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25. Flow State: The Anecdote for “Meh” with Stefan Underwood
12 Plays7 months ago
“You don’t have to be perfect to perform really well.” Music to our ears!
In this special bonus episode, we dive into the world of optimal human performance with Stefan Underwood, a seasoned performance specialist and Senior Vice President of Methodology at Exos…AND podcast co-host Mallory’s husband!
With nearly two decades of experience, Stefan shares how his work with elite military, professional athletes, and corporate teams translates to women business owners. Join us as Stefan discusses the role of “flow state” in unlocking your human potential and sustainable high performance.
In this episode, you’ll learn how to:
- Strive for excellence instead of perfection.
- Create an environment conducive to flow state, focus, and effectiveness.
- Implement practical tactics to identify and eliminate flow blockers.
- Recognize the significance of recovery in achieving peak performance.
- Understand the neuroscience behind flow state and executive function.
For more inspiration, subscribe to Unbound Turnarounds on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts!
LINKS:
- Connect with Nicole
- Connect with Mallory
- Connect with Stefan: www.teamexos.com
- Flow by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to Unbound Turnarounds Podcast
00:00:03
Speaker
Welcome to Unbound Turnarounds, a podcast all about the challenges women business owners think about constantly, but rarely voice. We're Nicole and Mallory, entrepreneurs, friends, and co-founders of Business Unbound, a community helping women alleviate the headaches, heartaches, and backaches so work actually works for life. This is your safe space for the ups, downs, and the turnarounds.
Season Two Finale and Special Guest
00:00:34
Speaker
Welcome back to Unbound Turnarounds and the end of season two. We are really looking forward to bringing you this special bonus episode on a topic with a very special guest. Mallory, who do we have with us today?
Meet Stefan Underwood: Human Wellness Specialist
00:00:47
Speaker
So today we have my amazing husband, Stephanie Underwood. Yes, I know. This is a fun fact. This is our first
00:00:57
Speaker
male podcast guests. That's true. We're breaking the mold now. We are with you and non entrepreneurs. So I guess you're just like extra, extra special for extra special. No, he is because he has actually spent his career in human wellness and he has so much knowledge and insight. And we couldn't really close out our season two on well being without picking his brain. So yes.
00:01:20
Speaker
We invited him on. Let me give you guys some background on him. So, Stefan Underwood is his CSCS certification, and he's an accomplished performance specialist. And he currently serves as a Senior Vice President of Methodology at EXOS, bringing with him nearly two decades of experience in human performance.
00:01:39
Speaker
So he spent his first 15 years of his career working with elite military and professional sport clients. These days, though, you'll find him applying his knowledge of human performance more to the corporate world and sharing his insights globally as a presenter for Exos. Today, he's going to be sharing for the entrepreneur world.
00:01:58
Speaker
Stefan leads a diverse team of experts in neuroscience, psychology, coaching, nutrition, and sports science as they seek to establish whole human approaches to sustainable high performance.
Sustainable High Performance and Organizational Psychology
00:02:09
Speaker
Over the last 20 years, Stefan's focused on individual team and organizational performance and is currently pursuing a graduate degree in organizational psychology.
00:02:19
Speaker
From his broad spectrum competency and ability to inspire high performance in individuals and teams to his unwavering dedication to unlocking optimal human performance, Stephan is always pushing for more within the EXO's performance innovation team. I am deeply grateful that you're here because I know you and I have had loads of conversations about how you apply what you teach in the corporate world to the entrepreneurial space. This is like exactly what we're going to get into today. So thank you for being here.
00:02:49
Speaker
Thank you so much. This is super fun.
Universal Human Performance Principles
00:02:53
Speaker
I've been on other podcasts, but never one with my greatest partner in crime in life and her partner in crime in business. So I'm definitely excited about this and really,
00:03:07
Speaker
honor to be here. And I think it'll really translate well to the entrepreneurial space because the thing that people often talk about, how do you go, you know, from elite military is so different to elite sport is so different to business. And you go, well, there's one main thing that overlaps all. And it's the fact that at the center of all of his humans, like human performance is human performance. There's certain universal human truths that help us thrive.
00:03:32
Speaker
And so it actually does transfer. And so I have no doubt that entrepreneurs are also humans. And we'll have plenty to talk about. OK, but I want you to call us elite entrepreneurs from now on. Yes. That's what I would like to have happening. In the world of elite high performance entrepreneurs. Elite high performance entrepreneurs. Thank you for saying that. I'm prompted. There we go. I'm prompted.
Resilience Over Perfection: Long-term Practices
00:03:53
Speaker
Okay, well let's get going and we're gonna actually start talking about Sustainable high performance. This is something that Nicole and I talk about building longevity So we want to talk about the sustainable high performance versus just high performance What does that mean and then how does that relate to us as entrepreneurs?
00:04:12
Speaker
Well, it's a good question. I think it really grounds the conversation because I think sometimes people feel they have to be perfect to perform well. And I'll say right now, right, we all know perfect is the enemy of good enough and perfectionism can be tough. Like anyone who is a recovering perfectionist out there knows that
00:04:32
Speaker
It's really, it's not something that is attainable. So you can strive for excellence but not perfection. But to be at your best, you can actually do that when you've done all the things wrong. We can probably all actually think of times we've been under recovered, not taking any of the advice that you two have talked about through this whole season on wellbeing. You can do all the things wrong and you can still show up for a moment that matters and crush it, knock it out of the park.
00:04:59
Speaker
And so I don't want to create this sort of false picture that you have to get everything right in order to be your best. I think it's an unfair message to people, honestly. But what we should talk about is what your long-term practices look like, because the body and mind will eventually always win. And so what you can't do is do all of the things wrong and perform at your best.
00:05:24
Speaker
month after month, year after year, decade after decade. And so that's where I really think that word sustainable high performance is what's so critical to talk about because it isn't how do I just go win tomorrow, but how do I set myself up to not crash and burn and have the wheels come off a year from now?
00:05:41
Speaker
Well, and I think that's so important to say that you can do things wrong and still show up in a really great way when it matters. Because that just immediately takes the pressure off of, oh, I did one thing wrong. So that means the end goal is never going to happen, right? Which is something that our brains are like, well,
00:06:00
Speaker
You did the thing, and that's over. That goal, done. So I love that it just takes the pressure off of saying, you know what? You can do a bunch of things that don't work out and still train yourself and have the habits that you need to know that, hey, when it really matters, I'm still going to show up.
