. It
Steven Kotler:wasn't just that I was curious about this and I was working on this stuff he was that one of the
Steven Kotler:best neuroscientists in the world said, I don't know. But that's a good question. And I'll help
Steven Kotler:you figure it out. And so that was sort of how all this started. But it was really in the beginning,
Steven Kotler:it was really complicated to try to be looking at mystical experiences, are we looking at biological
Steven Kotler:experiences, or the psychological of what's going on? Not all these were questions that were have
Steven Kotler:been answered over the past 30 years, but 30 years ago, when I got started, we didn't have a clue. As
Steven Kotler:to scientists, we spent the 90s. With a whole community of people, we had to prove that
Steven Kotler:spiritual experiences were good for people before anybody would take this seriously. So there's all
Steven Kotler:these studies that go back to the 90s that discovered religious affiliation produces health
Steven Kotler:and longevity. And you know, now we know why and where that comes from, and everything else. But
Steven Kotler:literally, like there's tons of studies where you had to in the 90s, you act before anybody size
Steven Kotler:would take it seriously had to prove that like spirituality, mysticism, immune flow was good for
Steven Kotler:people before you even take it seriously. So it's been a long, slow kind of process.
Stephanie Maas:But I think what is so great, though, yes, but your process to it, and the way
Stephanie Maas:you've done your research, legitimizes it. And I think that's where you get this buy in? I mean,
Stephanie Maas:one, I think human curiosity, people start looking for it.
Steven Kotler:It was also really important to me, you can't do peak performance without flow you
Steven Kotler:cannot like, so if you're at the top of your field, I don't care what your field is, if your
Steven Kotler:top 30%, for example, you're doing this stuff, like I've spent my career around the world with
Steven Kotler:the most exceptional, extraordinary people who've done the impossible, right? That was my focus as a
Steven Kotler:journalist, is those moments in time where impossible game possible? How did it happen? Flow
Steven Kotler:is always part of the equation. So I bet all these people who have done the extraordinary, none of
Steven Kotler:them, not any of them started out extraordinary. Scary. I like you and me. They're average people,
Steven Kotler:what they figured out is how their biology work. And they did it over and over and over and over
Steven Kotler:again. And across the boards across the boards. This is true with every everybody I've met. And I
Steven Kotler:say that I went out of my way, for three and a half decades to meet the most extraordinary people
Steven Kotler:on the planet. It was my job. And so I did it for a living for a really long time. Who are you? What
Steven Kotler:did you do? How did you do it? I started to realize I was like, Well, wait a minute, these
Steven Kotler:people are just like us. So I want I want flow, I want to bring it into the mainstream. I want
Steven Kotler:everybody to have access to this. Because a world where we're all performing at our best. The other
Steven Kotler:thing they said of this is when we're in flow state automatically expands empathy and
Steven Kotler:environmental awareness. We could talk about why that happens if you want, but so do I really care
Steven Kotler:if insurance broker number 99 are salesman or saleswoman number 237 is really better at their
Steven Kotler:job? Not a ton. But do I really think the world is better place if they're more empathetic and wise
Steven Kotler:and environmentally aware? Yes. So like, my trade is like, every wants flow, you can have it I want
Steven Kotler:a more apathetic, environmentally aware, wise world. And so to me, like my desire to break into
Steven Kotler:the mainstream is not about performance, it was more about but the mainstream also, I'm interested
Steven Kotler:in what people can do, right? Like, these are just ordinary people who did extraordinary things in
Steven Kotler:their life over and over and over, because they understood how flow work and how to get into this
Steven Kotler:state, and how to utilize the properties, some of the other components of peak performance. So I'm
Steven Kotler:always interested in that when I meet people, I'm always like, Okay, well, what's possible in your
Steven Kotler:life? What could you what might you be able to do? So flow makes us 500% more productive, it doubles
Steven Kotler:learning rates to soldiers in flow. This is studies done by the US Department of Defense,
Steven Kotler:learn to enter 40 to 500% faster than normal creativity, we did some of this work that it's not
Steven Kotler:Harvard University is Sydney, spikes 400 to 700%. Depending on how you're measuring that you've got
Steven Kotler:to stop and ask yourself, like, what kind of impossible challenges aren't you going after? What
Steven Kotler:would you go after, if you could be 500% more productive if you cut learning times and a half or
Steven Kotler:600%, more creative? And innovative? Those are huge numbers. I think that that's those are real
Steven Kotler:questions. So just scientifically accurate questions that we add. That's what the science,
Steven Kotler:performance is possible for all of us. So those are the questions that you have to sort of start
Steven Kotler:to ask yourself that I'm real to you or to me, it's really exciting and fun. And when I said when
Steven Kotler:I said I wanted to smuggle this stuff into the mainstream, I want empathy. I want environmental
Steven Kotler:awareness. I want wisdom, but I also want to see what everybody can do with this stuff. I mean,
Steven Kotler:really tired of meeting people who are dead before they're dead, really bugs me. I always tell people
Steven Kotler:like look, aging is sort of a fact of life old is a mindset and for biologic reasons that mindset
Steven Kotler:sets up in October. Want ease, and it has a massive impact on performance and our ability to
Steven Kotler:access flow on all this stuff. And so anything that I can do to explode those ideas and make us
Steven Kotler:make people understand how much more they're actually capable of, to me, that's good. That's
Steven Kotler:fun. I like that.
