Consistently achieving a state of focused concentration can be difficult. There are some simple techniques you can employ that will have you rapidly entering this blissful creative and productive zone. Learn the benefits of Flow and how to get into that hyper-productive groove.
Rapidly Attaining Creative Flow—Quick Overview
- Create your optimal environment for working on your creative projects. For me it's my office. Mine is like a cave, or a big closet. It's as removed as possible, situated in a far corner of my house. That way, external distractions are minimized and I'm able to focus.
- Each day prioritize your tasks. Arrange them so that you have time to focus on the creative part of a project. Schedule this time of day during your peak performance hours. For me that's in the morning. Fully commit to this time. Turn off your email, your phone, and your feeds. Don't allow anything to break your concentration. Lock the door if you have to and turn on some music.
- Start creating. Fully enjoy this creative time and be in the moment. Allow yourself to ignore your internal needs. Let time and worries drift away from your consciousness. Focus deeper and become completely absorbed in your work.
- Continue to push and challenge yourself in your work. If a problem presents itself that is too complex, quickly break it down into manageable parts and keep working, keep flowing, and keep creating.
Kaboomb! A bomb just went off or you finished your work. Otherwise, nothing is pulling you out of this zone!
Recognizing Flow
Flow can occur in virtually any activity that we do. Athletes can relate to being "in the zone"—hitting your shots, dribbling past another player, stealing the ball. What can I say, I love basketball. Whether you're a basketball player, surfer, skater, runner, boxer doesn't matter—you've felt it.
Visual artists experience flow just as commonly as athletes. When your actions, ideas, goals, and mental images merge, you're in the flow. The feeling is intense, powerful, and wonderful. Your work is moving along and you're totally absorbed in it. Everything is working. Visual problems you encounter you're able to solve, or prioritize, and come back to at the right moment. Flow leads to quality work results, memorable experiences, and a happy life as an artist. Below is a quick checklist to recognize when you're in flow.
- Happiness—If you are enjoying your work, then you're likely in the flow.
- Time Loss—Ever been working so hard you look up and three hours have gone by, but it felt like ten minutes? Or you just have no idea how long you've been working on something?
- Hunger-Schmunger—Forgetting about your basic needs, like food or sleep. Do be careful!
- Confidence—It's less a feeling of confidence than a feeling of not worrying. You are so absorbed in what you're doing that self-consciousness and fear of failure disappears.
The list above gives you a good idea of the benefits of flow. You're productive, fully concentrated, and enjoying your work. Being in the flow is an ideal state of mind for a designer or visual artist. It's something to strive for daily. It's intrinsically rewarding. Fortunately, it's also beneficial to our work.
5 Principles for Attaining Creative Flow
Wouldn't it be cool if there was a shortcut Flow button on your keyboard? We have Delete and Help. Why not Flow? If you pressed it, you suddenly were fully concentrated on your work and producing fantastic results. Unfortunately, attaining a state of flow isn't quite that simple, though it's not difficult, either. You can easily create optimal conditions for you to enter the flow. Use a few relatively simple techniques to encourage rapid entry into a state of creative flow.
1. Set Optimal Flow Conditions
If you suffer from succumbing to temptation or if there are identifiable annoyances that hinder your ability to enter flow, then remove them from the situation. If it's e-mail, turn it off. If it's the television, throw it out the window. Remove the distraction. It will improve your ability to enter the flow.
Also be awake. If you haven't slept well in days, you'll have difficulty achieving flow. No, coffee and soda are not magical flow elixirs. Try to maintain your health over the long-term. This is part of setting your flow agenda.
You want to set the optimal environment and alert mental state to be able to enter creative flow. Pick the time of day that you work best to do your most challenging work. Set your environment up so that you will not be distracted. Also, set aside enough time to accomplish your task and have an enjoyable "in the zone" work session.
Know your tools. It's difficult to flow if you haven't become one with your instruments. A warrior won't win battles without knowing how to wield their sword. Keep practicing with the tutorials here on PSDTUTS and elsewhere.
