Characteristics of flow states:

1) Heightened and intense perception of reality.

2) Perception of time slows down or fastens up
(Usually slows down)

3) People spending time in flow states are generally more happy and do productive invaluable work.

4) OVERLOAD your mind with *lots* of *small* directly acheiveable tasks.

If the size of the tasks are too big, you will give up. Also have lots of such small tasks. Go as small as you possibly can.

Do not rush the process beyond your capabilities. Although you need to have a vitality to complete the task as reasonably fast as possible.

Slow and getting the work done is better than going fast and crashing.

4) How to achieve a flow state?

Observation. Curiosity of a child. Fascination.

Over thinking is the number one flow state inhibitor.

Think using reality/perception itself as directly as possible.

Feels like the work is doing itself for you, instead of you doing the work.

Block out a fixed unit of time (at least 90 min) before you sit down to work. No distractions.

Distractions kill flow state like overthinking, worrying while you are engaged in your work.

Your interpretations of reality severely augments and distorts the perception of objective reality.

Everything would instantly fall into place if you lived life at high intensity.

Literally nothing could be in between you and what you want. The problem is that you lack the intensity of life.

Live life at high intensity.

For most people, including yourself, high intensity takes the form of pressure and desperation. It's sad that it has become this way, but it is the way it is.

If you are genuinely under high pressure that is a notch or two above your comfort zone, then this is your opportunity to turn up the intensity of life.

Ignoring and postponing this opportunity will cost your growth dearly.

The biggest thing I learned this year is to do extremely difficult things in extremely difficult situations.

ie Stress Tolerance.

I knew this was important, but I thought that the fact that it's stressful is due to lack of preparation or knowledge. This is never the case since you can't prepare enough and you always work with partial knowledge. It's the rule, not the exception.

Stress can hamper the quality of work. Usually for tasks that require high IQ, elite decisions making and other skills, you can't let stress hamper the quality of your decisions.

But for most of life, people do not obsess about the quality of work, so stress hampering the quality of work is something you can get away with fairly often.

But always make it your goal to create something brand new, a version the world has never seen before.

Do highly difficult work in high pressure situations.

Difficult work = making decisions at the moment.

High pressure = have a long term objective to meet.

To decrease pressure, forget the long term consequences. Don't attempt to decrease pressure right from the beginning. The pressure is a reminder of the things you have left to do. Do the work and let the pressure automatically subside.

Do it so much that you forget the long term consequences.

You learn more from "unexpected results" than from getting things right the first time

Mastery is a function of innate talent intensified with extreme effort.

In order to be master of any craft:

- You need to have the talent for it
- You need to be practicing it with intense effort.

People who believe they’re thinking differently by simply finding echo chambers online that reinforce their supposedly dissident thinking patterns have not broke outside the box, they just found a different box they prefer.

Echo chambers are dangerous and insidious and subtle.

For creative tasks, worrying about results, will seriously hamper your results. Just forget about the results COMPLETELY, as if it doesn't even exist.
Immerse yourself in the process.

Worrying is not going to improve the results anyway. Thinking about the result will make you worry about it even more.

Conversely, for dumb tasks, think all about results and go brute force it.

The fact that you are alone is among the deepest most fundamental realities of life.

https://t.me/machiavellicorporate/643

Great story!!

Never Give excuses, especially as a man. No one cares.

https://t.me/tatespeech/1751

Obsession is a must have for success.

Your mind must be preoccupied with just ONE THING for extended durations of time to result in Mastery.

Fuck the pomodoro trash nonsense. Take a break when you desperately need it. You are probably not in the flow nor are you going to relevant/creative work if you are tired as hell.

The bare minimum time you should continuously work, once you sit your ass down is:

90 minutes.

Bare minimum.

Make it a habit. Resist temptations take breaks beforehand. Train your brain to focus. Block out all the distractions that may pester you in that golden 90 minutes.

Even after 90 min, take breaks only if you really need it. If you need breaks even before 90 min, then probably you were not well rested enough before sitting down to work. Don't let that happen. Train.

This is life changing advice.

Use naivety to your advantage.

If you know what exactly you should do every day for the rest of your life, you will be demotivated since it will appear huge and insurmountable.

Imagine Jeff Bezos working in his book shop in 1995 having information about Amazon being a trillion dollar company going through all the ups and downs within a few years. It will be so scary to have all that information.

Not having too much information is a blessing in disguise.

Know the immediate next step. And ruthlessly take action. The next step will be revealed at the appropriate time as and when required.

You cannot foresee all the future steps in the present and execute each of those instructions like a machine. That's not how that works. You will fail if you work like that.

If you are a loser, and you are on track for this to continue in the future...

ESCALATE YOUR TACTICS

You have nothing to lose, in the sense that you have a life not worth living.

Execute high risk-high reward tactics, until you either win or die.

Better to die in the middle of executing a high risk course of action, than to live and be a loser.

Death is nothing.

To live and be power less is to die everyday.

The only advice I have is:

Ramp up the intensity. Intensity at which you work and deliver is everything when it comes to peak individual performance.

Intensity is flow. Intensity is peak life experience. Intensity is effortlessness and mastery.

If you don't create intense experiences for yourself early on, then God will generously send you opportunities to experience peak intensity yourself. At least don't miss that. It usually comes in the form of high pressure, high stakes situations.

You need to be a grounded, principled man to face these testing times.

"But ..but consistency.."

Yes, consistency matters. What is consistency? It's literally showing up everyday and putting in the work. Of course I already expect you to do that.

Any moron can be consistent. And not all of them generate superb results.

Consistency alone is a low bar.

Be consistent. Spike Intensity.

Every ambitious man i’ve observed to take their life seriously,

hate small talk and gossip.

And they are extremely selective on giving attention, which makes them look like bad listeners.