---
author: The Knowledge Project Podcast
date: '2026-10-27'
guest: ''
layout: post.njk
source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w_p-68aRdmc
speaker: The Knowledge Project Podcast
tags:
- flow-state
- peak-performance
- neurobiology
- learning
- personal-growth
title: 心流状态的本质、生物机制与个人成长
summary: 文章探讨了心流状态的六大特征及其作为最佳意识状态的定义，分析了其神经生物学基础与可训练性，并讨论了挫折感在学习中的作用及作者对成功的个人理解。
insight: ''
draft: true
series: ''
category: psychology
area: society-thinking
project: []
people:
- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
- Michael Jordan
- Cal Newport
- Colleen Seifert
companies_orgs:
- DARPA
- Flow Research Collective
products_models: []
media_books:
- West of Jesus
status: evergreen
---
### 心流的本质与六大特征
如果你看到任何一个人处于其最佳状态，很可能心流就参与其中。这是地球上最令人上瘾的状态，绝无例外。
Original English
If you were seeing any human being performing at their best, chances are flow [music] is involved. It's the most addictive state on Earth, period.
Original English
>> What does a flow state feel like?
Original English
>> It's where I want to be, and when you're in that, it's there's no there's no better feeling.
Original English
>> When it happen, you have [music] no idea what the [ __ ] is going on.
Original English
>> Everything becomes one, and there is no time.
Original English
>> You're so focused on what you're doing [music] that everything else just starts to fade away and disappear. We feel a sense of control. You look at Michael Jordan in a flow state, you see the windmill dunk, but I'm inside it's Wow, that basket looks as big as a hula, but I can't miss.
Original English
>> What does it take for you to be your best when it matters most?
Original English
>> It's nothing more or less than getting our biology to work for us rather than against us.
Original English
>> DARPA's research found that you learn 230% faster than normal in flow. So, let me be spend a few beats and
Original English
>> teach me how to get [music] into flow.
Original English
>> Two things to know. First,
Original English
>> [music]
Original English
>> I'm curious how you would define flow.
Original English
>> Flow is a scientific definition, and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi is the one who came up with that definition, but it's technically defined as an optimal state of consciousness where we feel our best and perform our best. It mean refers to any of those moments of rapid attention and total absorption where you get so focused on what you're doing, so focused on the task at hand, that everything else just starts to fade away and disappear. All aspects of performance, mental, physical, and emotional, will skyrocket.
Original English
>> What does a flow state feel like?
Original English
>> So, this is actually the original work that Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi did on flow. He went around the world asking people about the times in their life when they felt their best and they performed their best, and he discovered that flow has six core characteristics. So, there's complete concentration on the task at hand. There's a merger of action awareness, a diminishment of our sense of self, uh time distortion, uh we don't feel peak performance on the inside, we feel a sense of control. So, a sense I can control things I can't normally control. That's what it feels like, right? You look at Michael Jordan in a flow state, you see the windmill dunk, and that's what it looks like, but on the inside it's wow, that basket looks as big as a hula hoop, but I can't miss. It's a feeling I can control. Finally, the last thing is flow states are um autotelic is the technical term that Csikszentmihalyi used. It just means euphoric and delicious. Autotelic means an end in itself. So, it basically means flow feels so good we'll go very far out of our way to get more of the experience. If I were to put it psy- psychologists hate when I do this, but it's the most addictive state on Earth. Period, right? But those are the six characteristics. So, if you're trying to figure out, am I in flow? My team in flow? Those are the six characteristics you're looking for.
Original English
>> So many people feel like they're not reaching their potential. Like they're capable of doing more, but they don't quite understand that. Is flow that that key?
Original English
>> Flow is how evolution created optimal performance in the human body. We've known for a while that the origin story of flow was probably runner's high. And there's a couple other evolutionary stories go along with it, but there's also some proof, and now there's a little bit more kind of neurobiology to back this up that flocking behavior and mobbing behavior, um which are actually related behaviors uh in nature, are early versions of flow states. But it's very old, and it's so it's it's not just in humans. Sm- All social mammals get into flow, and some insects, some birds. So, this is how we evolved to perform at our best. So, if you were seeing any human being at their best, chances are flow is involved. Another term that's worth defining is peak performance cuz it has connotations. People think soldiers or athletes or And people for all I As far as I can tell, this is This is my definition. It's nothing more or less than getting our biology to work for us rather than against us.
Original English
>> Go deeper on that.
Original English
>> There's nothing sort of beyond our bi- our biology. There's no secret secret to performance. There's just our biology. Neurobiology is mechanism shaped by evolution. It's the same in all of us. Um what motivates you is going to be different than what motivates me. But in both me and you, that motivation's going to show up as dopamine. So, what we're actually after here is the dopamine. That's the actual energy and focus and drive. And ever all the words and the terms we can put around it don't matter as much as getting the dopamine, which is actually what matters. And so, when you I I sort of figured if we could get to the level of mechanism, this stuff would get very trainable. And that has been our experience. So, at the Flow Research Collective, the our flagship training for a lot of years was Zero to Dangerous. We've 35,000 people went through it. So, after 8-week training, people would see a 73% boost in flow. I would like to tell you that's cuz our kung fu is that good. It's because this stuff is really trainable. And if you start with the neurobiology, which is the same in all of us, it's trainable. Cuz it's built into all of us. So, maybe you spend a few beats and
Original English
>> teach me how to get into flow.
Original English
>> Two things to know. What we're going to First, flow states have triggers. Preconditions that lead to more flow. There are 26 to 28 that have been discovered. There's probably way more. That's just what we know so far. And the first thing to know is the simplest, flow follows focus. Only shows up when all our attention in the right here, right now. On the task at hand. So, that's what all the triggers do. They drive focus in the present moment. If you peel back the hood, they do this in a number of different ways. They can push norepinephrine into our system. They can push dopamine into our system. They can push both together into our system. Or they can lower cognitive load. Cognitive load is all the crap you're trying to think about at any one time. And if I lower cognitive load, your brain instantly repurposes that energy for paying attention. This is why people will tell you to clean your desk first before you try to focus on on writing or something like that. What you're actually doing is lowering cognitive load cuz now it's more organized and things are in spots and the brain will automatically it's an efficiency [clears throat] engine. It always wants sort of extra energy for the task at hand. And so, that's what happens. You clean your desk, and you get more energy cuz cognitive load has gone down, and you can focus better. So, that's what all the triggers do.