2. Game the Right Level of Challenge
Think of it as a video game. If it's so hard that you can't get past the first part of level one, then you're going to get frustrated. If you sit down and save the princess in 30 minutes, well now you're bored. You have to set the right gaming conditions in your creative work.
Break down the level of difficulty so that it's challenging. The idea is that it should require you to concentrate fully to accomplish. If it's too hard you'll be tempted to do something else and it will be difficult to get into the flow.
Clearly define the problem you will solve and the tasks you will complete. If you have a large task to accomplish, break it down into smaller pieces that form a workable challenge.
3. Concentrate Fully
Start creating. Fully enjoy this creative time and be in the moment. Allow yourself to ignore your internal needs. Let time and worries drift away from your conscious mind. Focus deeper and become completely absorbed in your work. Ignore your internal cynic. When you're warming up to a flow state don't be overly critical of your work. Do recognize if something isn't good enough, but don't let it stop you from continuing to work. Often perfection is the enemy of high-quality, really good work.
Keep in mind you will likely have to force yourself to work hard until things start to flow. The first few steps are always the most difficult. Push yourself until you get a good flow going.
4. Get Absorbed in the Moment
Allow worries and fears to subside. Let self doubt fall to the side. Allow time to drift away from your consciousness. Let internal needs, like hunger, become irrelevant. As you become more aware and more focused on your work, everything else becomes blocked by this creative fog that forms around you. Allow everything but your work to disappear in that fog.
5. Have Fun
One of the key ingredients to being in the flow is that you are enjoying what you're doing. Try to approach every task in such a way that you'll go into the flow. Some tasks easily go into flow. Creative flow is actually easier than flowing in projects that you find boring.
Set up the projects you need to accomplish so that they are fun. Creative flow is intrinsically rewarding. Try to balance other needs and accomplish business tasks that need to be attended to and set aside special time for being creative. If you're a designer or an illustrator then your projects will have multiple stages that you can get into that creative zone.
Prolonging Creative Flow
Once you're in flow its important to keep it going. If you're in the flow designing a really cool Web site in Photoshop, don't stop. If you're working well and it's break time, work through your break. Skip lunch. Just keep going. This is especially true if you have difficulty entering flow or if you have multiple non-creative tasks you also have to get done. Work on staying in the groove once you get there.
Practicing Creative Flow
Track how well you're entering creative flow each day. Did you go into flow for two hours today, but only one yesterday? Analyze what helped get you into the flow. Consider any distractions. Practice and work on improving your ability to get into the flow daily. The more you practice and pay attention to what is working, the quicker and easier you'll be able to enter creative flow.
Further Reading
If you're interested in learning more about creative flow, follow the links below. These links also served as resources in creating this article.
- Csikszentmihalyi&mdashWikepedia's information on the psychologist known for his work on flow and positive psychology.
- Finding flow—A good resource on flow and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's views on the subject.
- How to Achieve the Creative State of Flow—While this article is about creative flow in writing, the principles could be applied to design.
- Effortless Success—How to turn work into play and succeed on a massive scale—Extensive article on applying the principles of flow to your work for enjoyment and success.
- 7 Rules for Maximizing Your Creative Output—The personal accounts in this story relate to programming, though the principles discussed are applicable to any creative endeavor. Great article on getting into creative flow.
- How to cultivate mad-hot creative flow, love what you do and double your fees—An interesting article from our friends over at Freelance Switch. It applies some commonsense approaches to avoiding clients that will suck the flow right out of you.
Conclusion
Flow is the reason I became a designer. The feeling of creation—putting together the basic elements of design and fusing them into a new vision. It's a great feeling. Leave some comments about your feelings on flow. How do you get into flow? What prevents you from getting into the flow? Are you in the flow right now?
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User Comments
( ADD YOURS )Brad March 24th
Yeah first comment! Some good ideas here!
( )Bogus March 24th
SWEET READ!!!
( )mave March 24th
not this again.
( )Brother March 24th
^???
Nice article.
( )Arnaud March 24th
Thx you, it’s very usefull !
( )Eric March 24th
Great article! I’ll have to look even deeper into it when I get some more free time!
