Anyone Can Reach a Flow State When Writing
By: Jessica Lynn
Tags: Advice, Productivity, Success, Habits, Writing

Reaching a flow state or as what some refer to as, “getting into the zone,” isn’t some magical or illusive mindset. Anyone can get there, and most of us know what it feels like when we do.

When writers get to a flow state, it feels like you’re in your own little bubble, your own creative world, and no amount of distraction can divert you from what you’re doing at the moment. You are present. Minutes zoom by without you realizing it. You look up from your writing desk, only to now notice hours vanished, and you have a lot of writing to show for it.

That is flow. This is what being in the zone feels like.

According to James Clear, in his book Atomic Habits, “we are more likely to repeat a behavior when the experience is satisfying.”

Flow state happens to me frequently when writing. It helps that I like to write; although I find it challenging most times, I feel an immense sense of satisfaction after a few productive hours of writing when I reach a flow state and come away with something I’m proud of.

Getting into the zone doesn’t happen each time I sit down to write. And when it does, it doesn’t happen right away. Somedays, when writing feels like pulling teeth — you’d be surprised how often this happens — it takes a good 45 minutes to get going.

On easy days, it takes no time at all, a few minutes maybe.

You know you’ve reached it when you don’t have to think about ignoring distractions; you ignore them with little effort.

James Clear describes it as,

A mental state you enter when you are so focused on the task at hand that the rest of the world fades away. This blend of happiness and peak performance is what athletes and performers experience when they are “in the zone.” It is nearly impossible to experience a flow state and not find the task satisfying at least to some degree.

When you aren’t consciously thinking about things or processing moment by moment but in a state of relaxed high performance.

According to Brett Wingeier, a neuroscientist, flow state is:

Perfect focus.

Relaxed higher performance.

Any task that you do and block out distractions without trying.

Repetition is the language of the brain and the way you get better at anything.

The National Institute of Health hooked up freestyle rappers to an MRI machine and looked at their brains while rapping. While freestyling there was less cognitive control; cognitive thinking didn’t need to happen because they were in a flow state; they were in the zone when practicing their craft at the highest level.

“But decreased activity in dorsolateral prefrontal regions that normally play a supervisory or monitoring role. Like an experienced parent who knows when to lay down the law and when to look the other way, these shifts in brain function may facilitate the free expression of thoughts and words without the usual neural constraints.” — The National Institute of Health

When you first learn a new skill, your frontal lobe lights up; as you become an expert, the frontal lobe activity goes down and moves into the subconscious.

Photo by Pixabay from Pexels

The biggest misconception about reaching a flow state is that getting into the zone is some magic trick that happens only a couple of times in our lifetime or not at all.

In reality, you can prepare to reach a flow state during a task and get into the zone more easily.