Original English
>> I I always There's three triggers I start people with, but I also start I always back up. So, there is what It It's known as a primary flow activity. This is whatever you've done since you were a little kid that you just lose yourself in. You're just totally [ __ ] immersed in. And it's In a certain level, which triggers you're most susceptible to, a little bit of that is uh I probably genetic. A little bit more is early childhood environment. So, for me, it's skiing, right? That's my primary flow activity. Meaning like 90% of the time I go skiing, I'm going to get into a flow state. Or it's uh group flow, the shared collective version of a flow state. Interpersonal flow is two people getting a great conversation, and an hour goes by, and you didn't notice. It's interpersonal flow. I told you earlier that I work with the same editor and have for 25 years. And group flow is really like we're really good at this. We're working together for 25 years. We know exactly sort of how to how to work with each other. And so, invariably, a couple times a week I'm getting into group flow doing that. My wife, it's walking her dogs in the back country. My best friend is playing the guitar. Everybody's got their thing. And usually what happens as we become adults is what do you do? Oh, you have responsibility. You got a family. You got a job. Put down childish things. And you stop your primary flow activity goes away, and it's literally the single worst thing
Original English
you could do for the following three reasons.Original English
First is that This should be obvious, but flow is a focusing skill. Meditation is a focusing skill. They're different. They're different kinds of focusing. You're doing different things in the brain. Related, but different. But just like mindfulness is trainable, flow is trainable. So, focusing skill. So, if I go skiing on Sunday, and I'm in flow, and I go to work on Tuesday, I'm going to have an easier time getting into flow on Tuesdays. That is the first thing to know there.Original English
The second thing is for reasons that we can get into uh as we go along, anxiety will block flow. Um in most of us, right? A little bit is good. Little bit sort of primes the brain for focus and attentional alertness and learning. Too much will block flow. And primary flow activity lower resets your nervous system. So, it'll calm you down.Original English
So, primary flow activity on Sunday, go to work on Tuesday, encounter like a work problem, and your threshold your anxiety is a little bit lower. If you're burned out, if you're dealing with burnout, um the my lab did some work on this, but uh Corina Pfeifer's lab really is the one that proved this, but flow overrides burnout. It'll override PTSD, burnout. We do work. Now, we're doing a lot of work with veterans and on PTSD, addiction, uh depression cuz flow is neuroprotective [clears throat] against those things and can construct over pave over some of them. But, if you're really burnt out, doubling down your primary flow activity is the sort of the only way back. UmOriginal English
And but the what's Coolest research says shows that like two to four hours a week is about what it takes on your primary flow activity. So, the first place to start if you're training flow is actually the thing that you've done your whole life that you've probably stopped doing, and I will set you back there first.Original English
>> Because if you get into flow in one thing, it's easier than in another.Original English
>> in another thing. And then I'llOriginal English
>> thing to get into flow in is your primaryOriginal English
>> your primary flow activity cuz it's what you're like you're naturally inclined to do that. And the most common flow state on Earth, by the way, reading.Original English
>> Oh, interesting.Original English
>> most common flow state on Earth.Original English
>> What are some common flow triggers?Original English
>> If you're trying to think about flow triggers, one of the easy ways to do it is like if you look at the list, they're all they look like psychological interventions. So, novelty, complexity, unpredictability, risk are all flow triggers. Whenever we encounter any of those things, you get dopamine, right? In complex situations, the most famous flow trigger is the challenge-skills balance. So, we said flow follows focus.Original English
We pay the most attention to the task at hand when the challenge of that task slightly exceeds our skill set. So, you want to stretch but not snap. Bunch of years ago, decades ago now, uh Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi teamed up with a Google mathematician and tried to put a number on it just to see if they could put a number on it. They got 4% and they never said this was science. They said this was a back-of-the-envelope calculation, meaning when the challenge is 4% greater than your skills, um that's seems to be the sweet spot.Original English
One of the things I will say is it's right outside your comfort zone. The more you sort of train being just outside your comfort zone, just pushing a little bit, um the easier it gets and the other side of it is that's if if you were to talk about the the sweet spot, emotionally you'd say it's between boredom, there's not enough stimulation here, I don't care, I'm not paying any attention, and anxiety, whoa, way too much. Right in between is this sweet spot. What uh flow scientists call the flow channel, but if you're a physiologist, you call it the Yerkes-Dodson curve. It's one of the oldest findings written physiology, um that there's this sweet spot between challenge and skills, but if you're shyer meeker timid or less skilled thing that you're doing, you're going to be just outside your comfort zone. If you're like a hard-charging entrepreneur, um yet the problem is that that 4% is so small that you'll blow by and you'll take on challenges that are 50% 60% greater than your skills simply cuz it sort of wakes you up. AndOriginal English
so if you're training people on flow, you either have to train them to push a little bit harder or usually with type A types, you got to back them off and tell them to chunk it down. Those big huge overarching goals are great. Motivation science tells us that a good properly set hard goal gives you an 11 to 22% boost in motivation. Um so, that's amazing. Like just for having a well-set goal, but you want to chunk it down so the thing in front of you sits in that sort of 4% sweet spot. What this really tells you is you can only get about 4% better at a time, right? Like that that when you're laddering up, it's like 4% gains. This is the thing that we learned when we tested it. And again, I I don't know how accurate this is, but like we saw it again and again. We found if you only stay in that 4% sweet spot, and the reason I like we could do with action sport athletes is we started doing it with downhill down mountain bikers, and we measured every feature on the hill. And that's how we could figure out, okay, this is what you can jump, so this would be 4%, and that's how we did it. That's how we were testing it. And what we discovered is if you stayed in that sweet spot, you never plateaued. You would get more flow and more flow and more flow, and you made way more progress over the course of a season, um than you did the other way.Original English
>> How can we mute distractions and get into a flow state?Original English
>> We said earlier flow follows focus, right? All the flow triggers drive attention to the present moment. The most obvious flow trigger is complete concentration. What do I mean by complete concentration? For me, it's writing, so I'll give you a writing example. When I'm going to go writing, the first thing I want to do is get rid of all the distractions. So, my smartphone gets turned off because, you know, they modeled it after a jackpot, the single most, you know, addictive and distracting technology uh in the world, and uh so that gets shut down, notifications, email. When I used to start at this work uh 20 years ago, average executive I dealt with had like three ways you can interrupt them. There was cell phone call them, you could email them, you could message them, you could knock on their door, right? The average executive I work with these days has like 17 to 18 different incoming channels, WhatsApp and messages and Slack and Notion, and it's it's insane.Original English
>> But do you know how many people [ __ ] on me? Like my phone is perpetually in focus. If you're not my kids, it doesn't get through. That's it. Just my kids. And so, like people are like, "You're always in focus. I feel like I'm interrupting you." And I'm like, "Well, you can text. I'm just not going to get your text until I choose to look atOriginal English
>> I Yeah, well, that's the other thing. I tell people you train people. So, limit communication channels, keep one channel open for emergency. So, like your boss or your you know wife or whatever. One channel for emergency. Get rid of the others batch communications. So communications in the morning, the end of the day. The next question is how long should focus? And here's a really good biological answer because we actually have an answer here. So everybody knows they go through a sleep cycle when they sleep and it's roughly 90 to 110 minutes long um which is the REM cycle. You have an awake and alert cycle. It's the exact same like this 90 to 110 minutes long. Your brain is biologically designed to focus for 90 minute slots. So I always tell people when we're training them in flow and we're training them how to focus, you know, start by starting. You know, start by like walling yourself off and if you can only focus for 10 minutes at a time, start there. If it's 15 minutes, start there. It doesn't matter. Start by starting. But when you start to get better at this, you will find that your brain will naturally move. Like you'll people will be training up and training up and I can I got 20 minutes, 25 minutes and suddenly they're like, oh myOriginal English
god, I was 90 minutes. What happened?
Original English
And I'm like, what happened is your biology. Like you're built to do that.
Original English
Um so if you start getting your biology to work for you in this way, you're going to move in that direction um naturally. So complete concentration is one of the first flow triggers. You know, you have your primary flow activity. I always say, you know, manicure the space for complete concentration and then use the challenge skills balance to figure out how to tune the task. So I'll give you a writing example. I write every day. Sure you do too. When I'm starting a book for me, I like to write about 500 words a day.
Original English
And so that's that's right in that 4% sweet spot for me. Cuz that's so mutable, you have to also tune it on a daily basis for what's your energy level. Right? If I didn't get any sleep last night cuz my plane was delayed and it was 3:00 in the morning when we landed and I woke up, you know, and it was starting a book, I wouldn't ask myself to write 500 words. That would be too hard. I'd do 300 words. That's sort of in that sweet spot. So you can manicure the space for complete concentration and manicure the task with the challenge skill sweet spot.
