I have recently been experimenting with a different method. I'm not sure taking the joy out of what you focus on is the best idea anyway.
Instead of figuring out how to set up the perfect set of variables to trigger flow (focus) for long periods of time, I do something else.
I purposely interrupt my work every 10 minutes for a long (5+ minutes) break. Most accounts I have read say that it takes 10-20 minutes to get into a state of flow to be able to do some real, hard work. But with the limitation of only 10 minutes of work, I force my brain to learn to get into flow much more quickly (definitely under 5 minutes, and I think much less but it's hard to measure!).
I only started doing this the last couple of weeks. I'm amazingly more productive, and the scope of my projects are increasingly ambitious.
I am posting this to see if anyone has had a similar experience. So, have you?
Totally. More generally, setting lots of small, tight deadlines really helps force my focus, if you're a deadline-driven type maybe you might feel the same way. I ran into the term "forced efficiency" the other day and it pretty much encompasses this practice:
http://gtd.marvelz.com/blog/2007/06/27/maximize-productivity...
Very cool idea. It's the mental equivalent of cross training for an MMA match! I'd like to give this a go tomorrow, but we have to come up with something a bit more memorable than "The ljolel Method". Any suggestions? ;)
that sounds really interesting. Haven't tried it yet, but it certainly looks like something I will try to do in the near future. Thanks for sharing :-)
Instead of figuring out how to set up the perfect set of variables to trigger flow (focus) for long periods of time, I do something else.
I purposely interrupt my work every 10 minutes for a long (5+ minutes) break. Most accounts I have read say that it takes 10-20 minutes to get into a state of flow to be able to do some real, hard work. But with the limitation of only 10 minutes of work, I force my brain to learn to get into flow much more quickly (definitely under 5 minutes, and I think much less but it's hard to measure!).
I only started doing this the last couple of weeks. I'm amazingly more productive, and the scope of my projects are increasingly ambitious.
I am posting this to see if anyone has had a similar experience. So, have you?