00:06:19
Speaker
Yeah, that's what resilience is. I mean, 100% you can. And it's an important message. And it's where I like to draw on examples from the sports world. And people say, I'm not an athlete. That doesn't apply. But you are a human. You still have thoughts. You're still trying to perform your best. And the number of times athletes, we can get too far into the weeds on really trying to get that 1%. And all of a sudden, that athlete starts to go, wait a minute, if I'm dehydrated,
00:06:46
Speaker
Like I might as well not even dress for tonight's game. Like my gross motor control, my phone, fine motor control, my, like everything is going to decrease. I'm going to go 0 for 0 for four tonight at the plate. If I'm a baseball player, like there's no way I can hit a fastball. I'm dehydrated. And you're like, no, you can absolutely still go perform well, but you shouldn't go dehydrated all season. We should get your hydration right more often than not, but it's okay when it's a not.
00:07:13
Speaker
Exactly. And I think that's what entrepreneurs do a lot of is essentially just get dehydrated all season. Because they're like, it's fine. I have the benefit of working for my home. And so I will work 23 hours a day. This is fine. I can keep doing this forever. I'm sure I can. And so that's what happens.
00:07:35
Speaker
100%. Yes. So if you had to pick something that contributes to us being able to have a sustainable high performance and just putting in the caveat that that still means you can go up and down in between and that's fine. But if you had to pick something that contributes to us having sustainable high performance running our businesses, what are some of the things that come to mind for you?
Understanding Flow State
00:07:59
Speaker
Well, there's sort of one large topic that I think then encapsulates a whole bunch of
00:08:05
Speaker
smaller topics. Like there's one big topic that I can nest everything else I'd answer that question with under one umbrella. And I think there's a really interesting conversation around what is known as flow state, which some people may have heard of or not have heard of, or they may have heard of it, but it might be this sort of ethereal thing. Right. You catch it like a cold, you don't know exactly what it is. It's a little mystical. So I think we work a lot, especially in
00:08:32
Speaker
our corporate settings with how can you intentionally create your environment.
00:08:37
Speaker
to help flow be a more intentional act and something that you experience more readily. So I really think a conversation around flow is valuable because within a conversation around flow, we need to talk about things like recovery practices. We need to talk about things like focus and limiting distractions, how you can time box things, how you can create boundaries. You just talked about the entrepreneur like the laptop is always there 23 hours a day.
00:09:05
Speaker
how you can start to create structure in your day. So all the things I would find myself talking about the importance of sleep, so many things you've covered on this season can all sort of interestingly nest in the flow, even your motivation to keep going. In organizational psychology, where flow shows up in the literature, like as I was going through, I noticed it shows up in the motivational constructs.
00:09:31
Speaker
Flow is about the things that bring you joy. It is what the individual who coined the term and was sort of, we'll say the father of Flow was a man named Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. And he sort of talked about it being what is called an autotelic experience, which means you do it for, it feels good. You are doing it not for any other extrinsic reward. You're doing it. You're doing whatever you're doing for the sake of that thing.
00:10:00
Speaker
kids playing is autotelic. Kids are in flow all the time. And so anyways, all the things that I think I'd say, how do we get sustainable high performance? You can sort of nest under this one big umbrella of demystifying flow state.
00:10:14
Speaker
And I like how you talked about creating an environment that supports that. So that's something that actually I've talked about a lot with Resilience Coach, who is also on the podcast in season one, is how do you create an environment that welcomes in the things that you want, right? How do you create an environment that is a place Joy wants to be?
00:10:34
Speaker
And it's a place that sleep wants to be. And it's a place that, you know, inspiration wants to be. And it sounds like you're saying the same thing that you can really design, right? I guess it's part of the human design. But you can design a life and a work space that supports flow.
00:10:52
Speaker
Absolutely can. And that's exactly what we're doing at Exos. And I'm sure many listeners coming from an entrepreneurial world may not be familiar with Exos, but really a leader in human performance globally, working with 25% of Fortune 100 companies, supporting a third of the NFL Combine, supporting special operations military, like really the biggest name in sort of human performance.
00:11:14
Speaker
And that's exactly what we're working on right now is how you intentionally engineer an environment that is supportive of flow. And Mal, you haven't heard this yet, so you'll be able to make fun of me later for this. But this is one of those moments where you say something and you feel enormously stupid afterwards. But how important the environment is, I was presenting recently internally for our team. And one of my teammates said, you know, it makes perfect sense. What do you do when a goldfish is sick?
00:11:45
Speaker
And my apparently inhumane answer was, flush it down the toilet. Oh no. And he's like, it's not dead yet. You change the water. When the goldfish is no longer thriving, there isn't necessarily something wrong with the fish. You change the environment. Change the environment. That is such a better answer than first. That is a better answer. Yes. I've also, because you have hamsters and now I'm worried about them.
00:12:11
Speaker
I won't flex the hamsters down the toilet, I promise. OK, great. I promise. OK, so I think we're going to get into that. But I think we got ahead of ourselves just a tiny bit. So you had mentioned maybe people haven't really fully heard what flow state is or don't know. So let's actually go back a step. And let's talk about what, let's demystify it. What actually is flow when you're talking about this?
00:12:33
Speaker
Such a good place to start. Yeah, let's set the table for the conversation. So flow state at its simplest is our optimal state of being. It's a human experience. It is not for athletes or extreme athletes. It is a human experience where we both feel and perform our best.
00:12:55
Speaker
So I told you this man, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, the quiz at the end is who can spell it. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, who is a Hungarian-American professor. He was a psychologist, and he was not researching elite performance. He was not researching athletes, X Games athletes. He was researching happiness. It was the largest global happiness study
00:13:23
Speaker
And he was saying, when you feel your best, when you feel joy, right? So if everyone listening thinks of those moments when they just feel light, they just feel free, like everything feels right for them, right? Like Nicole, I know you love horses, right? Like when you're around horses, it doesn't always happen around sports or physical activity. Some people, it's cooking. Some people it's art, it's playing the guitar. It's whatever it is, that thing you do, right? When you feel right.
00:13:52
Speaker
And he looked at it from an experiential perspective. What does the human experience feel like? And he started finding similar threads that people would talk about. And he would talk about things like clear and unambiguous goals. You have a goal with what you're doing. He would talk about things like connection, deep connection.
00:14:16
Speaker
If you've ever experienced flow in a group environment, that's a whole other conversation, but there is group flow. You feel really connected with one another. You're finishing each other's sentences. But equally, this is the person playing the guitar that says the guitar feels like an extension of their body. The piano feels like an extension of my body, right? He talked about it being autotelic. He described so many things. He talked about a challenge skill ratio. Think of the moments you feel joy and you feel at your best.