Original English
>> How would you teach somebody with ADHD? Would that be different?
Original English
>> Couple of things.
Original English
Um I'm not an expert ADHD, but in my original flow my first flow company, Ned Hallowell, literally coined the term ADHD. He's a Harvard psychologist, just retired. He's a mentor. Uh married to his now both of us think that ADHD is an evolutionary superpower for cuz it's it's hyperfocus. ADHD, the problem isn't I can't focus. The problem is I can't focus on [ __ ] I don't care about. Right? On [ __ ] I care about, I can lock in and you're not going to find me for months.
Original English
And I will say I have met very few people at the top of industries business athletics arts. Like everybody I know has ADHD. I think it's an absolute superpower in in in business and everything else.
Original English
But here's the first thing that I would say.
Original English
First thing you have to know when you're working with ADHD, and this is just another flow trigger. Well, most people don't know this, but autonomy and attention are coupled systems in the brain.
Original English
So you cannot maximize focus. If you're not the one driving the bus you won't just not going to care where it goes as much as the driver. Like it's just that simple. So for people who have ADHD, um reframing is the tool you want to reach for.
Original English
So I used to I'll give you an example again from writing, but we can apply it anywhere, but or work. If you have a boss comes to you, so you have a boss, right? And you have ADHD, and the boss says, "I need you to do X." And you don't like X. X isn't your thing, and you're pissed. You're going to have a really hard time focusing. But if you If X is something you want to do, you're locked in. 3 days go by, no problem, done. So you have to reframe the task. You have to say, "God, you know, 90% of this task is crap. I don't care. 10% of it is going to make me a better salesperson." And that's something I really care about cuz it's aligned with my purpose and who I think of myself and right, so that's what matters or when I used to get early on in my journalism career where I was really poor and I would have to take every assignment that could possibly come my way cuz I needed the money. Not all of them were stuff that I loved. You know what I mean? No, do I really want to write 5,000 words on data caves?
Original English
I could think of, you know, better things to do with my time, but I will I do it if you're going to pay me? Yes, absolutely and I'll I'll find this task and be like, okay, I don't like any of this task, but writing this is going to teach me how Wired magazine structures their stories and that matters to me. So, I will focus on the thing that I want to learn that's aligned with my purpose and sort of that's my gateway in. So, if you have ADHD, the first thing you have to do is reframe the task to find the autonomy because you can't marshal attention without it and with ADHD, this is really a problem for you have to figure out what in the task aligns with who you are, your purpose and your values and all that stuff that will allow you to sort of push through.
Original English
>> You said that's the first thing. What else?
Original English
>> Know that you're super distractible. So, that's going to manifest in two ways.
Original English
One, it means distraction management, right? Manicure your space, manicure your environment, all that stuff. The other thing you're super distractible too is as you move into flow, one of the things that happens in flow is you get a [ __ ] load of dopamine and norepinephrine. These chemicals do a ton of things in the brain. One of the things they do is they massively amplify pattern recognition.
Original English
So, when we link two ideas together, right? Uh that little rush of pleasure you get, that's dopamine. So, if you've ever done a crossword puzzle and you stick you get an answer right, that little rush of pleasure, that's dopamine, right? And it shows up when there's pattern recognition.
Original English
We actually talk about this as the creative trigger. Flow's creative trigger. It's really just cuz pattern recognition sits underneath creativity. So, that you have to manicure the space is the first way, but you have to protect yourself against your own thoughts.
Original English
Cuz when you're in flow and you've got more dopamine in your system, there's more pattern recognition, creative ideas tend to spiral. One idea will lead to the next idea, lead to the next idea. In flow, tangents are delicious. So, with ADHD, that's it's twice it's easier to get distracted and you've got that crazy focus, so you're going to get distracted and then you're going to focus down that rabbit hole and you're going to going to be gone and you're not going to finish the task at hand. So, you sort of need the discipline to stay focused on what you're doing and just sort of like write down the tangents. We're going to save that for later. So, you want to manicure the space on the front end. You sort of want to police your thoughts as you as you move through it um on the back end. And you always want to sort of find your autonomy in in the act. Those would be the first three things I would do.
Original English
>> Every few years, a new platform earns its place at the top of every smart advertiser's media plan. The people who find it early build advantages that are very hard to close. AppLovin just had the most remarkable run in adtech history and now they've opened that engine to businesses like yours. Over a billion people play mobile games every day. Focused, not scrolling, with no feed competing for their attention. AppLovin puts your brand in front of the right customers and optimizes purely for your growth. Brands like Wayfair, Kitsch, Ridge, and Nectar are already scaling on it. Well, most of their competitors don't even know it exists. Ready to find your next million customers? Go to applovin.com/shane and launch your first campaign today.
Original English
>> I built an AI version of myself with HeyGen. What you're about to see and hear is my digital avatar. I asked it why some professionals build an audience while most stay invisible. And here's what it said. Hey Shane, the professionals breaking out right now aren't the most talented ones. They're the most visible ones. That's their edge. They show up on video constantly and nobody else can keep the pace. Record yourself once and I close that gap. So, you become the face people trust. That's HeyGen. Record yourself for 15 seconds and get an avatar that keeps you posting without filming. So, you don't need to become a full-time content creator. 30 million people already use it from financial advisors and real estate agents to 85% of the Fortune 100. Your first three videos are free at heygen.com/tkp. That's h e y g e n dot com slash tkp.
Original English
Is [music] flow always good?
Original English
So, that's an interesting question. One of the things that's worth pointing out is flow is morally neutral. It's a tool. So, soldiers get into flow. So, depending on which side of battle you're on, right? Csikszentmihalyi pointed out years ago and he was absolutely right that most so-called juvenile delinquency, graffiti art, vandalism, fighting, that sort of stuff, it's actually bored
Original English
teenagers who are natural Your body Your body will naturally seek flow and they're actually tuning the challenge skills balance with through delinquency. They're upping the challenge level in their lives and trying to get into flow. Um rather than This isn't about like misbehaving. It's actually This is flow-based behavior. So, flow's just a It's It's neutral, can be used for good or bad, and can have good and bad effects, right? Depending What do we know for sure? We know it underpins happiness, well-being, overall life satisfaction, meaning and purpose, and increases longevity. I mean, we could talk about what cognitive benefits, but these are just like kind of well-being benefits. Those are beneficial. It expands empathy, which I always think is a good thing. It increases uh environmental awareness, which is our ability to see, perceive, and care about the natural world. I always think that's a good thing.
Original English
>> What's one specific thing everybody listening to this podcast can change today that will increase their performance?
Original English
>> So, uh we did this work a a while ago. It's It's written about in my book, Narnia Country, which was really in uh in experiment in longevity. But, one of the things that we discovered is um So, I have uh and I knew Anders Ericsson before he passed. He was He was a really nice guy. Really liked him. But flow or challenges his 10,000 hours like right it does cuz it says you can flow. And this is if you go by DARPA's uh research, Defense Department looked at learning and flow and they found that you learn 230% faster than normal in flow. 230% faster than normal is obviously, if it's going to take you if 10,000 hours, which we all know is a fantasy number, and that was Malcolm and not and and not Anders
Original English
>> iterations.
Original English
>> And and even that, it's it depends on what domain you're trying to learn, right? But so what we discovered among many other things is not just flow. We compared deliberate practice, which is Anders Ericsson's, which is doing the repetition with incremental improvement.
Original English
>> Mhm.
