Vox

Leitura de 15 min

Protecting Flow State - Setting Your Session Feedback And Goal

Summary

This episode focuses on practical techniques for protecting and entering flow states during work or practice sessions. The host explains that flow is essential for peak performance and best work, but it doesn’t happen by accident—it can be designed through intentional preparation.

The core technique involves two simple but critical steps to perform before any session where you want to achieve flow: setting a specific, tactical goal and establishing a clear feedback channel. The goal must be achievable within that single session, measurable, and specific enough that you can definitively say whether you’ve met it or not. Examples include making a failing test pass or completing a specific task.

The second component is identifying what feedback channel you’ll use to know if you’re progressing toward your goal. This feedback should be immediate and closely tied to your actions, such as test results when programming or auditory feedback when playing an instrument. The host discusses how even athletes use imagined feedback (comparing their execution to a mental picture of perfect performance) when direct measurement would be distracting.

By combining these two elements—a clear goal and an appropriate feedback mechanism—you create the optimal conditions for entering flow. This preparation takes only about a minute before each session but significantly increases your chances of achieving deep focus and peak performance. The host emphasizes that this approach works because it eliminates uncertainty and evaluation during the session, allowing your brain to focus entirely on the task rather than questioning your progress.

Recommendations

Tools

  • Split — A feature management and experimentation platform that helps teams deploy features faster by using feature flags with insightful data. The sponsor segment mentions it allows safe delivery of features up to 50 times faster.

Topic Timeline

  • 00:00:00 — Introduction to protecting flow state through preparation — The episode begins by referencing the previous discussion about flow state and its importance for peak experiences. The host introduces today’s topic: protecting flow through preparation rather than letting it happen by chance. He explains that you can design your environment and situation to maximize your chances of entering flow.
  • 00:03:43 — First variable to control: Setting a specific, tactical goal — The host introduces the first of two key preparations: deciding on a specific goal for your session. This goal must be tactical, achievable within that single session, and measurable. Examples include making a failing test pass. The goal cannot be open-ended or span multiple sessions, as uncertainty about completion breaks flow.
  • 00:08:42 — Second variable to control: Establishing a feedback channel — The host explains the second preparation: deciding what feedback channel you’ll use to know if you’re progressing toward your goal. This feedback should be immediate and closely tied to your actions. Examples include test results for developers or auditory feedback for musicians. The feedback doesn’t have to directly measure the goal (as with athletes using imagination rather than time).
  • 00:12:46 — Putting it together and concluding thoughts — The host summarizes how setting both a clear goal and feedback channel works together to create optimal conditions for flow. He emphasizes that trying to find goals or feedback signals during the session leads to suboptimal performance. This preparation takes only about a minute but significantly increases your chances of entering flow state.

Episode Info

  • Podcast: Developer Tea
  • Author: Jonathan Cutrell
  • Category: Technology Business Careers Society & Culture
  • Published: 2023-02-13T08:00:00Z
  • Duration: 00:14:07

References

Podcast Info

Transcript

[00:00:00] In the last episode of Developer T, we talked about protecting flow.

[00:00:13] We also established the definition of flow.

[00:00:16] We’re not going to go over all of that again in this episode.

[00:00:20] I’ll reference that one if you want to go and learn a little bit more about flow and

[00:00:25] why it’s important.

[00:00:28] The summary is flow is necessary for peak experiences.

[00:00:35] This means that your best work or your best performance, your best moment playing a particular

[00:00:45] sport or an instrument or whatever it is that you feel most connected to, your talent, your

[00:00:54] skills, your best expression of those things is almost certainly going to happen in a moment

[00:01:00] of flow.

[00:01:02] So we’re talking about protecting your state of flow in a couple of these episodes, the

[00:01:11] last one and this one.

[00:01:12] We’ll probably talk in another one about this because it is so critically important.

[00:01:17] In today’s episode, I want to talk about protecting that flow through preparation, protecting

[00:01:24] the flow through preparation.

[00:01:26] Last time we talked about planning and pausing, planning to make a decision by using heuristics.

[00:01:35] Whenever you come up against a hard decision that requires you to think longer than necessary,

[00:01:40] it’s going to take you out of flow most likely.

[00:01:43] So have some kind of heuristic tools for the decisions you think could be a part of that

[00:01:49] experience.

[00:01:51] The pause is to defer those decisions.

[00:01:55] In this episode, we’re talking about prepping for your work session.

[00:01:59] Whatever your work session is or whatever your practice session is, your performance,

[00:02:05] whatever those things are, I want you to think about this episode as a precursor to those

[00:02:12] things.

[00:02:13] And you can probably look at your schedule today and figure out what thing am I doing

[00:02:18] today that most fits this model?

[00:02:22] What thing am I doing where I could possibly, given the right circumstance, given the right

[00:02:28] variables, I could possibly get into a flow state?

[00:02:34] Now especially the ones that you want to get into a flow state with, right?

[00:02:38] Now here’s the important part.

[00:02:40] These things don’t just come together on their own.

[00:02:43] You can design this situation.