00:14:46
Speaker
And quite often, if it's too easy, it's mundane and boring. If it's too hard, it's sort of anxiety inducing. Takes the joy out, yeah. It's that Goldilocks, like, I'm challenging myself. I've got to focus here, but I can succeed, right? And hopefully, as people are listening, they're thinking of that thing in their life where they feel that. And one of the hallmarks as well is
00:15:09
Speaker
The passage of time changes. So if you think of in big instances of flow, it also shows up when we need to be at our best. If you think of you're in a car accident or close to be in a car accident. And I know that's not joyful, but go with me for a moment. It is the extreme adrenaline dump. This is closer to the X Games athlete example. But in that moment, you have a fraction of a second and you feel like you could make 17 decisions. Time slows down.
00:15:36
Speaker
Equally on the joint of the spectrum, what people probably resonate more with is it going the other way. Time flies when you're having fun. It feels like five seconds have passed and it's been an hour.
00:15:48
Speaker
And you go, where did the time go? And so that is what flow is. And I'll hold there for your questions, because I could just dive into rabbit hole. But it is something that we now can say why all those things happen, because now in modern research, it isn't just experiential. There's FMRIs. We know about the neurochemicals in the brain. We know about brain regions, brainwaves.
Identifying and Enhancing Flow Moments
00:16:10
Speaker
We can explain all those things.
00:16:12
Speaker
But at the end of the day, that's what flow is, that state when you feel and perform your best and you just feel phenomenal. So you got to something that I was going to ask you, which was, what do people need to do to recognize and kind of diagnose those moments, right? So if this is someone who's maybe feeling burned out as an entrepreneur, super common, right?
00:16:36
Speaker
If we're trying to get them to see outside of that and remember the things that they deeply connect to, what tactically should they be doing? Is it literally go make a list today? Literally write down 10 times you recently felt the most joyful, or you were really doing your best. What do people do if they are not focused on this currently, but you're like, I want you to spend 20 minutes
00:17:04
Speaker
getting pretty specific about this? What would that look like? Well, you're spot on it some inner awareness and self awareness. It's some reflection to figure it out. Because most people will be able to think of examples. But I'll tell you what we find most people can think of examples that are more often outside of work.
00:17:23
Speaker
Yeah, when I'm mountain biking, I feel amazing, like the time flies by, you know, when I'm on a road trip, driving time flies by, whatever. That's not Mallory. She hates road trips. But for some people, I like them. There you go. But um,
00:17:39
Speaker
It's good to then link and say, so now think of times, and I personally like to anchor to the, when, when time gets worked. That's the one that I think people can resonate the most because you get in that deep work. And I like to bring it to the workplace and say, so you can identify those moments in your life outside of work.
00:17:57
Speaker
Now think about job-related tasks. When do you feel that? I feel that personally when I'm making slide decks. I never thought I was a super creative individual. I'm certainly not a creative designer, but I found I love working in decks and I love flexing a little creative muscle.
00:18:17
Speaker
and designing and you go, what are the moments where you get so into your work that all of a sudden you go, oh crap, I gotta go pick up the kids. You go, oh crap, I'm late for a call or I got a call in five minutes. And we usually have shame with that because we go, oh my gosh, but that's actually something to say, wait a minute. That means you are in flow, right? To identify where it shows up in your professional life is the first thing I would say. I get, oh, go ahead, Valerie. Okay.
00:18:44
Speaker
When we talked about Flow in our mindset course, so we got a lot of this insight from Stefan in guidance to educate us since he's the expert. So we did put that in the course, and I remember talking a lot about these things. And I remember saying the founder's name, and now I can't even say it again now, because it's... Yes, yes, yes. I had to practice that because I was saying it, yes. I remember, though, there's like a...
00:19:10
Speaker
There's phases of flow. And I think we need to talk about that too, because that can hinder or support us in actually finding flow. I'm right. It absolutely can. Yes. So flow isn't a light switch. It's not on or off. I'm in flow. I'm out of flow. It takes place in a cycle.
00:19:34
Speaker
It is more rhythmic. So within that cycle, all flow starts with a degree of struggle. And this is one of the best reframes for everybody in the business environment. You think of those times we're in struggle and we run from it. I'm not going to do this. And to be able to sit in the struggle and know that on the other side of that is like rocket fuel for your most creative self.
00:20:00
Speaker
It can help you reframe struggle. We need to have some struggle, some agitation to get us to flow. Sometimes that's really quick. I go back to the extreme sports, you jump out of an airplane with a parachute on your back, you go through the struggle phase real fast. Yeah, that'll probably do it. That's just fine. That's very quick. But if I start trying to write something,
00:20:22
Speaker
those first few words. Ah, like runners high, by the way, sort of synonymous with flow. The first half mile never feels good for anyone. Like there's some struggle. Some people will say that none of it ever feels good. But thank you. But runners will say, you know, like you get into that, that space. So
00:20:44
Speaker
So you need to have some struggle. Then from there you have a release of some kind. Something that is a bit of an unlock where things then just start to the third phase is flow. And so that could be something as simple as you're in a call. You're having a call with people and there's clearly struggle. You're not quite aligned on ideas. You can just feel like it's just not quite clicking. We're not getting where we need to get to.
00:21:09
Speaker
And sometimes it can be something as simple as one good idea. Sometimes it can be something as simple as someone cracking a joke and everybody laughs and all of a sudden you just seem to click into this like synchronicity, like you're just there. And so you have struggle followed by release followed by flow, which is the state, right? And then, and this is the most important thing to talk about and why I say you can nestle everything under this umbrella is the final stage is recovery.
00:21:34
Speaker
Flow is incredibly neurochemically expensive. There's a lot going on for us being in that state. So you're not trying to live in flow all the time. That's not the thing. You have to then recover. And we often, when we talk with people, we actually start, even though it's the fourth stage, it is a cycle. So we can pick where we start. We actually start with recovery because the surest way to block yourself out of flow in your life is to be under recovered.
00:22:00
Speaker
So I feel like that's a direct tie-in for avoiding burnout or at least addressing a burnout, which I'm sure happens to elite athletes and people in the military and everyone, right? Everyone experiences burnout. A hundred percent. We get different names. Yeah. In athlete world, we call it over-trained. We see athletes having to get pulled out because they're over-trained. At the end of the day, whether you're over-trained, burnt out, whatever you call it, it's mismanagement of load.
00:22:29
Speaker
And so we need to figure out how to, that doesn't always mean do less, but it means load. Right. And I'm guessing it's different for everybody. Like the things that get us to a flow state are different for everyone. That's pretty personal. Absolutely. Probably what everyone thinks of as recovery might also be different. Is that accurate? It is accurate to say that both flow and recovery are very personal. So if you think of, uh,
00:22:58
Speaker
I've got some on my team when we are at a, we spent all day together in meetings or working on something where if we're in person going out to dinner, that puts energy back in my battery. That fills me back up, but I'm a pretty extroverted human. I've got teammates that are quite introverted and I just need to get back to my, my hotel room and be alone.
