7 Things That Kill Your Flow

WHAT IS FLOW

Today I’m going to talk to you about flow.

It’s Anthony here, and there’s a few things you need to know about flow. There’s a book by a guy called  Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, and I hope I’ve said that right. And it’s called flow. And what he talks about is he talks about what is flow? What do we mean by flow? Meaning of flow.

And what he says is, is that flow is a relaxed concentration and it’s the edge of your comfort zone, essentially. And it’s a deeply fulfilling place where you make your best decisions.

I quite like that.

The seven things that kill that flow.

Now, the first of those things is the most profitable business model in the planet is your constant distractions.

1. It’s your phone

It could be Facebook, it could be email.

Consumption is being reactive, so you are not being proactive on the things that you should be. When we are responding to other people’s priorities, we are not responding or working on our own priorities. And here’s a quick exercise. What I want you to do is write down your wins from yesterday. All of them. Think about yesterday very carefully and write down things such as team wins, for example. Obviously give praise for that and rewrite all of your wins from the day before. And I also want you to do this at the end of the week.

Now, what this does is it takes all the wins that you’ve accomplished over the week and it says, okay, what’s the next action that I need to take? How am I going to move this forward? Maybe I shouldn’t move it forward. Maybe I should just leave it where it is.

Now, sometimes you have days where you just don’t have any wins and you go, why don’t I have any wins? Well, what’s happening here is a question that you should be asking yourself. It makes you realize, have I just been responding to things or am I just replying to emails? Am I wasting time? These are the questions you should be asking yourself and what actually happened here?

Now you will begin to realize that things come together for a much bigger purpose when you know what’s happening by asking those basic questions. Here’s an experiment that I want you to do. Delete the apps that are distracting you the most. For example, it could be Facebook or it could be an email app like Gmail, for example, and understand what the real opportunity cost is when you’re constantly checking things on your phone.

2. Buried Jewels

Now let’s talk about the second thing that kills flow. It’s called buried jewels. 

And this comes from a book which is called Big Magic. Now in the book they highlight that the universe buries deep jewels within our souls and then stands back and it says, let’s see if they can find it. Now, how do you do this? What you need to do is you want to get to the point where you’re doing the thing that’s unique to you, where you’re exercising your highest power and that’s got to come from within you. 

So think what is that thing and make it happen. Even if it’s only one or 2 hours a day. Here’s three prerequisites for getting into flow.

• One, do I love it?
• Two, does this matter?
• Three, Am. I good at it?
• Four, is the business model behind it or supporting it.

Now, you won’t get into flow without any of those things that I’ve just described and you won’t find your jewel.

3. Over Ambition

The third thing that kills flow is definitely over ambition.

So here’s an exercise and it’s called the two list strategy. So what I want you to do is write down your top 20 goals and then what I want you to do is isolate the top three goals on that list. And what you’re going to do is focus on the top three goals and avoid thinking about the other 20 goals. These 20 things stop you from achieving your top three. Then think about what’s the most valuable use of my time? And focus on the one thing that will move me and my business forward.

4. The Wrong Type Of Work

Here’s the four thing that kills flow. We’ve got the wrong type of work.

What you need to do is choose which work to do before even doing the work. Don’t ask I need more sales.

Ask a better question like how do I get more sales? Is a much better question which will improve your selling system. And the difference there is leverage. What you’re doing is you’re creating and building systems that operate without you. That’s the purpose of your business.

So at the beginning of each week, what you need to do is ask yourself what am I going to do this week that is really going to make the biggest impact? And how can I build a system that over delivers on that? And what are different offers I can test is a good example. How can I improve my conversion rate at each stage of the funnel? These are just better questions than what I’d mentioned before. 

How can I help my team? How can I improve the culture within my business? Now have a think about it and think about the questions that are going to move your business and move it forward.

5. The Wrong Team

The fifth thing that kills flow you’re going to end up with for example, you could end up with the wrong team. What you need to do is focus on people that can show you before and after results. If you have a part time employee, it’s either a hell yes, you’ve done this, you’re amazing, or it’s no, I’m going to keep looking for somebody else. If you’re looking for full time employees, there’s a book called I think it’s called Top Grading. And here’s some of the questions that come from that book that are pretty valuable and you should be asking people that are looking to work with you full time.

• Number one is what makes you angry?
• And number two, what makes you happy?
• And the third thing is what are you grateful for?
• And then for what? Or what do you respect?

There’s some questions that you can ask for full time employees.

6. The Cup Is Full

Let’s talk about the 6th that kills flow. The cup is full. There’s a book. Wherever you go, there you are. I suggest you read it, but just pick it up. It’s a quick read. Don’t react to things instantly. First process it and then choose to respond. Let’s talk about the

7. What Type Of Task Is It

7th thing that kills flow tasks.

Now think about it. When you’re doing a task, what type of task is it?

• Is it creative?
• Is it expressive?
• What type of task is it really?

Get a pen and paper and write it down. And once you’ve understood what the task is all about, then what you need to do is understand if you’re the right person to complete the task.

Or can it be delegated to somebody else who’s better positioned or can do the task better.

So there’s the seven steps that kill flow.

And if you’d like some tactics to overcome these flow killing steps that I’ve just described, then there is some tactics in our Facebook group. It’s a scalable Facebook group, sorry, scalable business, but I’m sure you’ll be interested to learn and you can jump in there and have a look at them anytime you want.

Hope you’ve enjoyed this video.