Stephanie Maas:Yeah. Do you mind I want to give you my dad's phone number, would you give him a
Stephanie Maas:call and talk to him about this age as a mindset, guess what he's getting for Christmas, your book?
Stephanie Maas:I just want to comment on one thing, and there's something I think that is so human to what you
Stephanie Maas:just said, because I heard in the beginning some of your journey of how and why and this and that,
Stephanie Maas:but it's such an incredibly lovely side to you. Yes, you do want to see what people are capable
Stephanie Maas:of. But I want to see more empathy and environmental awareness to me. And I think to a
Stephanie Maas:lot of us, that's your why then that's lovely.
Steven Kotler:Well, that's I animals have always been my wife, my wife and I run a dog sanctuary to
Steven Kotler:hospice care for dogs now for 20 years.
Stephanie Maas:But you obviously care about humans, too. Yeah. I'm pretty introverted. And I'm
Stephanie Maas:like, I did you make a living off trying to make people better?
Steven Kotler:No, and I do I do. I, I don't like people as much as people think. All right. I don't
Steven Kotler:I don't I like animals much more than I like people I'm really open about that. I find it very
Steven Kotler:difficult to convince people that like, ecosystems are more important than their needs, which is a
Steven Kotler:lot of the job. But if I can get you into flow, the states sort of start to do that automatically.
Steven Kotler:That's easier. This sales job or out environmental awareness is too hard. It's too big of a lift,
Steven Kotler:I've been tried for 40 years, you should end up shouting at the rain. So I've sticky This is the
Steven Kotler:backdoor.
Stephanie Maas:But that's great. By making people better. You get your end goal
Steven Kotler:By making people better, they become better, right? Like, you want peak
Steven Kotler:performance. That's cool. I want to see what you do with the peak performance. Because if I'm just
Steven Kotler:training you up in flows, you can like sell more widgets in your you know, widget sale light, like,
Steven Kotler:okay, really, I mean, like, I'm interested in like, not blow my frickin mind when I started
Steven Kotler:this. The other thing that's really important here, Stephanie. So when I started out my career,
Steven Kotler:I was interested in neuroscience, I was interested in peak performance, I started an action sports,
Steven Kotler:right. And I was living in these communities. And this was during the 90s, the 90s, and action
Steven Kotler:sports and surfing, skiing, rock climbing, snowboarding, all of it, it's talked about as like
Steven Kotler:the era of possible more impossible feats got accomplished stuff that never been done before. We
Steven Kotler:didn't think it was ever gonna be done than ever before. But I was in these communities. I was
Steven Kotler:seeing it firsthand, talking to them, flow was always in the mix of like how they did it, right.
