In less effort you will have higher performance and more purposeful productivity
What if I told you that your performance and productivity will increase if you commit to relaxing more and trying less effort?
I went to yoga today, I have never been really a yoga person. I love the concept, the breath work, the postures and yet, yoga never became “my thing”. With that said I decided few months ago to make to yoga class couple times a week to break my routine of weight lifting and cardio.
I did not want to go today, my body felt tired and for a second I thought about canceling because I didn’t believe I would have a good practice since I was tired. I went anyway.
When the class started I committed to simply be present with each breath and do my best with my tired body. In that state, as the class progressed I was reminded of something important: that in between tension and relaxation, there is flow, the place where our performance increases because energies are fully balanced. In that flow state today I had an amazing experience in yoga. My tired state vanished and I found myself holding poses longer and more steady.
If you don’t like yoga, no worries. This blog isn’t about yoga although yoga is a great place to practice flow, hence the name of the class was flow, duh!
According to psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyl, author of Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, flow is the state in which people are so involved in an activity that nothing else seems to matter.
You have experienced this state many times, I am sure. Maybe running, mountain biking, writing or even having a great conversation with your best friend. It is a state where you are fully present, engaged and your mind isn’t thinking about anything in particular. You are just there, totally enjoying the moment and the action feels effortlessness.
Studies have showed that in the state of flow, our productivity goes up 5 times.
There are few stages to flow state. I want to speak about one of the stages, the one that precedes flow - RELAXATION.
Usually before you realize you need to relax, you will have a stage of struggle. It may show up in the form of a lack of concentration and focus, lack of clarity about your daily goals and poor engagement with your tasks and people. Sometimes it show up as fatigue like for me today or lack of motivation. Overall is a perception of low performance and low productivity level, which we don’t like to experience when we want to get work done.
The biggest mistake:
The biggest mistake that most people make daily at work is to push through it, to try harder, to force focus to happen. This is the opposite of flow. This creates more tension and no relaxation at all. The state of flow or what you may also call the zone of genius is that state where there is tension and relaxation at the same time, the sweet spot.
When we force creativity, performance and productivity from that state of pure tension we actually create more stress - mental, physical and emotional. We go into survival state.
In survival we experience anxiety, nervousness and hyper-tension. Biologically speaking, when our brains are in survival we are less smart, we lose sight of the big picture, we react and all our actions come out of fear. Not a resourceful place.
Being in the zone of survival creates an environment of stress and it is contagious. It puts everyone around us is a state of alertness and tension - opposite from a state of creation or thriving.
Sadly, most people at the work force in USA are working in the zone survival.
How to shift to flow and thriving: RELAXATION.
Most people who live in survival developed a nervous system that does not know how to relax anymore. When clients come to see me, the first thing I need to teach them is how to recondition the body to relax.
Start with the BREATH. The breath is the bridge between the noisy mind and the body, between the past/future to the present moment, between survival to safety.
Don’t underestimate the power of the breath. It is so simple that people don’t value the power that few simple deep belly breaths have. A deep belly or diaphragmatic breath has the ability to turn off the stress response in the brain, something that you psychology may not be able to do it. Try it - say “just relax”, usually you will stress more! Use your physiology, pause and take 6-8 deep belly breathes. You can’t help but relax a bit.
Once you are out of survival, you will have a space to rethink about your day, about what matters at the moment and have clear goals. Before you dive in the work, take a few more deep breaths, reconnect with your purpose and focus on one task at the time. Multi tasking is one of the enemies of flow.
Remove all distractions. When you are focused and get interrupted by an email or text, it will take your brain more than 20 minutes to get to that state again. That is a lot of time lost. Be disciplined, protect your time and your energy if you want to be a high performer and feel successful at the end of your day.
Productivity is not about being busy, it is about high engagement, purpose, energy and clarity.
And don’t forget work is also about JOY, enjoying what you do.
If this sounds a far state for you it may be because you feel stressed out, dis-engaged with your work, depressed and/or anxious. You may be living in a chronic state of survival.
If that is the case, the first step I recommend for you is to address the stress. What is the core of your stress? The root cause? Resolve that, know your stress and learn strategies like new ways to relate to it.
I have found that a lot of times high achievers’s stress is deep rooted in the past. You can start with mindset hacks, positive psychology or cognitive behavior therapy but it won’t take you too far. When stress is rooted in the past, healing is required for you to break free and decrease or eliminate the physical, emotional and mental stress that feeds anxiety, overwhelm and fatigue.
Start simple, breathe deeply. Prioritize 5-10 minutes, 2x a day to just breath and relax. Or just anytime that you become aware of the struggle. If you have a mindfulness practice that you like, use that with the breath.
If you want to learn more about breath work, healing, meditation practices, stress management and how to expand your energy, book a call today.
Peace and love, Alex.
“There is no separation between life and work. It is one life and our work is an expression of our art and our commitment to excellence and to service.”