[00:02:46] And that is what we’re talking about doing in this episode.

[00:02:49] We’re going to design our environment.

[00:02:51] We’re going to design the situation so that we have the best opportunity, the best chance

[00:02:57] of finding a flow state.

[00:02:59] And in today’s episode, I’m going to give you an extremely simple kind of technique.

[00:03:05] This technique is so simple that it almost won’t feel like advice.

[00:03:10] It’ll feel obvious when you hear it.

[00:03:12] But when it comes to flow, a little goes a long way.

[00:03:17] This is very important to understand.

[00:03:18] So I’m going to give you two things that you need to plan out, right?

[00:03:24] Two things that you need to plan out before any session where you expect or want to get

[00:03:28] into a flow state.

[00:03:29] And this is, remember we said all the variables have to be right.

[00:03:32] You’re trying to control for some of the variables that you can control for.

[00:03:37] You’re setting yourself up for that flow state.

[00:03:40] So this is very simple.

[00:03:41] We’re going to go over both of these.

[00:03:43] The first is to decide what your goal is.

[00:03:50] Now understand that in this case, normally we are talking about zooming out and looking

[00:03:56] at the big goal and trying to use motivation for the long run to inform what you’re doing

[00:04:02] today.

[00:04:04] In this case, I don’t want you to do that.

[00:04:06] In this case, I want you to identify a very short term tactical goal.

[00:04:12] This is the thing that you want to be true today when you’re done with this session.

[00:04:19] What is it specifically?

[00:04:21] And this has to be very, very specific, otherwise it doesn’t work.

[00:04:25] And this could be as simple as by the end of the session, I want this test that is currently

[00:04:30] failing to succeed.

[00:04:33] And that’s it.

[00:04:34] That’s your whole goal.

[00:04:35] I want this test.

[00:04:37] When I run it right now, it fails.

[00:04:39] I want it to succeed.

[00:04:40] And I’m going to put all of my mental effort, all of my focus, all of my energy, all of

[00:04:46] my thinking and feeling, everything that I’m doing, I’m going to put all of that into

[00:04:50] making this goal happen.

[00:04:53] Now, it’s very, very important that this is a goal that is achievable, that it’s a goal

[00:04:59] that is difficult enough that it’s not going to happen in the first moment or two moments

[00:05:05] of your session, your work session.

[00:05:08] So difficult enough to be challenging for you to take some time to actually achieve

[00:05:12] it, but not so difficult that your goal stretches across many sessions.

[00:05:18] Remember, your singular session needs a goal.

[00:05:22] This needs to be accomplishable within whatever session you are currently working through.

[00:05:29] Whatever that is, practice session, work session, this goal needs to be complete by the end

[00:05:35] of the session.

[00:05:37] The goal can’t be open-ended.

[00:05:39] The goal can’t be, you know, do this as fast as possible.

[00:05:45] Then you don’t really know if you’re meeting the goal.

[00:05:47] This breaks the entire concept of flow because your accomplishment becomes something that

[00:05:55] you begin thinking about rather than knowing.

[00:05:59] Understanding the difference here is really critical.

[00:06:01] If you set a goal that is open-ended, it’s not really a goal then.

[00:06:07] Your goal needs to be something that you can measure and easily say, yes, I met it or no,

[00:06:13] I didn’t meet it.

[00:06:15] Now, again, this may sound obvious, but very rarely do we think about these things when

[00:06:21] we sit down for a work session.

[00:06:23] What is my specific goal in this session?

[00:06:27] How do I know if I’ve succeeded in this session?

[00:06:31] So that is the first variable that you can control.

[00:06:35] We’re going to take a quick sponsor break and I’ll come back and talk about the second

[00:06:39] This episode is sponsored by Split, the feature management experimentation platform.

[00:06:53] What if a release was exactly that, a moment of relief, an escape from slow, painful deployments

[00:07:01] that hold back product engineers?

[00:07:03] Think about it.

[00:07:04] In a work session where that was your goal, to release the thing, and you could do it

[00:07:10] in one work session, with Split, you can free your teams and your features.

[00:07:16] By attaching insightful data to feature flags, Split helps you quickly deploy, measure and

[00:07:20] learn the impact of every feature you release, which means you can turn up what works, turn

[00:07:25] off what doesn’t, and give software innovation the room to run wild.

[00:07:29] Now you can safely deliver features up to 50 times faster.

[00:07:33] And finally, exhale.

[00:07:35] Split feature management and experimentation.

[00:07:38] What a release.

[00:07:40] Reimagine software delivery and start your free trial and create your first feature flag

[00:07:44] at split.io slash developer T. That’s split.io slash developer T. Thanks again to Split for

[00:07:52] sponsoring today’s episode of developer T.

[00:07:59] The first variable you control is setting a goal.

[00:08:03] If you have a work session, if you have a practice or performance and you don’t have

[00:08:09] a goal, you don’t know what you’re aiming for.

[00:08:13] Or maybe you have a general idea of what you want, but you haven’t made it explicit enough

[00:08:18] to know whether or not you’ve succeeded.