Original English
>> With against um deliberate play. Which is repetition with improvisation. And as learning tools, and you will actually learn better. In very tight domains like mathematics and violins, um the stuff that Anders was studying, deliberate practice is great cuz they're very structured and bounded disciplines. And if you're inside one of those, deliberate practice is effective. If you're outside of a bounded discipline, which is pretty much almost everything else other than like musical instrument a couple other things, deliberate play outperforms deliberate practice significantly. And the simple reason is how does learning work?
Original English
Quick short hand for learning and memory is the more neurochemicals that show up during experience, the better chance that experience will move from short-term holding into long-term storage. It's what neurochemicals do. They do a lot of different things, but one of the things they do is tag experience important save for later. This is why flow flow is this huge dump of neurochemistry, which is why learning goes through the roof. But quite simply, when we play versus when we repeat the same thing with incremental improvement, we get way more neurochemicals. So deliberate play will outperform deliberate practice. So you asked for one thing that most people can do to increase learning and peak performance, be more playful.
Original English
>> What are the sources of motivation?
Original English
>> If you're trying to amplify human motivation, the way I always explain it people that we usually I talk about this people will come to me and they're like, "How do you find a a purpose? How do I get a purpose, right? Like what is my" And I and I say, "Well, biologically, you can you follow the biology. The way the biology works is curiosity is the foundational motivator. It's a little bit of dopamine. It's great motivator, but it's just a little bit of dopamine. If you are trying to build towards passion, right, which is bigger individual motivator, you just want the intersection of multiple curiosities. So, this is one of the things when I'm people are trying to find their purpose, one of the things I do is I say, "List 25 things you're curious about and find where they intersect." This used to be a hard thing for people. Like they would have a hard time doing this and it would take people really long time. The great thing is we all have LLMs. Those they and they're great at this. Like you can literally use an LLM to do this. But if you can figure out where like one, three, or four of your curiosities intersect and start playing there, that's passion. That's a seed kernel of passion cuz now you got a lot of different dopamine coming in. When you attach that passion to a cause greater than yourself, that's purpose. The reason we care about purpose from a motivational standpoint is better drugs, right? Passion
Original English
>> Mhm.
Original English
>> is dopamine and norepinephrine. It's really powerful, but purpose is dopamine, norepinephrine, and then all that prosocial neurochemistry that you get when other people are there. So, you get serotonin and you get endorphins and you get oxytocin. It's better drugs.
Original English
>> Right.
Original English
>> Right? It's more feel-good drugs.
Original English
>> It also seems like there's two fundamental power sources for motivation, if you will, which is one have a chip on my shoulder. I'm I'm moving away from something. And then the other is I'm moving towards something.
Original English
>> It's an interesting way of thinking about it. I I I So, I uh one of the more famous things that I wrote it's it was a newsletter actually, but I love small letter S spite as a motivator. This is Tom Brady, right? Like with a chip on his shoulder. I My wife there's a fortune cookie that's taped to our refrigerator that like my wife found and it says you get great satisfaction out of proving other people wrong. And almost everything I've done like I've done because somebody I thought was doing it wrong and it pissed me off. And so I wanted I want to I want to fix it. So, I love that as a motivator. Um
Original English
>> What When is a chip on your shoulder healthy and when is it unhealthy?
Original English
>> So, Michael Jordan is the example of unhealthy. Because
Original English
>> Greatest basketball player of all time.
Original English
>> of all time. Of all time. And I was born in Chicago, I grew up a Bulls fan. It was like watching Jordan play was amazing. But watching what that chip became after he was out of basketball, like do you watch your interviews with Michael Jordan and think, "Oh, here's a really happy dude?" I'm thinking he's starting to get that a little bit there now, but as a general rule that level of spite as a motivator ends up eating you alive. So, I think like it's really really useful, but you sort of got to know when to put it down. That's why I say small S spite. One of the things that I never do is read criticisms of my work, take it personally, and care about what my critics say or argue with my critics. But I know lots of thinkers, lots of really brilliant men and women who somebody said they were wrong, they will like go toe-to-toe. I'll give you This happened fairly recently and it was just we put out a very I have a new science article out right now in Frontiers of Neuroscience called The Body Doesn't Keep the Score. And it is a direct rebuttal against van der Kolk, who I think is totally wrong and um I think that book is very problematic. Mike So, my co-writers cuz people are freaking out and there's a lot of like podcasters are trying to People are trying to argue with us.
Original English
And I had to call I was like, "We're not going to play that game." Like at some point, if, you know, the right person comes to us and says, "Hey, will you have the conversation?" Yes, we'll do that. But our job is not to like defend our territory against commerce. We took our stand. We We made our statement. It's a very well-written article. You can argue with this. You don't have to argue with us. But we don't have to rebut all the Like that's not the job. The job is to do the research. And you know, our job is to prove it more, right? Like people got mad. Great. Let's Let's go do another study and prove it more, right? And like that's our job. Our job isn't isn't all the rebuttals. And you don't have to So you do that. Or you know, I see these writers. And it's amazing cuz I like I
Original English
see really smart people who are amazing contributors to this world. And I can't tell you how much time they're they're you know, like flushing down a toilet cuz they want to argue with their critics.
Original English
>> One thing we haven't talked about with flow is its relationship to learning. So I know Cal Newport argues that flow isn't the optimal learning state because we need a lot of discomfort. I'm curious, what's your reaction to that?
Original English
>> One of my pet peeves is people who coin a whole bunch of new language for themselves.
Original English
One of the reasons flow research was so damn hard so damn hard. The entire altered state space is everybody wanted to coin a new name.
Original English
>> Mhm.
Original English
>> Right? Maslow called it peak experiences. Csikszentmihalyi was flow. Then Phil Jackson, the zone. And so I look at Cal and I think and I'm picking a fight here that I don't really need to pick a fight. But like it bugs the [ __ ] out of me. I'm like, "Deep work is another word for flow, brother." Like I'm sorry. You've coined a new term. When he says, "Well, no, you're you're going to need a lot of struggle for flow." Well, that's cuz there's a flow cycle. The front end of a flow state is what is known as struggle. It's a loading phase. Flow is unconscious when we can perform tasks without much conscious interference. To perform something unconsciously, we first have to learn it consciously.
Original English
>> Right.
Original English
>> Right. Um so that's why there's a four The first front end of flow state is struggle. Right? It's all conscious. It's all thinking. It's And Cal is exactly correct. Um and this is Colleen Seifert sort of did some of the original work here. She was at the University of Michigan. She's brilliant. But she found that in struggle, the more frustrated you get, the more sort of you've overloaded your RAM, the better chance you have of A solving the problem later, and B um of getting into flow uh once that solution shows up. If you're curious about this If anybody's listening, uh if you look my name in the in our big paper on the neural dynamics of intuition, it's called pathfinding and neural dynamical account of intuition written in nature, we found that uh this is also true if you want an intuitive breakthrough. Like when you're learning a subject, the more frustrated you are, the better chance you will later like intuit the solution. And this is So this is I'll talk more about flow and learning, but this is like for parents, I think it's one of the most important things that you need to teach kids. And I think it's one of the most important things that all of us need to learn. So I always say if you actually understand peak performance, you find out that a lot of our emotions don't mean what we think they mean. You know, frustration in This is a great example. When most people get frustrated, they're learning something they can't learn, or they're frustrated, they can't solve the They think it's a sign they did something wrong. They think it's a sign that they're moving in the wrong direction, or they should stop, or whatever.
From the literature, I can tell you it's the ex- it's exactly right.
