Writing habits, distraction, and staying in the flow state
How I'm trying to revamp my writing practice
Today’s hot tips come to you courtesy of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, the psychologist who coined the term flow state, whose research I learned about as part of my psychology Ph.D., but whose advice I never managed to take.
Until now.
Flow state is the state of being fully engaged and immersed in a task at hand. During flow state, the brain’s reward systems are more activated—all those minor achievements during a task that usually make you (okay, me) go yay I wrote three sentences, time for a coffee break! produce a little burst of dopamine that makes you keep going, chasing the next achievement and dopamine shot.
There’s more nuance to it than that, like the whole host of neuroscientific research examining the precise optimal brain states required to keep you focused on this particular rewarding task as opposed to searching out something that might be more rewarding (like rearranging your desk objects and counting that as a to-do list item).
But for the purposes of this post, I’m gonna focus on flow state as defined above, and talk about how to get into flow state and how to stay there.
According to psychologists, every time you get interrupted from a task you’re focused on, it takes you twenty-three minutes to reattain that level of focus. (3)
Seriously: twenty-three minutes. That’s like an entire episode of Schitt’s Creek.
Matters only get worse when you realize that, on average, a college student can only stay focused on a single task for sixty-five seconds. A fully-grown adult does just marginally better, clocking in at three minutes per task. 1 2
For those of you doing the math at home, that’s the loss of about six hours of productivity per day.
Think about how often your phone goes off with a text, or email, or your roommate busting in to ask you if you bought new garbate bags—how frequently you get distracted, not just by your own attention span, but by the interjection of modern life into your already-limited focus.
The type of interruption doesn’t matter. Every form of interruption imposes task-switching demands and reduces your productivity.3
Now consider that multitasking literally reduces the amount of gray matter in your brain. Yep. Neuroscientific studies have shown that people who multitask frequently have lower density of gray matter in the part of their brain that is involved in decision-making, learning, and cognitive control.4
Distraction is literally making us stupider.
Usually, the first thing I do when I wake up is to roll over and check my phone. Then I shamble to the bathroom, do all the typical AM bathroom stuff, make coffee, and settle in on the couch to pump (I’m still breastfeeding my 11-month-old) and do some more digital scrolling.
By the time I actually start focusing on work, I’m more than an hour into the day.
While I’m actually writing, my phone is constantly dinging with notifications. I pause to check each one. I get on Instagram and catch up on friends. Maybe I post a story. I remember that I’m trying to share a post on Insta every weekday morning, so I make one of those too.
Then I remember that I’m supposed to send out a Substack once a week, so I brainstorm that, maybe write a little of it.
It’s time for another coffee and a snack.
Okay, back to work. But first, I gotta check on my Discord friends and my email and see what kind of engagement my Instagram post from earlier is getting.
I also need to order new baby clothes, I realize; my baby is growing out of size 9-12. Maybe H&M has a sale.
All right, that’s done.
Writing time.
I write about five sentences, then my email dings. I check that, and reply, which counts as productivity.
Therefore, I think I deserve a little break. Reeses cups from the bodega? Sounds perfect.
Write again - maybe a few paragraphs this time. Whew. I’m on a roll. Then my dog starts whining and I realize I need to take him out for a walk around the block. I scroll through Discord while I walk. When I get back, I make a snack and text a friend before sitting back down at my laptop.
Lather rinse repeat. By the end of the day, I’ve written 500 words on my book…if I’m lucky.
This morning, when I got up, I decided to try something different.
I put my phone back on Do Not Disturb the second I woke up, before checking any of the notifications that had come in overnight. I do bathroom stuff. I make coffee. I decide to work before I pump.
I turn off WiFi on my laptop and open Scrivener. Somehow, I manage to write an entire scene.
Then I open the outline that my We Need Diverse Books mentee sent me and check it against a beat sheet, then create my own interpretation of how the beats of her story would fall. I save the document to go over with her later during our afternoon meeting.
I’m hungry, so I go to Dunkin Donuts and get a pumpkin donut. Then I come back home again and open Substack and write this entire article in one go.
Once I’m done with this, my plan is to (finally!) pump and eat lunch. I’ll turn back on my notifications and check everything I gotta check, feeling virtuous because I waited half a day to do so.
And then I’ll turn Do Not Disturb back on and write again.
Upcoming Content:
Habit-stacking and how to use psychology to your advantage
An interview with two literary agents
An interview with a YA book editor
An interview with an adult book editor
A special giveaway for paid subscribers
If there are any topics you’d like to see me discuss that aren’t listed here, please throw them in the comments below!
Brown, S., Lehmann, C., & Poboka, D. (2006). A critical test of the failure-to-engage theory of task switching. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 13, 152-159.
Brumby, D. P., Janssen, C. P., & Mark, G. (2019). How do interruptions affect productivity?. In Rethinking productivity in software engineering (pp. 85-107). Apress, Berkeley, CA.
Mark, G., Gudith, D., & Klocke, U. (2008, April). The cost of interrupted work: More speed and stress. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (pp. 107-110).
Loh, K. and Kanai, R. (2014). Higher Media MultiTasking Activity Is Associated with Smaller Gray-Matter Density in the Anterior Cingulate Cortex, PLoS One, 9, 1-7.
This was absolutely fascinating! I think I need to revamp my writing time too. Though my phone is constantly on silent, I find that I check it whenever I'm done with a paragraph or the stream of words in my head. Sometimes I go long, sometimes short. But I find there are more days where I'm constantly checking to see if any notifications have come through. And obviously that means I get less done. I'd love to be able to stay in a flow state every workday.