00:23:21
Speaker
So you're right, there is absolutely individual elements to it. And the activities that bring you joy and flow are absolutely individual and how you engage in flow. Some people find that they get there way more easily. They're super flowy. Other people.
00:23:37
Speaker
they struggle a bit more to get there. But there are known flow triggers for all people like research flow triggers. That's what we start putting into our triggers. Yeah. So flow triggers are things I said some of them we can pull from chicks sent me high. So I said that clear goals, you know why you're doing what you're doing.
00:23:57
Speaker
Have you ever been in a call where 10, 15 minutes in the call, you're going, what the F are we doing here? What is this call? What is this call? Do I need this in my life? The goal is what? So a very simple thing we did at XO says, hey, calls need to start with a clear and unambiguous goal. Make it time bound is even better. All right, thanks for being here. In the next 50 minutes, this is what we're looking to solve. We need to leave this meeting with X.
00:24:23
Speaker
Now, everybody is anchored. So, cleared on ambiguous goals are wonderful flow trigger. Challenge skill ratio is a wonderful flow trigger, like getting yourself the right degree of challenge that is just hard enough for you. So, we can start getting into this. Okay, I'm going to challenge myself to design three slides in the first hour, which might not sound a lot, but if that's what breaks inertia for you, fantastic, right? Like, whatever it may be.
00:24:53
Speaker
So there are some flow triggers, so things like that. Outside of that, we didn't talk about, because I didn't want to go too deep into the neuroscience of it, but I did say we know more about what's going on in the brain and the body during flow. So there's this really interesting potent chemical cocktail going on in your brain when you're in a state of flow. And they all have street drug names, by the way. Oh, dear. It's having just a little bit of this and a little bit of that.
00:25:21
Speaker
One of the key drivers of that neurochemical cocktail is adrenaline. There's an expression that my colleague uses that he says flow follows focus, right? We need to be focused in order to get into flow. And that's adrenaline's role in the body. Adrenaline is there to make us focus on something. So adrenaline, if you think of fight or flight states, right? There's a threat to you.
00:25:51
Speaker
You get a little bit of adrenaline because it's saying you need to focus on this. If you think about your vision for a minute, if you're out in the mountains, peaceful landscape, there is no threat to you. You take it all in. You see everything. If there's suddenly a grizzly bear over there, you're not taking in the whole environment. You are highly focused on one thing and only one thing, the threat. The rest of the world goes away.
00:26:17
Speaker
So that's adrenaline's role of one of about five to six neurochemicals in this cocktail. But that's adrenaline's role. Well, there are things we can do to give ourselves a little boost of adrenaline, not as much as a grizzly bear, but little boosts. So even things like social capital, like taking social risk, expressing gratitude,
00:26:41
Speaker
Right? Expressing gratitude. Now that has a whole impact on our brain state as is. But doing it out loud, there's a little bit of risk. If I'm in a work environment and I say, I just want to let you both know genuinely how grateful I am that you're having me on this podcast, that you're giving me some of your time and it really means a lot.
00:26:58
Speaker
It gives just this little heightened, it changes my chemical state just a little bit. And so we joke that gratitude can be incredibly selfish. Yeah, I love that. Yeah. If you are nervous about public speaking, what are the things you can do? You've already got a bit of adrenaline. You maybe don't need to add more adrenaline. So what are the things you can do to push back? But if you're not nervous about public speaking and you want to elevate to raise to meet the moment, I can do things.
00:27:25
Speaker
CO2 is a great one, some breath work, not the calming breath work, but the kind of breath work where you feel like you're drowning for a moment.
Role of Neurochemicals and Environment in Flow
00:27:32
Speaker
Yeah. Kind of hate. Yes. Yes. That fires you up. Your eyes get big just for a moment. You can in those yoga classes. Yeah. Like, so, so anyways, that's another way you can look at flow triggers is how can I intentionally change my internal state? So we've sort of talked about two things. We've talked about what can I do in the external environment to help me. And we've talked about
00:27:54
Speaker
What can I do in my internal environment to help me? We always have agency of the internal environment. So there's a lot of things anyone can do to start making flow show up more readily. And it's just about learning what those things are and identifying the value of flow of why you'd want it. Like what's the value prop behind it? So.
00:28:15
Speaker
I would normally like to put a positive spin on things and say, yes, what we just talked about, what are ways to solicit flow. But I think it's actually super helpful to talk about the things we want to avoid, because there are things that block us from getting into flow.
00:28:33
Speaker
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Speaker
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00:29:22
Speaker
Can you talk about some of those common things that are in our everyday lives that actually block us from getting into a flow state? 100%. It's such a good question. So I just said flow follows focus. And I took that in the angle of what can I do in my internal environment to drive focus. But let's think for a moment of all the things in the external environment that rob me of my focus. We live in a world that is literally designed to steal our attention.
00:29:49
Speaker
We as a species are not evolved for the world that we have created for ourselves. And I think that that's a shocking thought, but I think it is profoundly true.
00:30:02
Speaker
When you talk about clutter around you, if you talk about your phones and technology and your computers, like the biggest culprits that will rob you of flow in your life are called Slack and G-chat and iMessage and on and on and on. It's funny, the three of us got on and before we hit record, the first thing you said, Mallory, like let's run through our things. Everybody's phone's silenced, like notifications turned off.
00:30:33
Speaker
And I actually responded, I didn't bring my phone downstairs with me. Like my phone is not on my person right now. It is not on the same level of the house with me. It is physically detached. Obviously I am at my computer. I went on, do not disturb. I'm not getting any pings that are coming through. And I think that it's this intentional choice to constrain your environment to say, this is the time where I need to be able to do deep focused work.
00:31:00
Speaker
Therefore, I need to stop all these things from ding, ding, ding constantly. And think of how often you've been doing your best work, you're doing really good work. And the next thing you know, for whatever reason, you're doom scrolling social media, like one thing dinged on your phone, you thought I need to check something on an email, then that email turned into opening a different app, then something dinged, a notification popped up, then you click that next thing, you know, it's 30 minutes later. And by the way, you're out of that really brilliant work you were doing.
00:31:30
Speaker
So that's the first thing I would say in our lives that robs us of flow. And the other I'd already actually alluded to, if I said the surest way to block yourself out of flow is to be under recovered. You want to change your life and experience more flow, like step one, sleep better and improve your relationship with sleep and step two, modify your relationship with technology. The technology piece is tough because I think we have both the need to avoid all the distractions, right? We actually hate it.