[00:08:21] This breaks us out of flow.

[00:08:24] Even if you’re productive, your brain will be evaluating rather than focusing.

[00:08:31] Your brain will be evaluating how successful am I rather than focusing on the finish line

[00:08:37] out in front of you.

[00:08:38] And that brings us to our second variable.

[00:08:42] How will you know if you’re going in the right direction or not to meet your goal?

[00:08:48] The second thing to control for is to decide what is your feedback channel.

[00:08:57] And I literally think you should do this before each session explicitly.

[00:09:01] Write it down on a piece of paper, put it on a sticky on your computer screen, whatever.

[00:09:06] Have your goal explicitly stated and the feedback channel you’re going to listen to, to know

[00:09:13] what to do, to know what to change in order to meet your goal.

[00:09:18] Your feedback channel might be your tests.

[00:09:22] Maybe automatically running in the background and letting you know what’s failing and what’s

[00:09:27] succeeding.

[00:09:28] Now remember, it’s very important that your feedback is very closely tied with your actions

[00:09:33] in the moment.

[00:09:35] A good example of obvious and immediate feedback is kind of inherently available when you’re

[00:09:41] playing an instrument.

[00:09:43] If you’re trying to learn a song and you’re playing that song and then you hear a mistake,

[00:09:49] that feedback is immediate and connected directly to the actions that you’re taking to play

[00:09:53] the instrument.

[00:09:55] Sometimes the kinds of feedback that we get are hard to quantify.

[00:10:01] This is especially true, for example, for athletes.

[00:10:05] Some athletes can feel when they’re in the zone, when they’re kind of performing at their

[00:10:10] best versus when they’re performing at a substandard of their best.

[00:10:16] One form of this feedback for athletes specifically comes by the way of imagination.

[00:10:24] Before performing a particular, let’s say, high dive, an Olympic athlete thinks about

[00:10:31] and imagines how the high dive should go.

[00:10:34] They think about all of the individual movements, both from the outside looking in and from

[00:10:40] the inside looking out.

[00:10:42] What is it going to feel like to perform this particular move to a perfect degree?

[00:10:50] And what is it going to look like from the outside looking in?

[00:10:53] By creating this picture, the athlete can then, in that moment of execution, compare

[00:11:00] against what they’re doing versus the picture.

[00:11:04] This is representative of a kind of feedback that is difficult to quantify by nature of

[00:11:10] the activity that you are getting feedback from.

[00:11:14] In other words, let’s think about another sport, downhill skiing.

[00:11:19] Imagine that a world-class downhill skier is trying to beat their last run and they

[00:11:25] know that they can only beat it by maybe tenths of a second.

[00:11:29] What kind of feedback is relevant in this case?

[00:11:33] Perhaps if they were not a world-class skier, maybe they are a beginner skier, then feedback

[00:11:39] like some sort of indication of time on the run would be helpful.

[00:11:45] But because the margins are so slim, the feedback of that time, the current time on the run,

[00:11:53] that kind of feedback probably wouldn’t be very helpful, in fact, might only serve to

[00:11:57] distract a world-class athlete.

[00:12:01] The important takeaway here is that the feedback that you are seeking is not always the most

[00:12:06] obvious thing to help you achieve a goal.

[00:12:10] The feedback doesn’t necessarily have to be a measurement directly against the goal itself.

[00:12:15] The world-class athlete, their goal is related to the amount of time that it takes to get

[00:12:20] down the hill, but the feedback they receive doesn’t have much to do with the time at all.

[00:12:27] Overall, the basic idea here for both of these, to establish your goal and to establish what

[00:12:35] channel of feedback are you going to listen to, we’ll work together to set up the right

[00:12:40] variables to give you the best chance of getting into a flow state.

[00:12:46] Imagining that the work is just the work, imagining that somehow you’re going to find

[00:12:51] that goal as you go, or that you’ll be able to pick up on all of the feedback signals.

[00:12:58] All of these things are what lead to suboptimal experiences, suboptimal performance, situations

[00:13:05] where you’re not in a flow state at all.

[00:13:07] The great thing is you can try this out and it takes almost no time.

[00:13:11] It takes about one minute or so before your work session to set your intention.

[00:13:17] You may hear that phrase, set your intention.

[00:13:20] All this is really saying is set your goal and then layer on that one other piece.

[00:13:25] Layer on the feedback element.

[00:13:27] This is going to help you get into that flow state more often.

[00:13:32] Try it out.

[00:13:33] Let me know how it goes.

[00:13:34] Thanks so much for listening to today’s episode of Developer T. If you enjoyed this episode,

[00:13:38] please join our Discord community at developert.com slash Discord and subscribe to whatever podcasting

[00:13:44] app you’re currently using.

[00:13:46] Thanks again to today’s sponsor, Split.

[00:13:49] Head over to split.io slash developer T to get started with your free account and set

[00:13:53] up your first feature flags today.

[00:13:55] That’s split.io slash developer T. Thanks so much for listening and until next time,

[00:13:59] enjoy your tea.

Visão de gráfico