Episode 40
How to Enter the Flow State with Max Gotzler
Join Max Gotzler as he shares how to hack the Flow State and learn more about this highly sought-after mental state of total immersion in a task, which leads to unparalleled human performance!
Max Gotzler is the Founder and CEO of Flowgrade, a leading brand for cutting-edge Performance Nutrition. He holds an MSc in Economics from Sorbonne University in Paris and a BA in Psychology from Boston University. As a biohacker, former professional athlete, blogger and organizer of Flow Fest, his work has been covered by prominent media outlets including ZEIT ONLINE, Brand Eins, ARD, ZDF, and Bloomberg.
This presentation was filmed during Biohacker Summit (London, UK) in 2016.
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Key moments and takeaways:
1:29 Flow state makes life worth living
2:07 Unproductive vs. productive day
3:29 Concept of the Flow State
5:28 Flow is universal
6:06 The 10000 Hour Rule is done
6:41 Neurochemical changes in Flow
7:44 The Altered States Economy
8:42 Neuroanatomy and neuroelectrical changes
10:12 How can you trigger Flow?
12:33 The importance of habit hacking
15:34 Don't waste your flow
Transcript
Music.
Speaker:Hello and welcome to the Biohacker's Podcast. I'm your host Teemu Arina from Biohacker Center.
Speaker:And in today's episode, we are going to talk about how to access the mythical flow state.
Speaker:Our guest is Max Gotzler, a German biohacker, athlete, professional flow seeker,
Speaker:and the founder of Flowgrade.
Speaker:He has been working in the biohacking scene for over a decade and has helped thousands of people live their lives
Speaker:to the fullest through his podcasts, events, books, and Flowgrade products.
Speaker:I heartily recommend you to check out his annual FlowFest in Munich, Germany.
Speaker:I have been one of the speakers and I can tell you it's an amazing conference,
Speaker:especially if you live in Germany.
Speaker:The following presentation was recorded at Biohacker Summit in London,
Speaker:and the topic is on how you can hack the Flow state.
Speaker:Without further ado, the floor is yours, Max. (Max speaking) Oxygen is a great trigger for flow and I tried holotropic breathing.
Speaker:I wasn't aware of that? That's meditation where you use oxygen to get into flow state where you knock off your
Speaker:prefrontal cortex and you're almost transcendent, in a meditational way, thinking about... nothing.
Speaker:And this concept is so interesting to me and I know my company is also called, the first
Speaker:syllable of it is FLOWgrade. And I'm excited to present to you my passion for this topic because I think it's this one
Speaker:state that really makes life worth living.
Speaker:And I will explain to you why that is.
Speaker:So let me tell you two versions of the same story. So I'm sure you can relate to that.
Speaker:Sometimes I wake up, have no idea what this day is going to be like, and I reach to my phone and I open it and you see all these notifications popping up
Speaker:and Facebook is trying to get your attention.
Speaker:Everyone's competing for your time for this little bit of attention.
Speaker:That also creates this little dopamine burst and you actually are like a gambler in a casino and you're just scrolling down your timeline and opening
Speaker:all these apps and then you get up and you don't really want to check your email.
Speaker:But what I do, I sit down anyways and I check my email in my pajamas and it's 10 o'clock.
Speaker:And I said, ah, damn it, I already used half of my morning doing pretty much nothing productive.
Speaker:And then I choose to do something random, like taking a shower or then going for a workout.
Speaker:And I get nothing done in the end. So I feel totally unproductive. I was never in a state
Speaker:where I felt I created something or I brought my projects ahead or created value for the people
Speaker:people around me and it is an unsuccessful, unproductive day.
Speaker:So another version of this day would be I wake up.
Speaker:I know what I'm going to do.
Speaker:I don't let myself distract by any apps or my phone or anything popping up.
Speaker:I go for a little walk, sit down for some meditation, make my bulletproof coffee, take.
