How to find your flow: a 4-step process for beating distraction at its own game

Champion Focus in 30 Seconds

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On a hot Tuesday evening a few years ago, I leant over the ropes of a boxing ring to watch two men sparring. Something wasn’t right. Having coached both of them for years, I knew these fighters well. Normally, their rounds were full of classy angles, pinpoint accuracy and quick reactions. But on this day, they looked sloppy and out of sync. Rather than connecting with intention, most of their punches were hitting nothing but air. Their footwork was messy, they failed to defend, and they looked out of breath after just a few minutes of work.

As any coach would likely do, my first instinct was to shout out practical advice. I told them to plant their feet, use their jabs, and slow down. But, like their punches, these tips failed to land because the problem wasn’t technical. They were distracted rather than incapable. The issue was that they weren’t present.

Finding flow

I competed as a fighter for just shy of a decade, I coached for almost twenty years, and one of the most frequent conversations I had during that time was about how to get into "the zone". 

But this isn't a topic reserved just for athletes. The flow state is available – and very beneficial – during pretty much any activity that we do repeatedly. You'll know it as the effortless, automatic state you sometimes simply click into where everything just seems to work perfectly. It's that frame of mind where you're totally focussed without focusing. You may know flow as a fleeting experience, lasting only seconds at a time. Or you may have been in flow for hours. Either way, you are capable of it, and you can have more of it, with just a little work. 

The conditions for flow are these:

1. That the challenge faced is great enough to consume your attention

2. That the perceived threat is small enough to avoid emotional hijacking or panic

In other words, it sits in that sweet spot where things are neither too easy nor too hard. 

Rule-bound activities create the perfect opportunity for flow. This means that “the zone” awaits in pretty much any profession, sport or hobby. But, when the pressure is on, this optimal state can be elusive. Here, I’d like to share with you one of the simplest and most effective solutions I’ve come across to combat distraction and its effects.

Nine Things

Now, I may have been working as a therapist at this time, but in the boxing gym I had neither the permission nor the inclination to start asking people about their inner worlds. Thankfully, I didn't need to. To combat this distraction problem, I started teaching boxers a mindfulness technique.

This is not my invention; it may be age-old, but I’ve seen a similar process credited to therapy trainer Russ Harris. I like to call it “Nine Things” and it involves a series of simple requests. 

Step 1:
WITHOUT moving your head, notice three things you can see. Just notice them. For example, "I notice my phone, a picture on the wall, and the flowers on the table".

Step 2:
Notice three things you can hear – traffic or birdsong outside, the sound of your breathing, etc. Find three different sounds. 

Step 3:
Notice three things you can feel in contact with your body – the brush of fabric against your skin, the temperature of the air, the ground beneath your feet, for example. 

Step 4:
Breathing slowly, go to a relaxed, peripheral vision so you're not looking at any one specific thing but rather taking in the whole scene around you. Then, calmly notice all nine things at once.

If you try to do this well, you won't achieve it.

So let go of tallying things up or keeping track, and don't try to focus or get any level of detail. Just be openly, gently aware of those nine things all at once. Take a moment. 

Now, if that felt stressful, you're not alone, and this most probably means you're trying too hard. For now, take a breath and relax. Iif you practise this technique a few more times later on, you'll find that sweet spot, I'm sure of it. If, however, it felt really quite good, you're probably nailing it. And you can stay in that state as I finish the story. 

Champion focus in 30 seconds

On the day of the scrappy sparring, I led the boxers through this process as they stood in a fighting stance facing each other. The first three requests took about twenty seconds. For the final step, I gave them ten seconds to settle into the state of relaxed awareness I wanted them to adopt, and afterwards I instructed them to keep hold of it until they resumed their sparring.

As all of that was going on, the energy in the ring changed. It felt at once calmer and more vibrant, as if something really awesome was about to happen. When the spar began, I felt like I was watching two completely different athletes. Suddenly, their movement looked considered and controlled. Their shots started to land flush or, if they didn’t, it was because they were blocked skilfully. The boxers now seemed connected to both the action and the floor beneath them. As a result, their performance had become solid, powerful and effective. They were back in the game.

How Nine Things works

So, how does this work? 

1. Attention to the now

First, focusing on the senses forces us into the present. If we are paying attention to what’s happening in our immediate environment, then we are not paying attention to anxiety, rumination, pain, fatigue or any other internal distraction.

2. Adopting calm physiological behaviours  

Second, the calm breathing and peripheral vision at step 4 encourage a state of calm. When we’re in a state of psychological rest, we automatically breathe a little slower, and unfocus our eyes. This means that by consciously choosing to do these two things in situations that would otherwise be anxiety-inducing, we can trick our minds into thinking the threat is minimal. Within reason, of course: you can't just go to peripheral vision in front of a hungry crocodile and suddenly feel like you're on the beach in Barbados. 

3. Introducing (just enough) challenge 

And finally, the challenge to keep noticing all nine things at once consumes our conscious awareness. It is hard to concentrate on that many things simultaneously. If you tried the technique earlier, you may have found that you rotated through the different stimuli rather than holding them all in mind concurrently. That’s fine. The attempt to stay aware of it all is enough to keep your conscious mind busy and, therefore, to interrupt any distracting patterns of thought.

Another variation on this process — the “5, 4, 3, 2, 1” technique — asks you to notice stimuli from all five senses. Count five things you can see, four you can touch, three you can hear, two you can smell and one you can taste (even if that’s only your saliva). This is an equally effective way to short-circuit anxiety and step into the present moment. 

I didn't use this version with boxers because smell and taste are irrelevant to sparring. Sight, sound and touch, on the other hand, are crucial, and by repeating the exercise, the athletes can teach themselves to focus on the information required for them to box at their best. In other words, they can train their minds, as they train their bodies, to flow.

Where do you need champion focus?

So, where might you use this? Any battle can be won or lost in thought before it even begins. I don’t know what your equivalent to a round of sparring might be, but I’m sure you have one. To work it out, ask yourself where, in your life, distraction or self-consciousness can get in your way. Then wonder how those situations might be different if you could quickly get out of your head. 

To finish this off, I need to point out that this tool isn't only for difficult situations. You can also use it while taking a walk along a beach, watching the sunset or making a cup of tea. After all, we don’t need to be in a state of discomfort to enjoy the peaceful clarity of present-moment awareness. 

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Thank you for reading!

We’re Hazel (ex boxer, therapist and author) and Ellie (ex psychology science writer). We left our jobs to build an interactive narrative app for self-awareness and emotion regulation (Betwixt), which you can try on Android here and on iOS here.

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