You have a label on it. You Like it still feels like [ __ ] It's still frustrating. But you're actually moving in the exact right direction. That's a good thing, not a bad thing. It just doesn't feel very good. Or
Original English
>> So frustration is feedback.
Original English
>> Frustration is a kind of feedback. It's all it's telling you is that you've overloaded your working memory. But anyways, frustration is a sign that you're moving in the right direction. And uh So yes, is he right? Like do you need to struggle for learning? Yes, in fact, you need norepinephrine in your system to learn. Norepinephrine is Low levels is curiosity, high levels is anxiety, right? And you you cannot learn without a little bit of norepinephrine in your system. It will completely block learning. So, he's not wrong, but there's a biological cycle here. It goes farther than that, and what he's calling deep work is like, as far as I can tell, is flow. And you've just rebranded, you know, something else, and you've just made it harder for people who are trying to study this and get smarter about it. I want to
Original English
>> come back to something. Maybe double click on pattern recognition and anticipation, the relationship between those two things.
Original English
>> The brain fundamentally is a prediction engine, right? What the brain is doing at every moment of every day is it's trying to predict what is about to happen, right?
What it wants to do is lower uncertainty, wants to minimize uncertainty, and it wants to know exactly how much energy, right? Cuz we evolved in an environment where calories are really hard to come by, so it never wants to waste energy. So, it's what's about to happen and how much energy do I need to meet the challenge? That's what the brain is always trying to do. So, when I think about when you say anticipation, I'm really just thinking about what we mean by like a prediction engine brain that's always sort of trying to lower uncertainty. And I also think like, if you're trying to understand human behavior, you always have to start there. We use pattern recognition as a flow trigger, so it's another one of flow's triggers, and it's really, really, really important, and I'll give you a couple of like three really common examples. So, one of the things I will always have people I'm I'm working with do is read a minimum of 25 pages a day, usually in a book. I like I think books are the best, but cuz you have to stock the pattern recognition system with ammunition, right? If you're not feeding the pattern recognition system new information, it doesn't have the raw materials to make connections. So, one of the ways to start getting more flow in your life is if you start taking in more information. And I like reading books because they they're just the densest yet form of information available on the planet, and you have the best opportunity for stocking the pattern recognition system that way. But, that's one of the things I think of when talk about pattern recognition. Again, on the other side, this is something that I train a lot. I will train different thinking styles, lateral thinking, right? Outside outside the box thinking. How do you make sort of connections between sort of unrelated things? How does that work? And the brain will, you know, sort of automatically do that.
I always say with We were talking earlier about uh writing and sort of uh one of the most common causes of writer's block is not knowing your starts and your endings.
If you know where you're starting, you know where you're ending, the brain is a built It's a pattern recognition system, right? The brain does pattern recognition at like this is what neurons do at at most basic level, right? Everything Everything we do is built out of pattern recognition. If you know your starts and your endings, you have a pattern recognition system for the brain, it will connect them. This is how we do narrative, this is how we do cause and effect, this is how the brain does everything. So, with writing, people are you If they're stuck, it's usually cuz they don't know where they're starting and where they're going because eventually the brain will automatically fill in the middle for you cuz it's built to do that.
Original English
>> Let me tell you about the best new product that I've used in the past 5 years. It's the Matic vacuum. This thing vacuums, it mops. Matic does everything. Other robots bump into things, but the Matic sees things. It actually avoids the problems. And the Matic automatically adjusts between my carpeted surfaces and my hardwood floors. It's also super easy to schedule. I have it run every night while I'm in bed, and every morning I wake up to clean floors. Messes happen, and when they do, Roborock rolls into action. Go to roborock.com today and put Roborock to work for you.
Ever hit 3:00 p.m. and feel like your brain just quit? For a lot of people, that's not caffeine or sleep. It's electrolytes, and water alone won't fix it. That's why I drink LMNT every day after lunch. Zero sugar, no dodgy ingredients, just a real dose of sodium, potassium, and magnesium.
I know you're all thinking electrolytes are for athletes, but you don't have to be an athlete to benefit from it, and it tastes great. Stay sharp in
Original English
the afternoon and grab a free eight-count sample pack with any purchase at drinklmnt.com/tkp. That's drinklmnt.com/tkp.
Can you teach people to think better?
Original English
>> If you want to think better, you have to start by reading more. Like the You want to think better, read more. First first thing. People ask me how I got my career, how I did anything, and I will flat-out tell you I have read the [ __ ]
Original English
>> I just I realized very early on I wasn't the brightest guy, I wasn't, you know, the best at all that stuff, but I was willing to read three or four or five times the amount as anybody else was willing to read. So, I think one, if like you want to teach somebody to think better, you got to teach them how to read more. When I say read, I actually mean books. I spend most of my time these days reading textbooks. Um I and I I cuz I think it's the ultimate edge. I love them cuz literally you have the best people in the world summarizing and and putting all their most important stuff into it, and nobody else reads them. I always talk about this in terms of the ROI on reading.
Original English
>> And so, for example, if you read a blog of mine or a short article, you write it's going to take you 5 to 8 minutes, about 1,000 words, right? It's going to take you 5 to 8 minutes to read it. What do you actually get for those 1,000 words? Well, if I'm writing a blog article, I'm going to it's two writing sessions, really. I'm going to write it one day. I may do one phone call, one interview, what call a friend, "Hey, you know, you're an expert, what do you think? This is the idea, you know?" And then I'm going to polish it the next day. So, you give me 5 minutes and you get roughly 6 hours and maybe one phone call. So, two brains on the problem and about 6 hours for 5 minutes. That's not bad ROI.
Original English
>> But, if you read a book, say take Rise of Superman. My books um on average about 70, 72,000 words. It's going to take most people about 6 to 7 hours reading them. This is just normal reading speed, right? So, okay, cool. You've given me 6 to 7 hours. What's your return on investment? Well, for Rise of Superman, it took me 15 years worth of research to write that book. There were thousands of conversations and and you know, so literally, you're giving me 6 or 7 hours, but you're getting 15 years of my life and hundreds of other people beating on those ideas. That's amazing ROI.
Original English
>> Two ideas that dovetail into this >> I I want to hear you maybe respond to. One is I have a concept called the learning loop.
Original English
>> Okay.
Original English
>> And it's you have an experience, you take that experience, you compress it. So, you reflect on it. So, you have an experience, you reflect on it, you create a compression, and then you act on that compression.
Original English
>> Okay.
Original English
>> And when we communicate with other people, we're often communicating the compression.
Original English
>> Yeah.
Original English
>> And I feel in a lot of cases it's the illusion of knowledge. It's like me going home, I pull out a cookbook, I can make that recipe, but if something goes wrong, I have no idea what went wrong, why it went wrong. But, the chef who's had the experience, reflected on that experience, and then given me the recipe, which is in fact the compression, they know exactly what went wrong. "There's too much salt. Your oven's not the right temperature. You didn't stir enough. You" They like instantly know all of that stuff. And a lot of what we consume is the compression, other people's compression. So, in in the podcast space, one of the reasons I wanted to do long-form is to get away from
Original English
>> Oh, or at least as reasonably as we can get away from the compressions, get into the experiences, and show the thinking, show the reflection, and then people can come up with their own compressions that they take away from the episode in an effort to make it more useful. I'm curious, A, how you would respond to that, B, how I can make the podcast format better for people to take away information they can actually use.
Original English
>> Well, I think it's a medium is the message kind of thing. So, I think you will get with this kind of thing better stories, better the human side. I like there's a lot of advantages cuz those things even get compressed in in books for a lot of reasons. So, I think the podcast is really there's certain kinds of things that are that are very ef- that is very effective for. When it comes to like teaching knowledge though, I still think there's something about reading
Original English
>> Oh, definitely.