Speaker:A cold shower, sit down, work on the one task that I decided to work on the night before,
Speaker:feel really productive, get into a sort of flow state, get everything done before, get,
Speaker:to spend time outside with my friends and family, and I go to bed feeling really productive
Speaker:having had a very successful day.
Speaker:And so there is a way.
Speaker:To create days like that. And it relates to the same state that athletes feel,
Speaker:when they're in the zone.
Speaker:So when I described to you that perfect day of mine, I was able to create an environment
Speaker:that triggered me to get into that flow state, to feel productive, to get things done, to shut off the ego.
Speaker:Athletes, I'm sure pretty much everyone has experienced this state and people have different names for it.
Speaker:For example, Michael Jordan called it to be in the zone.
Speaker:John Coltrane called it to be in the pocket when you played the saxophone and one note just came after the other.
Speaker:Robin Williams called it to be in the forever box, when he was on stage getting the feedback from the crowd,
Speaker:one joke came after the other, just like that, non-scripted.
Speaker:A runner might call it a runner's high. A mother seeing her child in danger might develop superhuman strength,
Speaker:to save the child. That's called helper's high.
Speaker:So this relates all to that same state we call flow.
Speaker:So there are three things that happen when you're in flow. And I will go into the neurobiology a little later.
Speaker:So in that state, time seems to dilate. You have sometimes the freeze frame effect.
Speaker:When you watch the matrix, you see that, where time speeds up sometimes.
Speaker:Where five hours pass by and it feels like five minutes.
Speaker:The self vanishes. Your ego is non-existent. You're as present as you could possibly be.
Speaker:And performance, physical as mental, skyrockets. You get everything done in less time.
Speaker:You learn a language in half the time.
Speaker:You perform, you hit the last second shot, score the last second goal to win the game.
Speaker:That's what it feels like.
Speaker:So now for the first time in history, we are able to hack this state,
Speaker:because it was this concept that nobody really understood.
Speaker:And now there are people researching it. That goes back about 15 years.
Speaker:It's been researched for more for about 150 years.
Speaker:But ever since some people really try to emulate, observe this effect, what it does,
Speaker:we have increased our capabilities and it's seen now in extreme sports.
Speaker:Tenfold, twentyfold amazing results. There's actually a project called the Flow Genome Project.
Speaker:You might be aware of it.
Speaker:The two guys running it, Stephen Kotler and Jamie Wheal. I have a podcast called The Flowgrade Show.
Speaker:I recorded episodes with both of them and with Jamie just a couple days ago in
Speaker:order to prepare for this talk. And it's super interesting what they found out.
Speaker:And pretty much what is happening right now, flow is universal.
Speaker:We can all have it. We can all create it in our lives, which makes us more powerful to get things
Speaker:done to get the projects done in time, to learn things quicker, to amplify our
Speaker:physical and mental performance on every level.
Speaker:So at the Bulletproof Conference last year, they had a flow playground and they tried to get people into that flow state.
Speaker:So this is the Flow Genome Project.
Speaker:They've done a lot of research. They found out that people who are in flow, they're about
Speaker:200 to 250% more productive.
Speaker:They saw that in military snipers. There was a study done.
Speaker:They learned about twice as much. So Malcolm Gladwell's 10,000 hours to obtain any certain skill is not valid anymore.
Speaker:In flow, you can cut that in half. You can learn in 5,000 hours.
Speaker:So underneath the flow state, there is a math system, a neurobiological system that changes
Speaker:when you get into flow state.
Speaker:And there are actually three areas that are affected. It's neuroanatomical changes, neurochemistry, and neuroelectricity.
Speaker:And I'm going to explain quickly what they all refer to.
Speaker:So the predominant change and the most prominent change.