00:32:00
Speaker
However, it also feeds people to think that everything is important. Everything that comes into my email is important. It means that I'm important. Everything needs to be answered right now. That's just a state of mind we have to stop doing as business owners to say, what are those lines between urgent and important? These are not the same.
00:32:23
Speaker
So true. And can I so can I feed off of that? Yeah, and talk about what is important and maybe something we should have I should have gone into
Flow State and Mental Health Benefits
00:32:30
Speaker
earlier. Hopefully people are still listening. We'll get to it now. What is important is you. What is important is your mental health. What is important are the things that you've said are important your life that you're working toward as an entrepreneur.
00:32:44
Speaker
Those are things that are important. And I want to take a minute to give the value prop for flow. All I said is it's where you perform and feel your best. I want to talk for a minute about what the research is telling us about flow state beyond it being a space where we're intrinsically motivated. Flow state, really interestingly, so Adam Grant, organizational psychologist, many have probably heard his name,
00:33:11
Speaker
If not, look at them. So Adam Grant wrote this article in, I think it was 2021 in the New York Times. There's a name for this blah you're feeling. It's called languishing. It was actually the most read article in the New York Times in 2021. And like, let's look back from it of what was going on in 2021. I remember it. I remember. We had insurrections. We had like, we had all sorts of stuff. We had COVID. The most read article was Adam Grant's article.
00:33:34
Speaker
there's a name for the blah you're feeling. It's called languishing. And he goes on to explain languishing as the sort of the middle child on the psychology spectrum, right? Like that one end we are thriving, at the other end we have depression. Like in the middle is languishing. It's squarely articulated with one word, meh. Want to go to the gym? Meh. Yeah.
00:33:58
Speaker
Wanna go for dinner? Meh. Like that's languishing. We've all been there. And at the end of it, he writes this line that says that this thing called flow state may be an anecdote for that.
00:34:13
Speaker
And so as you pour into like, what's the research that got him to that statement, for example, there's this one research study that was done in Wuhan, China, China during the lockdown, the most aggressive lockdowns. Like you talk about how tough it is on humans as a whole to be isolated. And they were locked down, true isolation in Wuhan. And I think there were about 5,000 people in the sample size of this research paper. Uh, and
00:34:41
Speaker
One of the, if not the top predictors at the end of all of it, of who got through it without as much harm to their mental health, we'll say, were those that had flow state in their life. So through the questionnaires that they did, that the people being researched did, there are validated scales to assess flow state. And what they found is those that had more flow
00:35:07
Speaker
got through it better, those that played an instrument in their apartment, those that exercised in their apartment, those that- A small garden, probably, yeah. A small garden. Those that had flow in their life got through it. It shows up repeatedly in the literature as an incredibly protective mechanism for us. And some of that, I think, could be explained by what's going on in the brain. Another interesting piece, and this brings us to another value prop, is that when we're in a state of flow, you have different regions of your brain. Everybody knows that.
00:35:37
Speaker
Do either of you know what the frontal lobes, so like right behind our forehead, what that is, what it does for us? Oh gosh. You've told me before and I forgot. So our frontal lobes are used for what's called executive function. Okay. This right here, like behind my forehead is the chief executive of my brain. That sounds like a pretty important thing, right?
00:36:02
Speaker
So you think when I'm in flow and I'm acting and performing at my best, that should be on hyperdrive, right? The absolute opposite is true.
00:36:12
Speaker
frontal lobes go offline when we're in a state of flow. This is what fMRI tells us. And this gets, by the way, this is people who are like, I don't talk about research. I'm like, but some research is really cool. They put freestyle rappers in an fMRI and they're like, do rehearsed lines and now freestyle. And they looked at the changes in brain activity when they start freestyle rapping. I'm like, that is cool research. Come on. But, uh, so the frontal line, the frontal lobes go offline and you go, why, why would that be the case? Well,
00:36:41
Speaker
In our frontal lobes, what else lives there? Our inner critic, the voice in your head saying, they're going to laugh at you. This is going to fail. So if you're a creative, you want to be creative, a lot of flow states, a lot of creatives can really relate to flow state as a topic. Your inner critic is silenced. Interestingly, it's part of the neural networks that keep track of time, which explains why we have a warped sense of time. And if you think of when you aren't at your best, it's paralysis by analysis.
00:37:10
Speaker
you're thinking, not doing. And so if we bring that back to how can that also help us preventative to our mental health, a lot of depression and anxiety, or to not make it clinical, I'll just say a lot of less than optimal psychological states live in the past or the present.
00:37:34
Speaker
I'm ruminating on something that happened in the past. I am anxious about something that will happen in the future. It is robbing me of my sleep. It is robbing me of my sanity. The frontal lobes go offline. Nothing exists but the here and now. Nothing exists but the present.
00:37:53
Speaker
Again, my kids are amazing at flow state. They don't have executive function or frontal lobes yet. Insurance car companies know it because they won't let you rent a car until you're 25 and insurance companies know it because they'll make you pay more for your car insurance until you're 25 because your frontal lobes are developing until you're 25. So yeah, so it starts saying a lot of value probably go, wait a minute. There's one human state where I feel happy. One human state where I feel
00:38:22
Speaker
my best. And it's also going to silence my inner critic and make me my most creative, innovative self. That's a win-win. And that's what we mean when we say you both feel and perform your best. So that's the value prop of why you want it. And I'll tell you, we just finished up some research with Adam Grant. And I can't release it yet because it is under embargo. This is an exciting thing for me. It's the last year of work we've been doing on our own workplace environment at Exos.
00:38:50
Speaker
And we got the results back from Adam and his doctoral candidate, Marissa Shandell, who's been working with us on this. And I'll say, the exciting thing I'll say as we look at some of the correlations that exist, you see a correlation. So this isn't causation. I'm not saying flow state causes, but there is a relationship with those that experience a higher degree of flow, also experience a lower degree of burnout.
00:39:17
Speaker
Those that experience a higher degree of flow also experience a lower degree of exhaustion, rumination, these types of things, right? So when you say, I'm an entrepreneur, it's real easy to burnout. I'm fighting that burnout. I've got so much going on. If you can intentionally, and this where we can get super tangible and applied and get out of theory land, if you can intentionally set your environment up to let flow show up a little bit more readily and frequently.
00:39:45
Speaker
It will do wonders not only for the creative and innovative work you do, but also for how you feel at the end of the day. So here's my question. We are going to be talking about this in season three when we talk about time and the choices that we make for our time and our energy.