Steven Kotler:But he was these people. So if you know anything at all about peak performance, or how do you raise
Steven Kotler:a good kid, right, forget the right what matters. Well, Mom matters, nature inviter good
Steven Kotler:environment, the right schools, the right blood, all that stuff matters. And yet everybody I knew
Steven Kotler:these acts were athletes like that in the communities I was in. They came from broken homes,
Steven Kotler:they had bad childhoods, they have very little money, it very little education, there's a lot of
Steven Kotler:risk taking these communities, there's much substance abuse. And normally you put those things
Steven Kotler:together in a community, people die young go to jail, they do not reinvent what's possible for the
Steven Kotler:human species. And that's what I was seeing a fraud an in person all the time. So when I say
Steven Kotler:that anybody can use flow to do the extraordinary. I'm not like talking about I'm talking about the
Steven Kotler:people who started so far. You know what I mean? before they ever you hear a lot about people
Steven Kotler:talking about how people started second base with third base, these people were starting so far
Steven Kotler:beyond what before hopefully, it was a miracle that they even got an app that and yet it was
Steven Kotler:these people who reinvented what was possible for our species. And that was what really caught me.
Steven Kotler:In fact, actually, what I've discovered over time is, you know, who has a really tough time with
Steven Kotler:peak performance. It's not people who are really, really poor people who don't have a lot of
Steven Kotler:education or people who you know, all that stuff. It's folks who had a really easy time in high
Steven Kotler:school. If you were really popular if you were naturally smart, or naturally athletic and
Steven Kotler:naturally, really pretty in high school was really easy for you. And you didn't actually have to
Steven Kotler:learn how to be ready. And like all how to regulate your emotions and do all that stuff.
Steven Kotler:Those are the people that are very hard to train in peak performance. Actually, it turns out that
Steven Kotler:the more you got your ass kicked earlier on, it's almost it works for you later in life a lot.
Stephanie Maas:Okay, now I'm gonna have to have you talk to my high school senior. We literally
Stephanie Maas:were just having the conversation yesterday. That Don't worry, high school sucks. It sucks for most
Stephanie Maas:people. It's okay. It gets better than this life gets better.
Steven Kotler:One other thing I wanted to tell you since you have a high school senior because
Steven Kotler:this is something nobody tells kids nobody tells anybody. It's so important. So flow states have
Steven Kotler:cycles. They're not a binary it's not in the zone out of zones, a four stage cycle and you got to
Steven Kotler:move all the way through all four stages to get back into flow. You can't live in a flow state
Steven Kotler:there's no permanent always on flow state because the cycle, the front end Have a flow state is
Steven Kotler:called struggle. It is a loading phase, you are learning you are loading and overloading the brain
Steven Kotler:with information. And here's a couple things that we don't tell our children that are really
Steven Kotler:important one, when you're in this struggle phase and this loading phase, frustration is literally
Steven Kotler:built into how it works. You will get frustrated by design, you're going to we have working memory
Steven Kotler:it holds about four cusps wants to struggle properly, you have to overload it, you're
Steven Kotler:literally going to be frustrated. And most people and most kids are taught that frustration is a
Steven Kotler:sign that you're doing something wrong. Stop. This is failure. This is an in peak performance
Steven Kotler:actually signing, moving in the right direction, you're exactly where you need to be, doesn't feel
Steven Kotler:any better. But literally, this is how it's supposed to feel. And we don't teach that to kids.
Steven Kotler:And so they get these bad feelings that they think that doing something wrong and being kids. They're
Steven Kotler:self conscious, they're like it starts right it does all that other stuff, right? So you end up
Steven Kotler:with this spiral off of this negative feeling. And that negative feeling is actually a positive
Steven Kotler:feeling. It's a sign that you're moving in the right direction, because it helps us reframe
Steven Kotler:frustration. And it turns out, the more we struggle, the more frustrated we are, the better
Steven Kotler:chance we actually have of solving the problem in the end and learning the thing we're trying to
Steven Kotler:learn the more frustrated, the better. I've what I like to tell people is like take it to the point
Steven Kotler:that your head's about to explode in them walk away and just know that that feeling of my head's
Steven Kotler:gonna explode. I feel like a failure and it's actually a sign that you're doing exactly what you
Steven Kotler:want to do.
Stephanie Maas:Okay, I know you really are trying too hard to fight this. You're pretty much a humanitarian
Steven Kotler:Shut up.
Stephanie Maas:Did you just tell me to shut up?
Steven Kotler:I said out loud.