Today is day #12 of my startup journey. I am experiencing a sense of void after a highly productive period. It is not uncommon. For all my life, I am

Fighting Unproductiveness

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2021-08-18 03:00:05

Today is day #12 of my startup journey. I am experiencing a sense of void after a highly productive period. It is not uncommon. For all my life, I am looking for the flow state.

Psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi coined the term “flow.” I understand it as a state of being ultra-focused and tireless, to the point of forgetting to eat or sleep.

As I enter startup life, working on my dream projects, I thought the flow state would frequently come to me. It turned out to be only half true. I find flow only happens with crafty activities, such as designing, coding, or writing. It never happens when I do self-promotion or marketing. Furthermore, on the days that I did both types of activities, I can’t get into the flow at all. In an attempt to fight my unproductiveness, I start to self-diagnose why.

To enter the state of flow, it needs a few hours of ramping up. The concentration level climbs up and then stays in the flow state at its peak, maintains it for a while, and then cools down. The graph:

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