Speaker:That happens when you get into flow is that you experience something that scientists call
Speaker:transient hypofrontality. Transient meaning temporarily, hypo just a little, and frontality
Speaker:refers to the activity in your prefrontal cortex, this area in the brain. So that is where your ego,
Speaker:your self-perception, your sense of self, your moral standards are stored. So that is shut down
Speaker:in flow. So you don't think about yourself. You immerse yourself in your environment,
Speaker:and your task at hand, you're totally focused, you're totally present,
Speaker:you have everything available to pursue, to perform what you're about to do.
Speaker:So, there are also very powerful neurochemical changes.
Speaker:And there are five chemicals that I'm going to mention here that are super powerful
Speaker:if you find them, as you see here, in very powerful recreational drugs that people take in order to put themselves in a flow-like state.
Speaker:And that's why it's also so dangerous nowadays, by the way, because people have access to flow states by buying them.
Speaker:The altered states economy right now is a $4 trillion industry.
Speaker:People buy themselves into different states.
Speaker:They go to Burning Man, for example.
Speaker:In the beginning, Burning Man was about shutting down the ego, knocking off that prefrontal cortex,
Speaker:and totally living with other people in a happy place outside of normal reality.
Speaker:Now it became an ego thing again. People running around in feathers, people take substances, they go at their party,
Speaker:they get into a flow state, but by the time they wake up in the morning, they feel bad,
Speaker:they feel depressed, they run out of the neurochemicals, which is also happening in flow,
Speaker:and then they want to ring the bell again and again, and then they get addicted.
Speaker:Because flow is highly addictive. It's the most powerful state our brain can get into.
Speaker:And when we're not careful, it has destructive power. So we are really walking the line with
Speaker:flow. Extreme athletes, bass jumpers for example, they go to the extreme. One of
Speaker:the most famous flow hackers is Shane McConkey, a bass jumper. He died doing his
Speaker:craft because he was looking for the next kick and the next kick. There's a.
Speaker:Theory that actually.
Speaker:Comedian Robin Williams. He was so addicted to that flow state that he got when he was performing on stage,
Speaker:that he was drawn to drugs offstage because he wanted to imitate that effect. Now we have neuroanatomy.
Speaker:Neurochemistry, and there are also some neuroelectrical changes.
Speaker:So when you're in a normal conscious state, your brain is usually operating at a beta wave.
Speaker:State. So it's a fairly fast wave and when you hit that struggle,
Speaker:nor a penephrine and dopamine are released, you're focused.
Speaker:You know, when back in the day a tiger approached, you were just, you had to be present.
Speaker:So that's what happened, fight or flight response.
Speaker:So what has to happen for you in order to get into flow is a release of nitric oxide.
Speaker:And with that, your brain waves also change to an alpha state, which is a daydream state.
Speaker:So now you flush out these stress hormones with nitric oxide, and you get into that alpha state,
Speaker:and then you even push to a theta state, which theta is usually what's happening when you're in REM sleep
Speaker:or when you're in very deep meditation.
Speaker:So, and the flow, you're pretty much in between alpha and theta.
Speaker:And what happens when you're pushed to theta, you might get these really powerful gamma spikes.
Speaker:And gamma is associated with epiphanies, with these aha moments.
Speaker:I got it. I know what to do. So that's actually the powerful ingredient here in the neuroelectrical world.
Speaker:That you get these gamma spikes, aha moments. Flow leads you to get these deep insights
Speaker:that you wouldn't get otherwise.
Speaker:So now how can you trigger flow?
Speaker:So the flow genome project that I mentioned before identified 17 triggers right now.
Speaker:I'm not gonna go into each one of them because they're very individual.
Speaker:For everyone, there are different triggers that work. One universal one, and one I wanna talk about right now
Speaker:because I think that's a hack that you can use right away is high consequences.
Speaker:That's the same thing when you're approached by a tiger. There are high consequences.
Speaker:We might lose our lives. So you quickly get into flow. It's a great trigger.
Speaker:However, there's one little hack that we can use because physical danger is,
Speaker:on the same level in our brain as social danger.