Original English
>> that's just better. I also always tell people that like you can't read the book same books as other people. All right, if you read the same books as other people, you think the same thoughts as other people. And so, whenever the whole world's running around talking about a book, like I'm I'm usually usually suspicious of that book, but I'm usually curious about what the author read to produce the book, right? That's really interesting to me. And I like I like backtracking that way in terms of sources. How to make the podcast better from an information perspective.
Original English
>> Information density
Original English
>> density perspective is interesting. To me, it's also about your willing to a willingness, one's willingness to always sort of ask the extra question. As a as I've been on both sides of the microphone, right? I started out as a journalist. Um there's an urge to sort of get through your questions and get through the interview and sort of do that part of the job, but like every there's always the next question, right? There's that follow and so that like the restraint to like, "Oh, I'm not going to get through my checklist. I'm going to take the time to ask the next question and the follow-up and the follow-up." Which you've been doing. So like
Original English
>> But this is why you're the perfect person to talk to with your journal. Like how do you pull out the best information from people?
Original English
>> So this is how do you interview experts? Yeah. Right. These are my rules. Um one, I don't go into like if I'm being interviewed by somebody or if interviewing somebody, I know I learn everything. Like everything. I will know your hometown. I remember um at one point I had to meet I can't remember the vodka company. It was the guy one of the big vodka companies I was interviewing him. And I found out like not only was did I find out what his hometown was, I found out what the patron saint of his hometown was and there was a statue St. Lidwina. This is the patron saint of ice skating. It's still stuck in my brain. I can't even tell you what town it is. Um it was in Finland I want to say. So like I'll go into the interview knowing all their work and a lot about them. First question I ask always displays personal knowledge. So you grew up in so-and-so and when you were 10 years old X happened. Something that like lets you know I know your history. That's question one. Question two, I'm going to always display domain knowledge about not just your like I'm going to display knowledge about your work, but I'm going to put it in the domain context. So David Eagleman, science writer, right? So David, when you wrote Incognito and you presented your information on synesthesia, that's really interesting, but it conflicts with what Helmholtz said back in blah. I'll do that kind of thing. So the first two questions I want to establish one, I know you. I know you and I know your work and I can speak your language. So feel free to speak freely. Um
Original English
>> I will I'm also always the first person to be like, "Hey, stop. You're going to have to explain that to me like I'm a four-year-old." Right? I've got no I've got no ego in what I like. I love being the dumb guy in the room, right? Love being the dumb guy in the room and being able to be like, "Hey, how did that work?" It's about sort of seducing your interviewee into flow, right? What you want is to interpersonal flow. What you're trying to get here is interpersonal flow. That's to get so lost in the conversation that my filters come down and I'm willing to, you know, that's what That's sort of what everybody's sort of going for when you're interviewing experts and suddenly you're like, "Oh my god, you you know my history and you speak my language? You want us? I could talk to you, right? It's a big deal.
Original English
>> I want to switch
Original English
gears just a little bit. Uh Josh Waitzkin says he hunts for his own thinking errors. Is that like the meta-skill? Why is he so effective at learning?
Original English
>> I love Josh. Um I think he's a genius about about this stuff. I don't know if this is an answer. I'm going to fumble around for a little while. Um but I will tell you that the areas where Josh learned how to learn, first as a chess player and then as a martial artist, um especially in Tai Chi, which is a sort of a slower, more meditative stuff, when you make errors in thinking, in chess you're going to lose and in Tai Chi push like he's going to get thrown out of the ring, right? Cuz he was doing competitive the the martial version of Tai Chi. Um and you get pushed out of the ring. That's how you lose in that version. Um and so his thinking errors were very visible to like the errors of thinking have consequences um that are that were right in his face
Original English
and I think something like that even like me learning to think as a journalist, right? When I got something wrong, I would get fired or I wouldn't get hired again, you know what I mean? Um so I think to develop the meta-skills one like I think the consequences sort of help a little bit to help you think about thinking.
Original English
Um I also think I'm a long-time meditator. Josh is a long-time meditator. Um when you start getting that separation between emotion and feeling, right? Cuz emotions surface first and they're automatic and feelings come second and they feel automatic and they feel like but you know, like if you can get into the gap between feeling emotion and feeling, you start to figure out oh, wait a minute, that feeling is a frame. It's not exactly trustworthy. It's different. There's two things going on here in the minute that feeling shows up, it locks me into a meaning. And so when you start doing that work and you start noticing there's like there's a difference there, I think all these things are very helpful sort of on the way to meta-cognition.
Original English
>> I want to tie that back to Josh for a second. So it seems like there's a couple things. I'm going to I'm going to say how I'm hearing what you're saying and maybe you can respond to this. So it sounds like a lot of the conditions Josh was using were the same conditions we need for intuition. So rapid feedback, lot of iterations and relatively unchanging environment. You know, you're confined in what's happening.
Original English
And then I heard but you didn't say or maybe I inferred from my past knowledge of Josh that he was okay being uncomfortable, which means he was okay looking like a fool and being a beginner and he didn't have an image or something he had to maintain and he was okay making mistakes and then getting the feedback from those mistakes.
Original English
>> That's interesting. I didn't I wasn't thinking about that. That is obviously true. I think anybody who's good at learning doesn't like I have a I don't like being bad in public. So I try very hard like even with, you know, when I ski I try to get as far away from the chairlift. Like I will, you know, I want to iterate in the woods out of sight. I think Josh was a little bit like when Josh was transitioning from Tai Chi and martial and martial arts Gracie Jiu-Jitsu at that point um and moving into surfing and and and Pan Am which is, you know, where he is right now. He left New York and went down to Costa Rica, right? Where he doesn't really know anybody. He got and some of it was access to waves and I got that, but I think some of that was also like, let me get away from everybody I know so I can like be really bad and it doesn't matter.
Original English
>> So, I have a theory on how people learn good just on this notion. I think the best people in the world often learn in what I call the dark hours. Nobody's watching them. There's no boss. It doesn't matter what your field is. It's how you hone your craft. You play. You're there after 5:00 p.m. It's 10:00 at night. You're playing around with an Excel spreadsheet or you're writing a wave or you're doing whatever and nobody's watching you. And in those moments you can fail cuz there's no consequences. There's no boss directing you and you're playing and you're learning and that sort of ties into what you were saying with skiing and how you Yeah, I want to do this in the back where nobody can see me.
Original English
>> I think about this slightly different to say when I I always talk about the importance of non-time. I get up and start my writing day about 3:30, 4:00 every day. And one of the reasons is nobody bugs me. Nobody owns 4:00 a.m. to 7:00 a.m. is non-time. It doesn't belong to anybody. And I you know, this is an old habit from I used to live on the West Coast and I was like I was the West Coast reporter for a lot of East Coast publications and we were all young and hungry. And so like my friends which my editors would show up at like 8:00 in the morning. They would get to work early. And it's 5:00 back on the West Coast and they would start to call me. So, I knew I had to get my work done, like my books written before the phone started ringing because I was so poor. Like the minute they called, what do you need? How high? I'll jump, right? Like what do you what do you need? I'll go do it. Um so, it was all it was an instant yes and I knew this so I had to like start getting up earlier and earlier and earlier.