00:40:02
Speaker
And we're going to talk a lot about multitasking. We're going to do all of that. And I'm sure your brain is just like, ugh, don't do that. But let's say that everybody is convinced that flow state is a positive. It's going to make you feel better. It's going to make you perform better. It's going to make you more creative. Let's say we're all sold because we probably are. Why do you think we still do things that don't get us there? Why are we choosing
00:40:30
Speaker
to stay distracted. We're choosing to say, you know what? I don't believe I'm going to feel better in a flow state. So I'm going to just keep running the way that I run. Why do we not all just gravitate to this? There's some part of our brain that says, keep doing what you're doing. Keep doing more of it, actually. Even though it feels terrible, this is the right way. Why do we do that? Our frontal lobe is on?
00:40:55
Speaker
And to be clear, we need our frontal lobe a lot as well. We need it. OK, fine. In any way, knocking the frontal lobe, just saying. It sounded terrible. Yeah, just saying in flow. It is quiet. There's a few different directions that I think we could take that. But I think I would say part of the reason that flow feels so good
00:41:18
Speaker
is also part of the reason that we are keeping habits that keep us out of flow. You look at our neurochemicals, I will tell you this. Every software company, every video game designer, they absolutely know what flow theory is. Like textbook in the 90s written about flow theory and video game design.
00:41:38
Speaker
Because let's go to the second neurochemical, dopamine. Dopamine is the molecule of pursuit. It is the molecule of more, but that can be, that is morally and ethically neutral. That can be pursuing things that are good for us. It can be pursuing things that aren't good for us. Dopamine is at the heart of every single addiction in the world.
00:42:01
Speaker
we get a little dopamine drip with every like and ding and social, like these apps are designed to hijack our neurochemistry. And so just as powerfully as I'm describing flow, just as powerfully, these devices have a grip on us. Yeah, neurochemistry. Yeah, that's true. And I think the pursuit of more is something that Mallory and I talk about a lot with just that badge of being busy, right? And how that
00:42:30
Speaker
Entrepreneurs especially want to, I don't know if they want to feel busy. They want to be able to say they're busy for sure. And it seems like busy is a substitute for productive a lot of the time.
00:42:44
Speaker
A lot of it. And so is that just a thing that we're doing? We're doing that, right? I think so. And I also think it's a societal thing. It's an expectation. And we've even stopped talking about productivity at Exos. Because if you legitimately look at organizational theory, productivity is easy to measure if you are creating widgets. So if you're in a production company of some kind, like we used to make x widgets in an hour. Now we make y widgets an hour. We increased our productivity.
00:43:11
Speaker
very easy equation. But knowledge work, like Exos isn't making widgets, right? If you think of knowledge work, or even as you get into software engineering, it's a really poor metric to say how many lines of code did you write this hour? The quality of code matters. Like, whatever you're doing. So we've started talking about effectiveness more than productivity, and more than busyness.
00:43:32
Speaker
What is your effectiveness? And that gets measured by impact. And there are many ways through KPIs and different objectives, many ways to measure and quantify your impact. So is this work impactful? Was it effective? Okay, so let's talk about a little more in depth. One topic that came up earlier, you said, if you want to change your life, change your relationship to rest, recovery, sleep.
Importance of Sleep in Performance and Stress Management
00:43:55
Speaker
But let's go into sleep a little bit more. How would you say sleep quality impacts our performance?
00:44:02
Speaker
And how specifically are there some specific tactics and strategies that women business owners or business owners entrepreneurs can implement to optimize their sleep and particularly maybe even during high stress times? Yeah, absolutely. So let's start with the first part of the question, why sleep is so valuable for us.
00:44:30
Speaker
You know that it's important. I'll tell you one of my favorite things. This is the cheesiest answer of all time. But the reason you know, like from an evolutionary, from biological perspective, why sleep is important.
00:44:41
Speaker
I'm going completely offline, unaware of my surroundings for eight hours. That feels from an evolutionary perspective like risky if you go back to caveman days. So clearly, it's important if we still said, nope, we need it as a species. But to come away from that and talk a little more about it,
00:45:02
Speaker
but sleep really isn't one thing. There's a couple, there's different types of sleep through our sleep stages, right? So you can talk about REM sleep and non REM sleep, REM sleeping when you dream, non REM sleep being our other stages, which is inclusive of deep sleep. And I mean, that's a whole podcast. But to give one that I like to talk about the most is when we are under slept,
00:45:30
Speaker
Right. What we experience in our brain is we struggle with emotional regulation. Okay. And do one Google search of leadership or entrepreneurship business and like emotional regulation, you'll get hundreds and hundreds, if not thousands of hits on really good sites like Harvard Business Review about like leaders need these are the soft skills right by emotional regulation.
00:45:57
Speaker
So I become less regulated. But on top of that, I start off in a more emotionally charged place. This is, again, going back to the research, this is a little creepy of the research. But what they did is they showed study participants quite alarming images, like images none of us would want to look at. And then they said, OK, now you go to sleep. One group, they let them sleep. The other group, this one is specifically during REM sleep when you're dreaming.
00:46:26
Speaker
is it's when you consolidate memories and learn and all these other wonderful things happen, but it's also where you sort of metabolize emotional distress, right? And so every time the group that was, this is so, so nasty. So they didn't wake them up, but they were tracking their sleep. And every time they were about to get into REM sleep, they disturbed them just enough to make sure that they stayed in light sleep and didn't get any REM. So the next morning they've had no REM sleep. Then the next morning they go back and they say, rate how alarming those
00:47:00
Speaker
significantly more alarmed by the images. And so you say, when I don't get a good night's sleep, I'm already starting behind the eight ball. I'm already emotionally charged and I'm worse at emotional regulation. And by the way, let's not talk about studies to prove this. Anyone with kids knows what to expect the day after a sleepover. Like if our kids get poor sleep for a night, they're more emotionally charged and worse at emotional regulation. And you go, they must be tired. We don't outgrow that as humans. We get better at masking it, but we don't outgrow it.
00:47:22
Speaker
and the group that didn't get REM sleep.
00:47:29
Speaker
So that's why sleep, Mallory, I think is so critical. Second part of your question was tactics to try and improve sleep, right? Yeah, there's quite a few and people have probably heard a lot of them of like having a cool environment, a dark environment, things like that. So to not just go down the path that people have likely already heard, although if that is news, have a nice cool environment,
00:47:57
Speaker
around 63 to 69 degrees Fahrenheit, have a dark environment, and if you can't get black-up lines, you're in the city, you can't get a dark environment, sleep with an eye mask, and seek to have consistent sound around you, so either quiet, no sound, or that's where white noise is wonderful. We live in cities now, right? If you're hearing things that would wake you up, because you're not truly fully offline when you're asleep, right?