Speaker:So actually, it's probably like when we were hunters and gatherers, we were threatened by death
Speaker:when we were left alone away from the group.
Speaker:So we're really afraid of social rejection.
Speaker:But we can use that in order to create flow triggers. We can actually, for example, I can tell everyone
Speaker:I want to lose five pounds over the next eight weeks, and I'm going to give every one of my friends 10 euros if I don't make it.
Speaker:And it's not really about the money, but it's about the embarrassment I will encounter
Speaker:if I don't do that. So that actually pushes me. That's a social fear of embarrassment
Speaker:that I can use in order to create a flow trigger.
Speaker:Now, if you want to find the flow triggers that work for you, it makes sense,
Speaker:to find out which flow type you tend to.
Speaker:You might find yourself in each one of those four types, but you might tend to one of them.
Speaker:So there are the hard chargers, the MMA fighters, the base jumpers, the extreme athletes.
Speaker:They look for the push, they need the high consequences, the dangerous wave, dangerous ride for the snowboarder.
Speaker:Then there are the deep thinkers, the engineers, that take things apart in their back room.
Speaker:They get lost in the system, they put it back together in better ways.
Speaker:Taming might actually be one of them.
Speaker:The flow goers, they're the ones that...
Speaker:They need some sort of...
Speaker:Meditation, some practice, yoga, the vegans that create mindfulness for themselves as a flow
Speaker:trigger. And then there are the crowd pleasers. We all know them. The extroverts, they're the ones
Speaker:having fun at the party, jumping in, getting the energy from outside and making everyone feel good.
Speaker:So which one are you? Or you're somewhere in between, but what could be a flow trigger for you?
Speaker:Now this is what I want you to remember from my talk because that's what I found for myself.
Speaker:The most powerful way to create more flow in your lives is optimizing your habits.
Speaker:We are creatures of habits. The older we get, the more habits we acquire, bad ones and good ones.
Speaker:We are a combination of habits. There's only a little part of our brain that's actively
Speaker:managing what we are. We're sitting on a large elephant, our subconscious,
Speaker:which is pretty much controlling our whole lives and this is built the whole
Speaker:the elephant is built of habits. So we can do we can create habits. We can,
Speaker:create good habits and we can get rid of bad habits. So I have a couple for you
Speaker:right here this is the five minute journal it's gratitude hacking. That's.
Speaker:Getting your brain in a positive mode. Let's say you have a bad day you write
Speaker:down three things that you're thankful for you will feel better because when I
Speaker:ask you what are you thankful for you will start thinking about something positive in your life. So you will find things that are positive in your life,
Speaker:making you feel better. Then we've heard a lot of hacks. So if you want to find
Speaker:out methods, just go to Ben Greenfield's blog, to Temu's podcast, to my website, and
Speaker:you will find a bunch of things that work for you and you might find things
Speaker:that don't work for you. So it's up to you to choose the habits you want to
Speaker:have in your life. You can have the bulletproof coffee in the morning to give you more energy and cut out the sugar. You can have a cold shower in
Speaker:in order to create hormones that raise your testosterone, if you're good.
Speaker:So there's a bunch of stuff you can do and I want to leave you with my favorite method,
Speaker:that I've discovered for myself which is really thinking about the one task you want to perform
Speaker:the next day the moment you go to sleep. Make your subconscious work overnight. It's a waste of time.
Speaker:If you don't. Think about something important before you go to sleep. You will wake up and
Speaker:your subconscious will have done work. It's a fantastic hack. So now this is how I came up
Speaker:up with that name flow great because in our community we talk about upgrading up
Speaker:we always want to optimize but where we want to optimize to as an athlete I want
Speaker:to win a championship as an Ironman I want to break my own record but as a,
Speaker:person in life where do I want to get because it's create desires I make a contract with myself to be unhappy until a certain point in the future and then I,
Speaker:make a new contract with myself and I'll be unhappy until I reach the next goal,
Speaker:So for me, it didn't make sense anymore.