( )Ibrahack March 24th
Thanks for this!
( )Cheers
Andrew D March 24th
Great tips, thanks
( )Craig Schlewitz March 24th
GREAT tips, but didn’t we see something very similiar to this last weekend?
( )Eh.
Ibrahack March 24th
i always forget about food and sleep! xD im in the flow then!
( )Keer Tan March 24th
Great tips. Thank you.
( )Zach March 24th
ok, um interesting post. and tru. being in the flow is a great place to be. i hope im not sounding like a jerk, but i thought this was a tutorial website.
srry.
i’d prefer a tut than a lesson on getting “in the zone.”
( )Mark Abucayon March 24th
that was a cool.. Thanks
( )goldenthunder March 24th
At first, I thought “Oh man, I’ve read like 10 of these type articles this week,” but then I read it and it has some very useful information – so good job, Sean! Thanks for the advice!
( )JPOG March 24th
To those complaining that this is just a tutorial site is right, but this article is a tutorial in itself. It’s a tutorial to help yourself which in turn help your art and your work. I’m glad Collis allowed this to be published, I seem to be in a state of anti-Flow right now and this is the perfect thing that I needed to get back I track.
( )Thank you good sir.
sascha/hdrs March 24th
Mave is right! Not this again! Aren’t there already enough of these kind of ‘get into the right groove’ tutorials on freelance switch?! When I visit PSDTuts I’m looking for practical PS tutorials, not meta-physical stuff like this.
( )Matt March 24th
Why people would complain is beyond me…
He could have not written it at all then you’d have nothing to do…
( )Good post.
Naveed March 24th
its a nice post, thank you very much for writing and sharing such great principals..
i really need this i dnt know what sometime i feel as if i hve lost my creativity and may be flow is the reason behind..i may not be able to get into flow and end up saying i have lost my creative abilities
( )anyways thanks again..and keep posting
Ole Martin March 24th
To all of those who cannot see the importance and enjoy such an article clearly have a few years before they need one. Creative flow is not an issue for those who are just following these tutorials because they are fun to do. It’s an issue for us who have to be on the edge and have as much creativity and inspiration on each project because thats how we make a living.
( )Markus March 24th
love these articles.
( )godonholiday March 24th
Thanks… its nice to have something to read between tutorials and find out how other people do things.
I like these articles and realise that this is a blog site as well as a tutorial site…. others dont seem to..
i like the fact that i can come here and read around the subject as well as attempt the tutorials. some of us dream about doing this stuff for a living…
these articles are very important.
as for flow…. music is the biggest flow generator for me…. but its hard to not include some ref to it in my work.
thank you for taking the time..
( )Crohno March 24th
Really cool and very necessary, for all who criticise ot let me say you a thing, Photoshop/Photography/Art it’s about creativity, it’s ok, necessary, to know how to do things, but is even more necessary to know how to creat new things, therefor thanks for this great tutorial
( )Shane March 24th
A similar article to the one others have mentioned, but interesting nonetheless. Those images are fantastic!
Cheers.
( )Arik March 24th
I live in an apartment with my parents, being focused and alone is impossible. A barrage of television noise, pc noise, skype phone calls, voices and me being called every 10 seconds to ‘fix’ something with my dad’s computer is just effin frustrating.
God I am ready to torch this place right now.
( )Dan March 25th
Great tips – thanks!
( )LOSWL March 25th
Another great inspirational writing, I’m getting my flow on!! ;o)
( )Brian March 25th
At the beginning, sure this might have just been a “tutorial” site. It has grown into a resource now though… stop complaining because there aren’t new tutorials every day, there has to be other content while the authors are busy writing and thinking of new tutorials that they want to share with you. Thinks it’s easy to do what these guys are doing…??? Think again, you aren’t forced to come to this website. You aren’t require to do anything, appreciate what is here and go complain about more important things.
Thanks for the article Sean, it’s always nice to see how others work and the ideas they have behind it.
