My flow lasts between 53 and 56 minutes. By flow, I mean the trance-like state when you are completely into whatever you are doing. Everything else falls away, and you are focused on what you are doing, be it reading, writing, translating, grading, or preparing the quarterly report. It’s the state of heightened creativity and concentration.
The flow is extremely enjoyable. It’s been described as
the biggest neurochemical cocktail [that] blend[s] all six of the brain’s major pleasure chemicals and may be one of the few times you get all six at once.
Steven Kotler, The Art of the Impossible
If you’ve experienced it, you know that it is, indeed, very pleasant.
I don’t know why my stretches of flow are always timed so exactly at 53 to 56 minutes. It’s one of those things that one’s brain does that are incomprehensible and really cool.
Is anybody else on here into chasing the flow? How long does yours last? What do you do to kickstart it?
By the way, I’m back stateside, and regularly scheduled programming will now resume.
Clarissa's Blog 
I’m not sure if it’s the same thing, but in early January I got struck by lightning and I woke up early one morning with an entire novel and sequel on my head fully formed, I started writing it down that morning and I haven’t stopped. The first thing I want to do after taking a shower and coffee is write, I hand write in a notebook, then lunch and write more.
It might have started because I got a new Kindle for Christmas and started reading the romance novels I’d saved on there, plus one night I’d watched the video From Yesterday by 30 Seconds To Mars four or five times in a row: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=7JCl0O0oWlA&t=688s&pp=ygUhZnJvbSB5ZXN0ZXJkYXkgMzAgc2Vjb25kcyB0byBtYXJz
I’m also into world building and some of my other stories are set in a fictional country that’s like a pagan, monarchy based on Finland and I guess all these things came together in my subconscious: the novels, watching this amazing video so many times in a row and my fictional country. I finished the first novel in two weeks and am over a 100 pages into the second, my goal is to have the sequel finished and both uploaded to Wattpad before I go back to work in March. I’m driving my brother crazy writing every waking moment and listening to 30 Seconds to Mars constantly but I can’t help it, I’m just a conduit to this story.
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Until I something physically stops me which is why I set loud alarms.
Never found paying work that permits it. It’s all constant interruptions.
“Multi-tasking” they call it.
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30 minutes to 1.5 hours. Haven’t really got back into the swing yet, but I’m working on it, and when it happens, it’s *glorious*. I’ve missed that so much.
My youngest turning five and no longer needing help to use the toilet or put on socks has been a monumental turning point of late: flow state was simply a luxury I could not achieve for years, with little kids (Mama, can I have a drink?). That isn’t the kids’ fault: I planned poorly, not knowing what was important. For anybody out there who does creative work, or any enjoyable work that involves flow states, and also wants a family: don’t take that for granted! Do, before you ever have kids, talk to your spouse about the importance of this thing ahead of time so he or she can help defend your time, in sufficient intervals, on a regular basis! If you don’t nail that one down, you won’t have it. If you can, arrange for other people to watch your kids on the regular, and find someplace to *go* where you can work.
I remember reading about this in Madeleine L’Engle’s memoirs (Crosswicks) when I was young and single and… I didn’t get it. Now, it slaps me in the face. She was a writer, he was an actor, they had standing arrangements with each other that they could have regular time blocked out in the office (a building separate from their house), no interruptions, while somebody else looked after the children, and that time was defended as sacred (envious look goes here).
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–1.5 hours is picayune though. When I was young, I used to start on a project after dinner, and just keep working all night. Painting, especially, was well-suited to that sort of schedule.
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Very, very true. You can’t turn inwards around a small child. Having a child teaches you to appreciate and savor the flow like nothing else because a child is very antagonistic to it. And the joy of helping a kid experience her own flow! It’s so wonderful.
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That is one thing I’d go back and inform my younger self about, if I could. Even if someone else is watching your kids… if they still know I’m nearby, they feel *betrayed* if I’m not accessible. If you can swing *going somewhere else* for a couple hours, though…
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Interruptions are the worst. I still have two kids at home and there’s always something they need, and I can’t begrudge them, but it makes it really hard to work when they’re around. However, for my fiction writing, I have to work when they’re not in school, so it’s a pickle. So I do one of the two things:
– Go to a local Barnes & Noble coffee shop. I drafted the whole second book there last summer. I can’t do it now with Book 3 because it’s actually too cold to sit there for very long.
– Put on headphones and listen to music, generally hard rock or metal. I think I have (more than) a touch of ADD, so extra stimulation actually helps me focus. To really hit flow, I have one song on repeat and it really kicks me into a trancelike state better than anything else and it’s (mostly) kid-proof. I can keep flow for several hours at a time. Usually 2-3. But I can’t do these long stretches every day. When I write, I write on average 4 days a week, about 2500 words per session, so 10k per week and can crank out a novel draft in under three months. (tangent alert) I know plenty of writers who do it faster, but I have a very demanding job (that only seems to get more demanding) plus family, so honestly I think this is pretty good, all things considered. But with writing as with anything else, you’re competing with people who go 100% and throw everything they’ve got at it. So writing fiction is another endeavor where I get to feel like an impostor — yippie!
tl;dr I can get 2-3 hours of flow at a time, especially when aided by repetitive music. Alas, domestic interruptions are a serious culprit to maintaining flow
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