Original English
And I started to realize exactly what you did is now I love it because sometimes in my job, I'm sure in your job, too, there are days I got to spend an hour or 2 hours on a sentence. And if you're asking me to spend 2 hours in a sentence at 9:00 a.m. in normal business hours when I got to like run my company, that you're crazy. I cannot do it. And it's certainly not playful, right? And really what you want when you're stuck writing is exactly that you have to start playing with the language to like get that break that you have to come at it from weird angles and do all that stuff. And you can only do that with like that non-timer, your dark dark
Original English
>> dark hours.
Original English
>> dark hours. Um it yes, that's sort of how I think about
Original English
>> One of the things we have in common is that we both had Lyme. Tell me about your your story.
Original English
>> It's sort of the second half of my entrance into into flow science comes out of this. I had this crazy sort of year of sort of It's the last year of where I was a journalist. I had a bunch of badass assignments. I went to Africa and lived on the side of a river in Madagascar for a couple of months. I was part of the first uh National Geographic sand surfing expedition into the Sahara. Then I did the first biotic survey ever in a slot canyon. It was like all this mad stuff.
Original English
And then I went to a wedding a friend's wedding in Long Island and went for a walk in the arboretum cuz I'm shy around people I don't know. And I He was his friends and I didn't know anybody. And I got bit by a tick at a wedding in Long Island. And but I lost I spent 3 years in bed. I was one of the first cases in California so they had no idea what was uh on me and it was no nobody could fix me. So that I was on drugs uh to my stomach lining. So I was on doxycycline and my stomach lining started bleeding out. And they're like, "We don't know if you're ever going to get better." "What done with you. We can't do anything more for you basically." And uh
Original English
>> It's so interesting cuz doxycycline is the
Original English
>> I know it's the drug, but they kept me on it for so long that like now they'll keep you It's a month or 2 months. They kept me on it for a year and a half. Like which was insane. So they it it it did a lot of bad stuff to me. The story I always tell is I was functional like 10% of the time.
Original English
>> I don't know how sick you got, but I couldn't
Original English
>> I was really sick.
Original English
>> Yeah, my brain stopped working. My short-term memory was gone. My long-term memory all of it. And I couldn't, you know, walk across the room. And after I was going to kill myself, I had sleeping pills. I had booze. I had a plan. It was just It was like when not if. And I was in LA at the time and a friend of mine showed up at my dressed up and demanded that we go surfing. And I was
Original English
laughing.
I
was
like,
"Andrea,
I
can't
walk
across
the
room.
I'm
not
I'm
not
going
surfing."
And
she
would
not
leave
my
apartment
and
wouldn't
leave
and
wouldn't
leave
and
wouldn't
leave
and
after
like
3
hours
and
you
know
how
irritable
you
are
with
Lyme,
right?
You
have
no
reserves.
Um
and
she
really
just
like
didn't
matter
what
I
said
to
her,
she
was
not
leaving.
And
after
3
hours,
I
was
like,
"I
give
up.
Let's
just
go
surfing
today.
What
is
the
worst
that
can
happen?
I'm
going
to
kill
myself
anyway,
right?"
So,
um
she
took
me
to
the
Pacific.
They
gave
me
a
giant
board,
right?
And
surfing
the
bigger
the
board,
the
easier
it
is
to
surf.
And
it
was
summer.
It
was
a
mellow
warm
day.
And
the
people
had
to
like
take
me
by
the
elbows
and
lead
me
out
to
the
break.
And
I
was
on
my
board
like
less
than
30
seconds
and
a
wave
came.
I
think
I
took
literally
all
the
energy
I
had
in
the
world
and
popped
right
up.
And
I
had
no
intention.
Like
when
we
went
surfing,
I
was
like,
"I'm
going
to
sit
out
in
the
sun
for
an
hour
and
then
we're
going
to
go
home.
I'm
not
going
to
surf.
That
would
be
insane
and
impossible."
And
I
popped
up
and
turned
into
a
dimension
I
didn't
even
know
existed.
Like
time
slowed
to
an
absolute
crawl.
I've
been
flow
states
before,
but
not
a
full-blown
macro
flow
state.
I
started
to
have
a
an
out-of-body
experience.
Um
and
a
bunch
of
other
really
crazy
things
happened
and
it
felt
It
was
amazing
cuz
the
best
part
about
it
is
like
my
head
was
clear.
I
could
surf.
The
pain
was
gone.
And
I
was
It
was
amazing.
I
caught
four
more
waves
that
day
and
I
was
I
was
done.
Original English
And
they
drove
me
home
and
they
put
me
into
bed.
And
I
didn't
move
for
14
days.
People
had
to
bring
me
food
cuz
I
couldn't
even
get
to
my
kitchen.
I
was
so
destroyed
from
it.
And
on
the
15th
day,
I
could
walk
again.
I
had
a
neighbor
who's
a
pro
surfer,
a
former
pro
surfer,
and
I
didn't
even
know
him.
And
I
just
like
knocked
on
his
door
and
I
said,
"Hey,
can
you
drive
me
to
the
beach?"
Original English
And
I
went
surfing
again
and
over
the
course
of
like
6
months,
I
went
from
about
10%
functional
to
about
80%
functional.
And
only
thing
I
was
doing
was
surfing.
And
coming
back
being
destroyed.
Original English
And
slowly
over
time,
I
start
I
got
healthier
and
healthier.
I
was
having
these
wild
altered
state
experiences
in
the
waves.
And
Lyme,
as
you
know,
is
only
fatal
if
it
gets
into
your
brain.
And
I'm
a
hardcore
science
guy.
I'm
a
rational
materialist.
I'm
having
basic
quasi-spiritual
experiences
in
the
waves.
And
I
think,
"Okay,
I
might
be
feeling
better,
but
it's
got
to
be
an
illusion.
The
disease
is
in
my
brain,
and
I'm
clearly
dying."
So,
I
lit
out
on
a
giant
quest
to
figure
out
what
the
hell
happened
to
me.
Original English
And
I
had
seen
flow
sort
of
work
earlier
in
my
career
with
athletes
and
getting
them
sort
of
from
zero
to
superhero,
but
I
didn't
exactly
know
it
was
flow.
We
didn't
quite
know
what
was
going
on.
It
was
hard
to
tell
what
was
flow,
what
was
a
quote
unquote
spiritual
experience.
The
literature
was
very
confusing.
The
science
wasn't
there
yet.
The
neurobiology
wasn't
done
yet.
Um
so,
it
was
really
hard
to
figure
that
out.
But
I,
you
know,
I
quickly
figured
out
that
these
states
have
a
name.
Um
from
a
neuroimmunology
perspective,
Herb
Benson,
who
sort
of
at
Harvard,
who's
the
cardiologist
who's
famous
for
the
relaxation
response.
He
actually
mapped
the
uh
original
neurochemistry
of
the
flow
cycle.
Flow
is
a
four-stage
cycle.
It's
not
a
light
switch
experience.
And
he
mapped
it.
And
he
looked
at
healing.
And
he
has
said
in
his
book,
The
Breakout
Principle,
that
he
thinks
flow
is
responsible
for
most
cases
of
spontaneous
healing.
Original English
And
I
think,
by
the
way,
that's
a
massive
overstatement,
but
not
for
an
autoimmune
condition.
And
here's
why.
As
we
transition
into
a
flow
state,
there's
a
global
release
of
nitric
oxide,
right?
It's
gaseous
signaling
molecule.
You
go
to
the
gym,
and
when
your
uh
lungs
open
up
after
about
20
minutes,
it
gets
quiet
upstairs.
That's
that
nitric
oxide.
And
it
pushes
stress
hormones
out
of
your
system.
In
flow,
when
you
transition
into
flow,
it's
a
huge
nitric
oxide
release.