( )Joey Hiemstra March 25th
Hi,
Collin i can’t seem to find a way to contact you. but i really want to ask you something by email. can you please give or send me a email at which i cant reply?
regards,
Joey
( )Joey Hiemstra March 25th
srry i think i spelled you’re name wrong collin > collis
( )Track 6 March 25th
“If it’s email. Turn it off. If it’s the television. Throw it out the window. Remove the distraction.”
My main distractions are always my girlfriend and my dog. Somehow I think throwing them out the window would create far greater problems than damaging my flow! ………. unfortunately.
Great pointers though. I also recommend listening to metal as loud as possible, thereby driving other said distractions out of the house.
( )Dragolux March 25th
Some nice tips here. Thanks for the article!
( )Ben Griffiths March 25th
Thanks, some great and useful information here
( )Kelly March 25th
This is a great article.
Those complaining will learn in their own time that their creative wells can be tapped to near-empty and that it is necessary to refill those creative wells constantly. You don’t fill your creative well by using your creativity, you fill it by absorbing creativity around you and every now and then reading various advice on how to accomplish it.
VERY good article. I actually feel like it’s a special treat when one of these articles pops up instead of another tutorial.
( )Alexander March 25th
I think that meditation, a pre-work break from anything directly work-related in terms of physical proximity to your workspace, thoughts that tie directly to the project (well, maybe juggling ideas could be ok, but definitely not to the point where they cloud the creative juices like milk in water), and a nice walk in the park are good steps to prep for a long session of hardcore mouse-abuse. Do remember to eat your veggies…
( )Christian Mejia March 26th
These are things we all know (or should know) but tend to forget due to daily stress. Thanks for the reminders.
( )Joe March 26th
Another good way to get into a flow is to generate great ideas using a brainstorm.
( )Sean Hodge March 26th
First off I appreciate the criticism. Its a sign of a healthy community that users are free to debate.
I’m glad that people are finding the article helpful. Being that this site focuses on creative design techniques, its certainly a subject of interest here.
Flow actually encompasses more than creative pursuits. It can be applied to boring work as well. Consider going into flow the next time your dishwasher breaks and you have to wash the dishes by hand. You can either regret every moment of it or find a way to get into the flow of the work. Or like the television throw them out the window and get back to doing the creative work you love. Though, like Track 6 said don’t throw your girlfriend or dog out the window. Not a good idea.
As designer’s we unfortunately have to do non-creative tasks as well. I listen to music for entertainment as other’s mentioned, but I also listen to Audio books. When the task at hand is really boring I find I need some entertainment to get into the flow of the task.
This non-creative flow, or flow for boring tasks, wasn’t discussed in the article. Though it came up in the research I did for the article. Just keep in mind that flow principles can apply to just about anything. If its boring find a way to game it to make it more interesting. Or add another stimulus to make it fun. Just some additional info.
Thx.
( )soundpiercing March 26th
I think that it would be a nice idea to post a tutorial for enhancing images with long exposure lights (similar to the last photo).
( )internet & web design blog March 27th
it is hard to define the best way to acheive ur ultimate creativeness – but i always find relaxing and clearing the mind helps. being hungover is the worst state to be designing in take my word for it
( )f0ox March 27th
http://alltutorials.ru/ – уроки фотошоп, уроки photoshop cs3, уроки по фотошопу
( )Nono March 27th
There is no such thing as flow. ;-P
Nono.
( )Hip Hop Maker March 28th
Great Tutorial.
( )Shan March 29th
Sean, these articles of yours are excellent so keep them up. Yes, they might not be tutorials, but they help us to be inspired to do stuff. All your other posts have also been extremely helpful by showcasing an idea and then finding designers who have been inspired by that technique and to top it all off, you throw in a few tutorials at the end. There will always be people who complain – you can’t please everyone, so just keep doing what you’re doing, as lot of us do appreciate it!
( )Tasha April 1st
Here is the funny thing about coming across this article: The main I’m recently on a tutorial hunt was not to just sharpen my Photoshop skills, but because my “flow” has been interrupted constantly these past few months, and I’ve run into many walls in my work. This was an excellent read, and an exercise I will take with me as I get my mojo back.
