Yesterday I had an awesomely fabulously productive day, with lots of clarity and strategic thinking (sound decisions were made) rounded off by running an evening training session for a client. Mondays don’t get any better… I was buzzing so much that I didn’t get to sleep for hours. This morning was an effort. I had been excited for today, I knew the weather was going to be amazing and I was going to go to the gym before the “DO to BE” session, but having gone to bed late I needed the sleep instead. And then when I got to my desk, like the magic beans in James and the Giant Peach, yesterday’s energy had wriggled away, and I couldn’t grab hold of it. Now I was tired, grumpy and getting quite resentful.

It was not helpful.

I was experiencing an energy hangover... still excited about work, but also frustrated because energetically everything was hard.

Worse, I was actively mourning yesterday’s flow state

I sat and pondered what I wanted from today… and I wondered what I could do as all the magic energy beans had wriggled away and I was needing to get stuff done anyway. I leant into what might be possible. Shoving myself and battling against the day looked like it was going to make for a miserable time, and I was already grumpy enough, so what were the alternatives?

I looked at what I hadn’t quite finished yesterday (sorting my task list), and I opened the “DO to BE” co working session, welcoming the members and inviting them into the space ready to crack on with three rounds of deep work. It was so good to connect.

And as I made these tiny movements, I noticed something significant:

I was in motion and I had done it by gentleness, not brute force

I was in flow, but it wasn’t the mythologised ‘F.L.O.W.’ I had experienced yesterday, it was something else…

Last week I was on a camping and walking holiday in the Peak District. I had noticed a tiny spring on the side of a deep narrow valley. Unlike the springs round here in the Cotswolds, this one was not gushing. In fact there was no visible movement, yet it was happening. In a field above there was a small oval well, again, with no obvious sign of movement of water, yet the valley it had cut was deep and steep.

My pattern making brain clunked into gear, joining up my grumpiness and this slow, but powerful water.

I realised that I have been conditioned to think of ‘Flow State’ as being that mode of perfection, and the assumption is with that whole productivity 'Flow State' nirvana, that the flow is always deep and fast.

What if ‘Flow State’ is yet another of the many productivity instruments of torture?

You know the sort of thing… the ones that leave us feeling like failures because we couldn’t achieve the whole get up 3 hours before you go to bed, bro hustly stuff where you do a whole day’s work before anyone else wakes up... 

Psychologist Mihály Csíkszentmihályi originally coined the term "flow state" to describe that immersive sweet spot where skill and challenge meet. It’s a powerful concept. But somewhere along the way, it got commandeered and distorted into this glossy and ideal productivity mode, a high speed, high output, deep immersion.

Yet the reality is that flow can also be gentle, slow, steady, like a gentle stream in an upland meadow, rather than the vast and mighty Ganges disgorging into the Bay of Bengal, visible from space.

Naturally, the next brain stop in the patterning adventure was Bruce Lee, who said:

“Be like water making its way through cracks. Do not be assertive, but adjust to the object, and you shall find a way around or through it. If nothing within you stays rigid, outward things will disclose themselves.

Empty your mind, be formless. Shapeless, like water. If you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup. You put water into a bottle and it becomes the bottle. You put it in a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Now, water can flow or it can crash. Be water, my friend.”

What I was experiencing this morning (and noticing) was a different flavour of flow; one that honours tiredness, adapts to the real conditions, and still moves forward without forcing. And I like it.

As we closed out our “DO to BE” virtual coworking session today, one of the community members said:

“Thank you for today, I got stuff done I wasn’t expecting to be able to do.”

It is those sorts of results that make me genuinely glad, and I know their clients will benefit from their work today too. It’s what we do every Tuesday, going with the flow, and working with the art of the possible, just as we are.

How is your flow today? How and where have you been in motion, particularly the smallest and littlest of ways?

Shall we pledge to drop the judgement, and instead lean into the art of the possible, given the prevailing conditions out on the water each day?