Speaker:We needed to stop the upgrading and start the flow grading.
Speaker:Have more flow moments in our lives. Because what happens, how we can use them when you have them every day.
Speaker:You can learn a language a lot quicker.
Speaker:You can get your work done in time. You can spend more time with family and friends.
Speaker:You can be a more productive, more happy, more satisfied person.
Speaker:For me, it starts with flow.
Speaker:So flow grade is your treasure trove, I call it, for effective biohacks.
Speaker:You find different things to make it more productive to hack your sleep stuff that we do in our community and
Speaker:We also have an ebook that just got translated. It's called Superman Secrets. It's just five easy hacks. It's free,
Speaker:you can download it on our website and,
Speaker:finally, I got it in English! This was actually a great flow trigger to get it done before this event
Speaker:So I want to leave you with this one question because it's really powerful and I think that's the danger of flow now if you're
Speaker:able to create flow moments. A lot of people waste them. They go into clubs, they party all night long,
Speaker:and they have this amazing energy and it's good, don't get me wrong, I love to party.
Speaker:And sometimes to get into that flow on the dance floor, but then at the same time if you're able
Speaker:to enter into these states you can do so much more. So I ask you that question. Once you're able
Speaker:to become your own Superman - your superHERO (sorry ladies!) - what are you gonna DO with it?
Speaker:(Teemu speaking) Thank you very much Max Gotzler for your great talk on how to hack the flow state.
Speaker:Here are the top 5 scientific facts of the day about how to access the flow state,
Speaker:based on studies done by Csikszentmihalyi, Nakamura and Kotler, just to name a few.
Speaker:Number one. Flow state is a state of optimal experience that occurs when there is a balance
Speaker:between the challenge of the task and the skill of the individual performing the task.
Speaker:The task should not be too hard to become frustrating, nor should it be too easy to become boring.
Speaker:Activities like snowboarding, DJing or reading an awesome book can easily provide such an experience, just to give you a few examples.
Speaker:Number two. Flow is associated with a decrease in prefrontal cortex and an increase in the activity in the striatum,
Speaker:which is the input module to the basal ganglia, a part of the brain associated with reward processing.
Speaker:The moment one activates the prefrontal cortex to analyze too much what is happening,
Speaker:the spell of flow disappears.
Speaker:This is why, for example, golfers or archers describe that when they just trust their training
Speaker:and their bodies and don't analyze too much what is happening physically,
Speaker:they will paradoxically perform better in that physical feat.
Speaker:Number three.
Speaker:The experience of flow is associated with the release of neurochemicals such as dopamine,
Speaker:norephrine and anandamide, which are also involved in reward mechanisms. That is why the flow state
Speaker:is such a pleasant state to be in and it is comparable to taking a drug. Number four, flow.
Speaker:Experiences are associated with increased performance in a variety of domains, including sports,
Speaker:creativity and learning. Some of the world's top people describe the flow state as the primary
Speaker:source of their success. Number five, flow experiences are more likely to occur in
Speaker:activities that are intrinsically rewarding as opposed to those that are
Speaker:motivated by external factors such as money and status. What we can learn from
Speaker:this is that if you want to be happy and enjoy your life, pick up activities in
Speaker:which you spend time in a flow state as much as possible. Nothing is as frustrating as getting up in the morning, working on things that you don't like,
Speaker:being interrupted all the time, getting well paid for it, but feeling super
Speaker:miserable thinking about it. Thank you very much for listening. To learn more
Speaker:about us and biohacking, check out biohackercenter.com where you can find best
Speaker:content, supplements, technologies, courses and events such as the Biohacker Summit, so
Speaker:that you can take the guesswork out of how to champion healthy habits, prolong
Speaker:your healthspan and lead a productive life.
Speaker:Over and out. I'll catch you up in the next episode.
