 If you're a student, then you are basically a pro athlete. You're up there with the likes of LeBron James, Kobe Bryant, Michael Phelps. The only difference is it's your brain that's the muscle that made you a top tier talent. Now imagine that just like Kobe, that you could get down to studying and get into the zone where every time you study is just bucket after bucket after bucket. That's called being in the zone or the flow state. And today we'll talk about exactly how to do that daily in your studying. Hey friends, welcome back to the channel. In case you're new here, my name is Lakshman, internal medicine physician. And here on the MD journey, we make content to help people just like you succeed on their journey doing it less stress. Today, I wanted to talk about flow and specifically what is flow, how you get into it, as well as some of the hacks that I've noticed both through my academic as well as professional life as a doctor of getting into the flow state more consistently. So first let's talk about what is the flow state? So flow is a concept made famous by the book by it's same name, flow written by, let's look that up. Mahaley Chick sent me hi. Thank God Google can do pronunciations. And while Mahaley's book brought the concept of flow into more light, it was always something you're more aware of, except you start to think about it in the terms of both sports athletes as well as brilliant geniuses. But the more I learned about what flow was, a few of the phrases that really stuck out to me include it being a subconscious level where your effort starts to feel effortless. One of the phrases I really liked calls flow a relaxed state of high performance. And in most layman's terms, when you're in the zone, when you're in flow, you're able to just tone everything down while doing things at a high optimal level. For example, in a really interesting study, freestyle rappers were asked to go into an MRI machine as they were freestyling. Now scientists were expecting to have certain parts of their brain have high levels of activity. But instead, compared to normal subjects who weren't freestyling, the freestyle rappers actually had less activity in their frontal lobe. Essentially they needed less activity in their brain for a very complicated task, which is freestyle rapping. So as we can see, flow is a really desirable state, not only for athletes, but you as a student. So let's talk about a few ways that you can increase the chances to go into flow. So principle number one is to have a distraction, use zone. So as I was reading about what other people do to increase their chances of flow, one of the things that almost everyone recommended is to have a distraction-free zone, but it's not necessarily something I'd agreed with because right now my desk and my work area is good enough to be in the zone to create a video. But if you looked at it, you may have say, well, that's kind of messy. I can't actually work in that situation. So it's more important than you actually have a distraction use zone. And basically what that means is find those common elements that really take your attention away from focusing on your studying. Common things for most students include having their phone, other piece of technology, annoying music, emails, snacks. That's definitely me. But it's going to vary from student to student. So you don't necessarily need to go out of your way to clean your entire desk. My desk, for example, has a lot of little knick-knacks and drinks and little tools that we use for recording some of our videos, but it doesn't necessarily distract me from doing work like studying, responding to emails, recording videos. So I'm not gonna go out of my way to clean that. But things like my phone are actually not on this task at all. Actually, it's really far away here in this corner, but I purposely put it away. So then my focus is here. My phone is actually behind me. Principle number two is to appreciate your Goldilocks value principle. It's really difficult for us to get into the zone if we pick a task that's either really meaningless, so we're just trying to do things to be busy, or on the other hand, something that is very difficult to actually get into. And so for a student, I would argue examples like watching a lecture. It's really hard to get into the flow state while doing that. But on the flip side, a student may have the right amount of mental activity at Goldilocks principle where everything is nice if they're doing activities such as doing things on a whiteboard and trying to test themselves. It's not super challenging, but it just gets their brain working at the right amount of level that they can feel that sense of progress, momentum, and keep going. And so to be able to apply this Goldilocks principle, yes, you have to have a task that has that right level of difficulty, but also has that sensation of progress. So if you're reading a lecture over and over again, you're going to not necessarily have the tendency of going to a state of flow. You're gonna be much more easily distracted. So to increase your chances of being in the zone when you study, pick a task and break it into small pieces of chunks that are challenging individually, but when you put them together, you feel a sense of momentum of going further and further. It's essentially analogous to when a basketball player is getting really hot and they're making bucket after bucket. Eventually, they'll do something called a heat check where they're gonna shoot a shot that they probably wouldn't have done earlier in the game, but they just wanna see where they are. But they do that because they notice the sense of progress of another shot going down. And so the same thing goes for you when you're studying. Make sure the task is difficult enough without being too hard and make sure you have a sense of progress so it's easier to continue to go forward and remain in that state of flow. Principle number three is to have a predictable workflow. Now personally for me, when I was a med student, the typical flow that I would like working in is about an hour chunk with a 10 minute break because it gave myself enough time to actually get into the work and then enough break to be able to then be re-energized to go back into it. And because being in the zone typically provides a lot of value, usually I recommend a lot of the students that I work with is finding a two hour chunk where you can do that high level activity. So for example, if you find that 60 and 10 minute intervals works really well for you, a bonus thing you can do is to have two hours at least protecting in a day and if not two and a half to three hours, if possible, and saying this is the time where I'm gonna do those Goldilocks tasks. And I know that if I continue to do them one after another, I'm gonna be in that sense of flow and I'm gonna enjoy the output that comes after that two to three hour window. Next, I wanna talk about a few hacks that I've used in my personal life that help increase my flow state. So the first thing that I really enjoy to increase my chances of going