Author: Christine Carter

Flow Tip: Take a BREAK

Are your feeling too overwhelmed and time-starved to slack-off?

Then what you need more than time to work is downtime. You need a BREAK.

Today, take a good old-fashioned recess in the middle of the day. Go ahead and do your hardest or most dreaded work—or whatever you need to do, but after about sixty to ninety minutes of focused attention, honor your ultradian rhythms and take a break. Rest.

What do you find relaxing or rejuvenating? Is there an article you’ve been wanting to read for fun? Does your most vivid fantasy involve a nap? Do you want to spend a few minutes looking at pictures of pretty living rooms on Pinterest? Perhaps you long to go outside into the great outdoors (or the plaza across from your office) and let the sun shine on your face. Just do it. The only rule is that what you do during recess must be restful or playful; it can’t be on any task list anywhere. Anything that you have to do anyway (shower, read an article for work) doesn’t count.

Need more ideas? Try driving in silence, with your radio and phone off. (Encourage your children to look out the window while you drive them, instead of down at their devices.) Take a walk outside, preferably in nature, without a phone or music player. If that’s too hard, just try a few minutes at a time, adding a few minutes each day. Just practice; it’ll get easier, and the benefits will become more apparent.

You might already be doing this homework throughout the day, but you feel guilty about it. Don’t! Rejoice (or at least forgive yourself) the next time you find yourself staring blankly into space. You aren’t wasting time! You’re letting your brain generate the insights you need to find your flow!

This post is from a series about “strategic slacking” from the “Science of Finding Flow,” an online course I created as a companion to my book The Sweet Spot: How to Accomplish More by Doing Less. Want to go on to the next class or start the course from the beginning? It’s free! Just go to The Science of Finding Flow course page. Enjoy!

How to Inspire Behavior Change in Kids

“Don’t judge each day by the harvest you reap but by the seeds that you plant.”
–Robert Louis Stevenson

Parenting Practice: Fostering Behavior Change

Think about the behavior you’d like your kids to change. How can you apply this week’s tips to it?

How can you help your kids clone a bright spot? (“What did you do yesterday, when you DIDN’T forget your homework?”)
Are you setting clear enough expectations? (“Don’t be so messy” vs. “Put your clothes in the hamper.”)
Can you appeal to a new identity? (“If you want to be like Taylor Swift, you’ll have to practice a lot more!”)
How can you appeal to emotions? (Evoking compassion for polar bears to encourage turning lights off.)
How can you change the environment? Remember, making an environmental change will be more effective than expecting self-control in many situations. (Move kids out of poking distance.)
What action triggers can you set? (As soon as you walk through the door, hang up your back pack.)

This video is the 4th in a series about boosting emotional intelligence from The Raising Happiness Homestudy. Check out the rest of the Homestudy here .

If you would like to download the audio version of this video to listen to in your car or on the go, click the link below.
DOWNLOAD THE AUDIO VERSION HERE.

by Christine Carter

Flow Class Worksheet: Outline Your Flow Ritual

This is a recommended practice from a series about how to focus in my online course, Science of Finding Flow.

Using the list you generated when you built yourself a “focus fortress,” — see previous post in this unit (Unit 4, Focus) — finish creating your own focus ritual. What else do you need to add to your list?

Next, decide what order you’ll do all this in, and write it all down on this downloadable PDF. Then print it out, and post it by your computer. At first, you’ll need this printout, but do your best to memorize the order of the tasks, so that you can do them habitually (rather than having to always use the list and self-discipline).

Click here to download the flow ritual PDF

Don’t forget to post your flow ritual at your workstation.

This “class” is from “The Science of Finding Flow,” an online course I created as a companion to my book The Sweet Spot: How to Accomplish More by Doing Less. Want to go on to the next class or start the course from the beginning? It’s free! Just go to The Science of Finding Flow course page. Enjoy!

by Christine Carter

The Benefits of Letting Ourselves Feel What We Feel

Enough about all the negative consequences of inauthenticity; let’s take a look at the benefits of letting ourselves feel what we feel!

#1: Happiness

Research shows that when we accept and let ourselves feel (and even express) what is going on emotionally for us, our overall happiness increases and depression decreases. Ironically, research shows that people who regularly suppress difficult emotions tend to experience more negative emotions overall.

Why might this be? Suppressing an emotion tends to increase the body’s physiological response to that emotion, essentially making it bigger (rather than making it go away). This increases our experience of negativity.

But when we don’t numb or deny our difficult emotions, they tend to dissipate, and our experience of them lessens. Moreover, when we let ourselves feel what we feel, we are able to access the full range of our emotions, including positive ones, like gratitude and compassion and inspiration and awe. Needless to say, these emotions make us feel happier and more satisfied with our lives.

#2: Love

Another consistent benefit of letting ourselves feel what we feel is that our relationships tend to improve, sometimes dramatically.

For example, the less often that people report suppressing their emotions over a two-week period, the better they tend to feel about their relationships over the course of three months.