So,
the
stress
hormones
are
get
stripped
from
your
system,
and
they're
replaced
by
performance-enhancing
feel-good
neurochemistry.
The
biggest
problem
over
time
with
an
autoimmune
condition
is
you
no
longer
know
where
homeostasis
is.
Your
body
can't
find
baseline
cuz
it's
it's
always
bouncing
it.
So,
like
a
lot
of
that
is
cuz
your
nervous
system
doesn't
know
where's
normal.
So,
by
moving
into
flow
and
just
having
the
stress
hormones
pushed
out
of
your
system
Original English
resets
the
nervous
system
to
baseline.
So,
the
system
can
sort
of
the
prediction
engine
brain
can
start
making
more
accurate
predictions
again.
It
brings
back
agency.
It
does
a
whole
lot
of
stuff
psychologically
and
emotionally
and
physically
and
the
neurochemistry
of
flow,
it
dopamine,
norepinephrine,
serotonin,
and
anandamide.
All
those
things
boost
the
immune
system.
They
don't
just
sort
of
reset
the
nervous
system
and
feel
good.
They're
immune
system
boosters.
This
is
why
flow
can
often
be
really
healing
from
especially
from
autoimmune
conditions.
And
this
is
now
much
more
well-established.
Back
in
the
'90s,
you
know,
the
mind-body
connection
was
still
suspicious,
right?
Back
in
the
'90s,
um
Ellen
Langer
hadn't
done
her
work
at
Harvard
yet
and
all
this
stuff
that
sort
of
like
smoothed
that
over
hadn't
happened
yet.
Original English
>> How
long
did
it
take
you
to
feel
normal
again?
Original English
>> I
was
sick
for
3
years.
The
surfing
to
like
80%
functionality,
which
is
where
it
got
me
to,
was
about
a
year
and
then
it
took
6
more
years
till
I
was
sort
of
back
to
normal.
I
lost
like
30
or
40
lb.
I
was
100
70
lb
when
I
started
and
I
was
129
lb
when
I
finished
with
Lyme
disease.
I
still
can't
get
my
weight
above
160.
Like
this
like
I
can't
get
I
can't
get
back.
I
lost
about
an
inch
of
height,
too.
I
was
done.
I
was
shorter.
I
was
lighter.
Original English
>> I
thought
I
had
a
bad
case
of
Lyme,
but
that
takes
Original English
>> What
happened
to
you?
Original English
>> I
What's
yours?
Just
woke
up
one
morning
and
started
drinking
coffee
and
the
left
side
of
my
face
was
completely
paralyzed.
And
that
was
the
start
and
I
had
no
idea.
So,
I
I
like
called
my
mom
and
I
was
like,
"Can
you
come
watch
the
kids?
I
got
to
go
to
the
hospital.
And
I
show
up
at
my
doctor's
office
and
they're
like,
"Oh
my
god,
we
think
you're
having
a
heart
attack."
So,
they
brought
me
in,
saw
the
doctor.
She's
like,
"Yeah,
you're
you
I
think
you're
having
a
heart
attack."
And
I'm
like,
"Well,
rationally
speaking,
that
doesn't
make
a
ton
of
sense,
right?
Like,
healthy,
no
hit
family
history.
Uh
out
of
all
the
things,
like
what
else
could
it
be?"
And,
you
know,
she's
like,
"You
need
to
go
to
emerge
like
right
now."
Original English
And
I
show
up
at
emerge.
They're
like,
"Yeah,
you
know
I'm
having
a
heart
attack."
And
then,
you
know,
6
hours
later
cuz
this
is
Canada,
I
see
a
doctor.
And
they
give
me
all
these
tests
and
I
was
like,
"Oh,
you
know,
I
was
talking
to
uh
some
neurologists
while
I
was
waiting."
And
he's
like,
"Oh,
you
were
playing
Dr.
Google
right
here."
And
I
was
like,
"Well,
they
said
that,
you
know,
in
a
in
a
healthy,
you
know,
male
at
my
age,
um
test
for
these
four
things
and
that
will
probably
cover
80%
of
what
would
cause
it."
And
he's
like,
"Here's
some
prednisone,
go
home.
Uh
if
your
family
doctor
thinks
you
need
it,
she
can
order
the
the
test."
Original English
And
over
the
next
2
weeks,
I
started
to
gradually
lose
almost
all
um
functionality.
Like,
I
couldn't
stand
still
at
one
point.
Like,
if
I
stood
still
for
more
than
3
seconds,
the
back
of
my
knees
felt
like
somebody
had
stabbed
them.
I'd
be
lying
on
the
floor
crying.
Uh
and
then,
you
know,
after
that,
my
I
had
lockjaw.
I
couldn't
open
my
mouth.
Original English
>> Wow.
Original English
>> And
so,
like,
my
whole
body
was
just
shutting
down.
But
luckily,
a
friend
saved
me.
It
was
like
I
told
her
about
it
and
she's
like,
"This
feels
like
Lyme."
She
wrote
me
a
prescription,
doxycycline.
And
within
3
days,
I
like
my
I
just
started
feeling
improvement.
And
she
gave
me
the
requisition
to
get
tested
for
for
Lyme
and
I
got
tested
for
it.
Turns
out
I
tested
positive.
My
family
doctor
called
me
this
the
day
after
I
got
my
test
results
cuz
it
takes
7
days
in
Original English
Ontario to get a Lyme test result, which is insane in and of itself.Original English
Um given what it does to your body and how destructive it is and how prevalent it is. And so, as calls me, and she's like, "I finally agreed to give you a requisition." You know, cuz you're just arguing with her. If you go If you open up "West of Jesus", which is the book I wrote where I tell the sort of the story we just walked through, um I don't really write about much about the Lyme. Um it just sort of kicks off the book and it's there a little bit. And um but there's a paragraph where I list all the diseases they thought I had before they would test me for Lyme.Original English
>> Interesting.Original English
>> Um it's literally a paragraph.Original English
>> It's just a simple test to use.Original English
>> refused. There's first the disease and then there's the medical establishment and and and what it's like to deal with a long-term illness when and the medical establishment.Original English
>> You have to advocate for yourself and it it's I don't know. It was eye-opening for me in so many ways, but luckily we're both fully recovered and healthy today. So, we always end these interviews sort of with a similar question or theme, but I have two questions for you. When are you most happy?Original English
>> Uh when I'm skiing or when I'm writing.Original English
>> And what is success for you?Original English
>> It's always been the same thing. Right? It's like I get to like put words together in a straight line for a living. It's the most mad Like I can't believe people pay me for it. And now I get to like put words together in a straight line, often based on the like science experiments that me and my friends get to run.Original English
>> I Are you kidding? Like are you crazy? I would have done all this [ __ ] for free. In fact, I was doing it for free for a very long time. Right? So, I think of it that way. I'm also will tell I'll flat-out tell you, it's one of the reasons I get along so well with the action sport athletes is I am ferociously competitive. I don't take it very seriously, but if you can, I will flat-out tell you I want to be the greatest writer in the history of the universe. I know that's not a specific title, but I still want that title. Right? Like I'm that ferociously competitive. The coolest thing about flow right and and and performance is that it's emergent. You don't really know what you're capable of cuz you can only find out inside of flow and you get into a flow state and you push your skills to their to their edge and then you know you get into another and you push it push it and push it and so when I think of what success is it's always I don't like it's not a destination it's a way of living and to me the way of living is one I'm doing things that are like core to me and dearly authentic and where I can be very effective and useful. I get to keep following my curiosity out and it doesn't stop. That's how I think about it.Original English
>> [music]