into a flow has to be caffeine. And this morning I had one of my flow sessions as you guys can see in my desk. Two things that I have is a coffee cup, it says wifey, it's my wife's. And then I have a monster, sugar-free, if you like them, then that's great. But drinking these throughout my sessions and studies have shown anywhere from 120 to 200 milligrams during these high focused states really does help give you that extra brain power to stay focused and also continue to have high output. Hack number two that I really enjoy is to have a start-up routine for my flow. Just like any athlete prepares for a big event or a big game with a very repetitive warm-up routine, you kind of have to do the same for your study. And so for me, that includes cleaning my desk too as far as I need it. I include just having my laptop and this like elbow space as open as possible, putting my headphones on, finding, you know, one of those like study music playlists that I really enjoy, putting my hoodie on, which usually just kind of sits in the back of my desk. I actually have a massage chair that's here. So I usually will start that to really get myself relaxed. And your routine can be as quick or as elaborate as you want it and then just get to work. Hack number three is to have high flow activities. Now, this was a principle that I learned from a video from Dr. Hardy. I'll link that down below in case you guys are interested. But he basically says that how you do anything is how you do everything. And he shares a story of one of his friends, Steve, who is a famous author, has published a lot of books. And he basically asks him, Steve, like, how do you get so much done? He basically says actually ski on a weekly basis. Maybe daily basis, but essentially he does something that just gives him such an exhilaration. And having this activity outside of your work for Steve, it's his writing for us would be your studying, but having an activity outside of that that feels exhilarating, that feels fulfilled, that feels also like a high flow state, helps you have low in the other elements of your life. And so since learning that, I've found that I've focused on increasing flow in many different aspects of my life. So for example, fitness, I'm training for a marathon because there is an exhilaration. I'm noticing my time skiing faster, being able to run faster. In my academic and medicine careers, I'm either creating new videos with new concepts or when it comes to education, I'm learning about more and more things and feeling my intelligence go out day by day. And that also goes for other aspects of my life, including relationships, where I find things that are difficult enough, but I know that if I do them continuously, there will be benefits. So there will be certain things that I can do to improve my relationship with my wife, my parents, my siblings. And if I see progress in those relationships, it makes me have a sense of flow there. It makes me wanna come and study and become a smarter physician. It makes me wanna record these videos and have more energy, better videos, better content. And then also in my fitness, when I'm training for a marathon, it makes me wanna push even further and further because I see different examples of progress in all aspects of my life. Now, the next hack that I wanna share is not really a hack, but it's more of a principle and how I think about it. That's to understand that it's okay to have your mind wander. If you've ever tried meditating, one of the main principles that people say was don't really worry about your mind wandering, just appreciate that it does and bring it back to whatever you're focusing on, whether it's the breath, the moment, a thought, the same thing goes for the sense of flow. If you're really narrowed in to your studying and then you have something where your phone goes off and email goes off and you go into a 10, 20, 15 minute tangent of not being focused, don't be frustrated at yourself that like now you're no longer focused. Think, okay, it happened. Let's go back. It is okay that that's happened. It's more important that I redirect my energy back to what I really want it to be versus focusing on the frustration of not being able to stay consistent. And from personal experience, being in the flow state has probably led to the most productive year in my life. As the making of this video, we are on December, 2021. Hopefully this video comes out before the new years, but this past year alone, I have made more than 80 videos here on YouTube. Ideally in a few days, I will have run my first marathon. I've created three new courses for the MD journey and finding time to do that in residency is something I'm really proud of. And then also have published a research paper for my academic career. So all of those plus many more makes me feel like, okay, if I get down and have those goalie log sessions over and over again, I'm more motivated to do it even going further. So hopefully 2022 is even more successful than I am this year. But just remember that getting into flow starts with the process of one making the commitment to take those small actions even when it's really easy not to do so and then appreciating those big actions that come from the small steps on repeating the process over and over again. And if you're noticing that you're struggling to get into a flow state because you're studying is just way off, you click down below, there are plenty of free resources in some of the videos that we really enjoy here on the MD journey. Of those many resources, one of the things I would recommend is the eight steps study course. So if you're not sure how to study, you can look at one of the techniques that I use when I was in medical school that really helped me improve my time. Give me that goalie locks level of focus and really just made med school so much more enjoyable. So if you're on your medical journey or if you're a student of any kind, not happy with your grades, consider checking out that course again, it's absolutely free. But with that my friends, if you did enjoy this video, the main thing that I ask is just drop a comment down below. These videos aren't easy to make an edit. So if you do enjoy it, just appreciate it, just some interaction. Let me know what questions you have, what you guys thought of the video itself. If you did enjoy this video, consider hitting that like button. And if you're new to the channel, subscribe and notification bell as well. If you're listening to this on an audio form, because yes, we do have a podcast, definitely consider subscribing to the TMJ show on your favorite podcast listening platform as well as leaving an honest review on iTunes. And if you enjoy this video, you'll probably enjoy this video right here on how to study longer without getting tired as well as this one right here on how Elon Musk would study in medical school if he was gonna be a doctor. So check those out. As always, thanks for being a part of my journey. Hopefully it was a little help to you guys on yours. I'll see you guys in the next one. Take care my friends, peace.