00:48:24
Speaker
So those are sort of like the table stakes there, but there's some other interesting things we can talk about to improve sleep. One of them is to recognize that sleep happens as part of our rhythm. People have heard of circadian rhythms. That's not just your wake-sleep cycle as in, oh, circadian rhythm is kicking in, it's time to sleep. Our circadian rhythm is a 24-hour rhythm, like it guides us through the day to be awake and asleep. And light and light exposure
00:48:53
Speaker
has a really interesting relationship or impact on that circadian rhythm. And that isn't just at nighttime. So getting real light to hit your eyeballs in the morning when you wake is a really phenomenal anchor for your circadian rhythm. And then in the evening, dusk, the changing colors of the sky, it's not such a bright light, it's more those reddish hues instead of that blue light.
00:49:21
Speaker
Go observe that again. These are wonderful anchors, and this is what helps regulate our own sleep system and do things like signal the release of melatonin, which tells us it's time to go to sleep. So light exposure is one key thing, regular, that you can do. And then the other that I like to talk about with everybody is consistency.
00:49:43
Speaker
consistency of a lot of things. Our body likes rhythms, it likes consistent. This is why, and I empathize with, you know, I would, I guess you're, we're speaking mostly entrepreneurs, so this maybe doesn't apply, but anytime I'm speaking to like nurses, firefighters, shift work.
00:50:00
Speaker
That's tough. And the research shows it's tough and they'll tell you how tough it is, right? Shift work is really tough on us. But if you can have consistent sleep times and wake times, that includes on the weekends, go to bed within a half hour window each night, wake up within a half hour window each morning, that consistency helps us get that cycle really dialed in, which helps us with the quality of sleep that we get.
00:50:24
Speaker
And then also your consistency of exercise and movement, your consistency of fueling or food intake. All these things can really set you up for better sleep. And then the last thing I would say a little bit like flow is sometimes it's addition by subtraction is identifying any sleep disruptors. Sometimes you can't get rid of the sleep disruptors.
00:50:48
Speaker
Newborn kids can't get rid of them. Amazing sleep disruptors. And in those moments, I just say, hang in there. You'll get through it and take everything I just said about consistency and all of that and apply it to your kid. Because once you get your kid sleeping better, then you'll sleep better, right? It's important to understand the effect alcohol has on us. I'm not judgmental. I'll enjoy a drink here or there, but
00:51:14
Speaker
if we just look at it purely physiologically, like alcohol disrupts your sleep, and not being drunk, but literally just having like a couple cocktails disrupts your ability to get quality sleep. So you're asleep, you think you're asleep, but you're not getting that quality sleep that helps us the next day be more regulated. And caffeine too, or no? Oh, absolutely. So caffeine intake, you want to certainly cut if you look at the half, I think no later than one or two p.m. and know that everyone is individual. Like,
00:51:44
Speaker
Mal, if you have coffee at all, like, I mean, you have at 10am, it's going to affect you now. I don't drink caffeine anymore. Caffeine absolutely is going to be a sleep disorder. Because it's actually genetically, like some people react to caffeine, right? And some don't. And some metabolize it faster. That's what it is. Yeah. Yeah.
00:52:04
Speaker
And there's also specifically to women around our cycles. And I'm bringing this up with, I know my husband is not a woman, but you and your team have spent a significant amount of time in the last several years studying the woman athlete. So can you speak to that just briefly to kind of wrap us up here?
00:52:23
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. Mallory always teases me because we both work from home and she's like, I feel like I just heard you spend all day on a call talking about menstrual cycles and supporting women athletes. It's a really important thing for us and not just athletes, by the way. So I work on what's called our performance innovation team.
00:52:40
Speaker
And we have different innovation arcs. And one of our key arcs that we've had for the last several years that we've been diving in deep into research is how to support women in sport life and like sport work and life. So, and you're absolutely right, Mal, that through your cycle, and I think women from all the women I've talked to intuitively know this, but as you look at hormone changes throughout the cycle, there are certain phases of your cycle where sleep is more disrupted.
00:53:06
Speaker
And you also look at body temperature changes. You can also talk, I know your last episode, you talked about perimenopause, like the effects of going through, like menopausal change of perimenopause and the effects of that on sleep as well.
00:53:17
Speaker
And so being aware of that and knowing that those are times to really try and dial in your sleep practice a little bit, like just being cognizant of those things is really helpful for sure. We would say maybe extending a bit more grace during those times to ourselves. Absolutely. Yeah. Absolutely. There's also, I think we've got on our performance advisory board, we've got a wonderful expert in sleep. And one of the most interesting things that he shared with me
00:53:46
Speaker
is also perceptions around sleep that we don't know the why behind this, or at least I don't know the why behind this, but women will actually quite often get more sleep than male counterpart, but report like subjectively in the morning feeling more tired, like having a greater sleep need, so to speak. And so interestingly, like Mallory, I think you sleep more than I do, undoubtedly, but you also
00:54:16
Speaker
in the mornings would probably often say you feel more tired than I do. I feel I need more. I don't know. Yeah. And so that comes to the disruptors like building a support network around you in your life. If you have partners in your life, like it's important for me to not play this game of I got up with the kids yesterday, it's your turn. Like that's not a healthy
00:54:34
Speaker
That's not a healthy dynamic, right? To say you need sleep, let's prioritize sleep. Our whole household is better when both of us are well rested and I'm a like early riser. Like that's okay on the weekend you sleep in, I can get up and.
Practical Steps for Enhancing Flow and Productivity
00:54:46
Speaker
And having boundaries around your sleep. So, you know, we have this communication, like if he's going to be out late, does he sleep in the basement because it's going to wake me up right an hour and a half into my sleep? Because what episode was that we talked about? Sleep is the ultimate expression of self-care and having boundaries around your sleep. It's not selfish. It's actually the ultimate expression of self-care. So I think that ties back to flow because then it sets us up. That's the first thing we need to do.
00:55:16
Speaker
in order to solicit flow state. You need to be well rested, well recovered to be able to have a shot at flow. So yeah, as we look, I mean, I know you said wrapping up, I'm looking at the time. If you want to make it super tangible, like we gave some tangible things around sleep, but like how do I, and we talked about a few in flow, remove distractions, things like that, but to give a sense of what we do to try and increase flow. Number one is be well recovered. Check. I sleep while I come in recovered.
00:55:43
Speaker
Number two is to actually learn about flow a little bit. So we did some really interesting research with Hofstra University. And one of the key findings that we found was that there are metacognitive beliefs around flow, which it's like thinking about thoughts. Like if you believe and think in the value of this, you will
00:56:07
Speaker
seek it out more, experience it more, you'll be more aware of it when it shows up in your life, right? And so taking steps to learn about Flow, and there's wonderful books out there that fit every kind of, you know, reader's interest. From something more technical by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, which his book is at the name Flow, to more storytelling by Stephen Kotler is sort of the preeminent. He runs a group called Flow Research Collective and is sort of the top person nowadays
00:56:35
Speaker
in the flow world, and has a wonderful book called The Rise of Superman.
