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The Inner Game
April 25th, 2022
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If you ever felt "in the zone", where you are consciously
unconscious and wholly consumed with a task that you're
working on -- that's /flow/.

This state of immersion happens when your actions and
awareness are intertwined like old tree roots.  Losing your
feeling of the inner critic and those "other" voices in your
head are signs that you are in a flow state.

In zen buddhism, there is a concept of the two minds -- the
big mind and the small mind.  Big mind thinks about
connections in the world and is engaged when you're thinking
beyond yourself.  Small mind is the opposite; the critical
and self-reflecting part of your mind 

There's a component to getting yourself into this flow state
which requires your big mind engaged in the activity.  I've
been thinking and practicing on what works for me and wanted
to share what I have found what engages my brain into a flow
state.

* Know the outcome

I ask myself what I am hoping to accomplish before I start
my activity.  This is something simple that is a measurable
goal.  I find I don't need details about the goal -- usually
it's something along the lines of "finish reading a chapter"
or "create something new".

It's important to me to keep the goal criteria loose --
frequently I fail to achieve my goal but those failures can
be powerful teaching methods if you leave yourself open to
reflection after you're done.

* Removing criticism

One of the things I struggle with most with achieving flow
is letting my inner small mind critic talk me out of what I
am doing in the moment, typically whenever I start to struggle.

The more mindful I am about recognizing this feeling of the
small mind critic the easier time I have of reminding myself
of my goal and letting myself continue even if I fail.
Criticism is a powerful tool, but engaging it immediately
takes me out of a flow state.

I have been mindful about reserving time for criticism after
I'm done with my flow state activity.  If I'm writing for my
activity, I just write for a while without any corrections.
If I'm playing music, I just improvise and create without
being critical and let myself be open with the results.

Having tools that allow you to record your sessions for your
activity can be a big boon because they allow you to
completely disengage having to keep track of your activity
while you stay in the zone.

* Practice for the big mind

As a person who has been a musician for most of my life, I
take for granted how much unconscious training I do that
non-musician people may not be predisposed to.  This is
called "practice", which means doing an activity in such a
way that you don't think about individual components of the
activity such that big/unconscious mind can "just do" them.

This includes all of the physical motions for your activity,
calculations, and any minutiae that for an unpracticed mind
would take a considerable amount of focus on these
individual components.

Investing time in getting these smaller components of the
activity to be automatic means that you can think about the
goal and let your big mind "do the right thing".  When I'm
playing a musical solo, I don't think about the individual
notes of a scale or rhythms -- I've practiced them in
isolation so that I can just pay attention to the melody I'm
making in context to the rest of the music.

* Context is key

This is less specific to flow, but is something I've found
to be important to me to achieving the state: the context of
your environment can help you get into flow.

One of my music composition professors once told me a story
about how he found that sharpening his pencil before sitting
down at the piano acted as a locus for getting him into a
flow state.  It became a ritual for him both physically
preparing his tool for the activity as well as sharpening
his mind.

Consider the space that you work in -- are there too many
distractions to interrupt your flow?  You may consider what
tools and resources you need to have close at hand to help
minimize the amount of time that would pull you away from
your activity.

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Further reading:

THE MIND ILLUMINATED
https://archive.org/details/TheMindIlluminatedByCuladasaJohnYatesPh.D.MatthewImmergutJeremyGraves2017

THE INNER GAME OF TENNIS
https://archive.org/details/innergameoftenni00gall_0