( )Mazzone April 2nd
I, too, stumbled upon this randomly and find it very accurately relates to my own flow groove. I need it absolutely silent in order to concentrate. Unfortunately, that time only comes very late at night (not the morning, because I get sick if I get up before 7:30am) when all the kids are asleep, or if perchance they are all napping at the same time (which in reality doesn’t leave me enough time to “get into the flow” because it takes me quite a long while). I do this stuff for a living and I’m really frustrated with projects that can’t seem to get wrapped up… I would love to get back into this flow stuff!!! Thanks for the excellent read. Sometimes this (a reminder) is more helpful than all the how-to write-ups in the world. (Wow, that was a rant…)
( )Mazzone April 2nd
I suppose, for sake of curiosity, I should add that I’m a stay-at-home mom of three under three (we’ve got twins and a two-and-a-half-year-old). For some of us it’s just impossible to get into the flow/groove/thang although we need to soooo badly for our own sanity!!
( )shak April 4th
Thats mind blowing
( )lol April 6th
i think it applies for stuff like maths too
( )jackie April 19th
Wow, that was a waste of time. All common sense, really:
“If you are enjoying your work then you’re in flow”
( )eric May 7th
晒布路。呵呵
( )TH May 14th
Great article! Thanks!
( )Prerna June 1st
I love this and its totally right if u want to be creative writer, creative artist what ever if u want to be creative u have to lost in ur work fully and mantain the flow a single break will make ur art work less creative SO FRIENDS LETS get lost in our world and enjoy being creative thanks for such a awsome article
( )Rexibit Web Services July 23rd
I will definitely be reading this again. However, I am not sure the rippled ocean was good in displaying your point.
( )lambshift August 4th
Flow-
( )being from a very creative family of scientists, and artists, they dont call it high art for nothing. Sometimes one’s cake can get too rich and high so that the interior domains of the creator-subject looses all reference to object related permance, including Target Market orientation and retrieval. But….(five minutes of air space)….the commercials make me cry, in a good way. Although these high states are termed flow they come at some great cost to the flesh and the mundane circumstance equivalent to a logorhythmic sequence. Like loosing a few days, or a loved one, or never meeting the one you love. A sacrifice. Safety …………………(in addressing interstitial time and spectral space dimensional sequences like melek and toc) is more important during these flow states. Or are they a sitcom resolution like chum in south africa? I think some of what you wrote and the czech dude who recently was heard at UW showed the viewer… that in search of flow, there is a chasing and its good to bring refreshments. Is the flow something that one can phamaceutically produce? Flowers for Algernon. Maybe its in the coffee? At the end of the day when future days begin after the yazmalim have left, one wonders will they ever touch…..a syntax…..like a score… like the ace lunch in Seattle…….(perfect for politics, and I will join the rooster’s for old foggies supper club If I must) brighter ….. higher….just register online…..my motto has been since the hyper modern age began…..Gladys night and the pipps…..People in Person….can you digg it……? If you don’t sink the ship……take more vacations please…..I’m concerned for your health…. like 5-7 in maximus. I’ll fix the flurry and pay for the jet. These contracts I’m signing are more than one page so I am thinking they are not involving Hollywood. My toc said Im on a two minutes cycle….how rapid…..mekek-chazmalim….no not us. I will destroy that servant, As I Said the First Evening. Yes? My teeth are showing. But….. airspace…..maybe a tilt of the head and five second of silence…. Forgiviness reigns…..if he’s strong he’ll recover from destruction as I have…..love your caterpillars do they speak gaulithian spanish? they must.
thank you for rendez-vous, peppermint is my favorite
dom de louise….raban III “le troisseure”
Dan September 20th
It’s true, today it’s more important than ever to be able to stay on top of your projects.
If you’d like a tool for managing your projects, you can use this application inspired by David Allen’s GTD:
http://www.Gtdagenda.com
You can use it to manage and prioritize your goals, projects and tasks, set next actions and contexts, use checklists, schedules and a calendar.
( )A mobile version and iCal are available too.