00:56:44
Speaker
It's more storytelling. So there's books, there's podcasts. Stephen Kotler has a podcast, you know, if you want, if you'd rather listen, you can find on your local podcast. But educating yourself a little bit on what flow is, or even just going back, re-listening to the section where we were breaking down what it was, and then the one about to say of how it shows up, building metacognitive beliefs around flow will help it show up more for you.
00:57:08
Speaker
And then we get into how you can intentionally set up your environment with those flow triggers. So we said, be sure to have clear and unambiguous goals. Give yourself goals. Then you can say other things like remove distractions, right? If I've got a clear goal, I need to get this pitch deck created by 2 p.m. today.
00:57:35
Speaker
I'm turning off, I'm silencing my phone. I'm removing distractions. I'm well recovered. Let's go to work. Like you give a chance of it showing up more, right? Like you're intentionally designing your environment. So do that. If you need to, you shift your internal environment. If I'm too amped up, anxious, like just not in a good head space, you won't get into flow. You go through practice a little bit, turn the dial down to meet the moment.
00:58:04
Speaker
A little bit of down regulatory breath work. Go meditate for a little bit. Whatever works for you to just calm and settle into the pocket. Other times, you're feeling too flat. I know I need to do this. I don't feel like doing it. How do I turn the dial up? How do I get a little bit? And that's a different kind of breath work. That's the CO2 tolerance where the eyes light up. That's more up regulate. Turn the dial up. Go for a short run.
00:58:30
Speaker
You go for a 20-minute run or brisk walk. Outside nature is an immersive, deeply immersive experience. It is rich environment, and the movement makes our frontal lines go offline. It's called transient hypofrontality. Transient means temporary. Hypo decreased frontal lobes.
00:58:53
Speaker
20 minutes of a brisk walk or a run. So you go, I know I need to set this up. So I've got my day set up. I'm going to go for a brisk walk or a run for 20 minutes. Right. Clear my head. I'm going to sit down at my desk. That is clean and does not have distractions. And I'm going to turn off all notifications on my technology. And I'm going to give myself a clearly stated goal of what I need to achieve. And I slept like a rock star last night.
00:59:22
Speaker
And guess what shows up more often? And you get that's the money shot right there. And now you get effective work. Like it actually where it helps you with burnout is not only what we said about you feel less burnt out, but you notice when you hit that pocket, like if you're a creative like Nicole, you design things, you get that spot where you feel like the work you just did in two hours is better than and more plentiful than what you could have done in six hours of interrupted work.
00:59:51
Speaker
So you're time boxing and using your time more effectively. And that's why I think when you start off, said, what's the one big thing for sustainable high performance? We've been able to talk about everything from sleep and recovery to time boxing and time management to how you intentionally design your environment in the workplace. But all of that is in service of being my most creative self, but also feeling the best. Well, and I think that's
01:00:20
Speaker
That's the place that I want to leave it as the closer of saying that my main takeaway from this conversation is that flow is a way to make literally everything feel better, right? And how we feel about our day at work, how we feel about our life is our reality, right? So if we can just shift how we feel during the day, 1%, 5%,
01:00:47
Speaker
eventually more, that's a radically different reality for entrepreneurs than how they felt yesterday. Right? So to me, that's, that's my main takeaway. And that's something I've been thinking about a lot lately is just, if I can change, not necessarily even what is right, but if I can change how what is feels, then that's a completely different reality.
01:01:10
Speaker
Absolutely. And that sounds kind of like what you're saying. It is. And it can be simple. That Hofstra study that I told you we did, we took 150 of our employees that are doing knowledge work. They're working at computers just like entrepreneurs. Same thing. 75 of them, life is normal. And then answer surveys, all of that.
01:01:28
Speaker
The other 75, all we did was gave them 20 minutes of flow education, where we talk about much of what we talked about on this podcast. So hey, high five, you just got your metacognitive beliefs. Re-listen to the podcast, you got it. We gave them 20 minutes of education.
01:01:42
Speaker
We nudged them through the day, which I know can sound counterintuitive because that's a distraction using tech, but we nudged them through the day at specific times to get them to set a clear and unambiguous time-bound goal for the next hour. It was a nudge of what are you going to achieve in the next hour? Set a goal.
01:02:00
Speaker
And we gave them, we reset their calendar, have calls on the 25 and 50 minute mark versus half hour and hour mark. So they got micro breaks through the day. And that's a whole other fun body of research on micro breaks. That's literally it. We didn't touch sleep. We didn't do anything. All we did was gave them short micro breaks through the day. Periods through the day where they set clear goals for themselves and a little bit of education. Those are the only three things we did in this research study.
01:02:29
Speaker
Flow increased significantly. You know what else was cool? Stress and anxiety decreased significantly. It is a way of setting up your workday where you are effective. You do great work. You're the best entrepreneur you can be, but you feel damn good doing it. Yeah. And like you just said, it's not that you have to completely change your entire world. These are small things that add up to making a big difference in how you feel.
01:02:57
Speaker
They're small and they're free. And that's why I like to end on that. Yeah, I like to end talking about that Hofstra study we did because sometimes it can feel overwhelming, especially when you're burnt out flow feels like one more thing. I hate one more thing. Stop telling me how to live my life. Stop telling me what more I have to do. And when it can be sometimes through the removal of things, or it can be as simply it's totally free. And it's really small. But just give yourself short micro breaks through the day. And just set yourself goals.
01:03:26
Speaker
This was so good. Cause our tagline is make business feel better. And this is like the number one way to do that. And shameless plug. If you want to educate yourself more, a lot of what Stefan talked about is in our boost your brain wellbeing court, just a simple, fairly quick course to get through, but it dives a little bit deeper into some of these things. Um, so honestly, I love this conversation. I think it's going to be super insightful and supportive to the entrepreneur space and to people who listen. So.
01:03:54
Speaker
I just, I can't thank you enough for being here and sharing your time with us and all of your insight. Thank you so much for having me. It, uh, it was a pleasure and an honor and, uh, I love what the two of you are doing. Thank you. All right, you guys, that wraps us up for this week. So we will see you again next time. Take care.
01:04:12
Speaker
Thanks for listening. Hop over to UnboundBoss.com to join our community and leave us a voice memo. We absolutely love hearing from you. If you like the podcast, please subscribe, leave us an Apple review, and share your favorite episodes with other women entrepreneurs. Talk to you soon.