This sort of authenticity—defined by psychologists as “the sense of empowerment and freedom to act in a way that is an expression of deeply held values, goals, and feelings, rather than the product of external pressures and expectations”—predicts the tendency to avoid destructive behavior in intimate relationships. More than that, it predicts greater relationship quality overall.

Why?

Because authenticity creates intimacy. Research shows that young adults in romantic relationships are most intimate with and most committed to dating partners who see them as they see themselves; connection and intimacy in our relationships depend on our feelings of being understood. In other words, when our romantic partners see us the way that we see ourselves—which they can only do if we don’t hide our feelings—our relationships last longer and are more fulfilling.

#3: Wisdom

Last but certainly not least, when we let ourselves feel what we feel we gain access to the most powerful part of our brain and nervous system: our intuitive, unconscious, and visceral knowledge.

Our unconscious knowledge is shockingly powerful—and far more extensive than our conscious knowledge. Consider that our conscious brain processes information at a rate of about fifty bits per second, while our unconscious, intuitive nervous system processes information at a rate of 11 million bits per second. Fifty versus 11 million. That’s not a small differential, and it means that our unconscious minds are constantly cluing us into our experience, both internal and external, if only we pay attention.

Here’s the catch: our intuitive knowledge system does not speak in words. It speaks to us through our bodies and through our feelings. Where our conscious critical thinking is very verbal, analytical, and linear, our unconscious and intuitive knowledge is emotional, embodied, automatic, and instinctual.

The unconscious power of our brain is the difference between being intelligent and being truly wise. According to social psychologists Thomas Gilovich and Lee Ross, authors of The Wisest One in the Room:

The difference between wisdom and intelligence is noteworthy. Intelligence involves taking the information available and processing it effectively—thinking about it logically and drawing sound conclusions. That is certainly an important component of wisdom. But a wise person does something else–a wise person goes beyond the information that is immediately available. Wisdom involves knowing when the information available is insufficient for the problem at hand. It involves the recognition that how things are right now might seem very different down the road.

This post is from a series about authenticity from the “Science of Finding Flow,” an online course I created as a companion to my book The Sweet Spot: How to Accomplish More by Doing Less. Want to go on to the next class or start the course from the beginning? It’s free! Just go to The Science of Finding Flow course page. Enjoy!

by Christine Carter

The Surprising Benefits of Generosity

So if our happiness and our success are best predicted by the quantity and quality of our relationships with others, and our relationships are built through small moments of positive connection, the question remains: How can we best engineer positive connection? There are many ways, but the best way is to become one of life’s big givers.

For starters, we know that generous people reap significant rewards in business settings. According to Adam Grant, professor at the Wharton School of Business and author of Give and Take: Why Helping Others Drives Our Success, givers develop superior networking, collaborating, evaluating, and influencing skills. So over the long haul, they tend to be the most successful.

We also know that helping others improves our physical health and longevity. People who volunteer tend to experience fewer aches and pains, and giving help to others protects overall health twice as much as aspirin protects against heart disease. People fifty-five and older who volunteer for two or more organizations have an impressive 44 percent lower likelihood of dying—and that’s after sifting out every other contributing factor, including physical health, exercise, gender, marital status, and smoking. This is a stronger effect than exercising four times a week or going to church; it means that volunteering is nearly as beneficial to our health as quitting smoking!

We feel good when we give because we get what researchers call a “helper’s high,” or a distinct physical sensation associated with helping. About half of participants in one study reported that they felt stronger and more energetic after helping others; many also reported feeling calmer and less depressed, with increased feelings of self-worth. This is probably a literal “high,” similar to a drug-induced high. For example, the act of making a financial donation triggers the reward center in our brains that is responsible for dopamine-mediated euphoria.

Similarly, helping others and receiving help are associated with lowered anxiety and depression. Adolescents who identify a strong inclination to help others are three times happier than those who lack such altruistic motivation. Teens who are giving, hopeful, and socially effective are also happier and more active, involved, excited, and engaged than their less giving counterparts. Generous behavior reduces adolescent depression and suicide risk, and several studies have shown that teenagers who volunteer are less likely to fail a subject in school, get pregnant, or abuse substances. Teens who volunteer also tend to be more socially competent and have higher self-esteem.

Although in many of these studies it may be that happier and healthier people are more likely to volunteer in the first place, it is important to note that experiments have demonstrated again and again that the effects of kindness on our health and happiness are causal. It isn’t just that kind people also tend to be healthier and happier (and that might be why they are kinder in the first place), but kindness toward others actually causes us to be happier, improves our health, and lengthens our lives. Being kind to others strengthens our social bonds. Giving to others also increases our sense of self-worth—heightening our sense that we have something to offer the world—which makes us feel more satisfied with our lives. But that’s not all that is at work here.

Most of us know from experience that when our own worries take center stage—What did she think of me? Will I get there on time? Will I have enough money this month?—we stress ourselves out. Heart attacks and other stress-related illnesses are highly correlated with how much people reference themselves in interviews, using words like I, me, my, mine, myself. In one study, patients with severe disease were more self-focused and less other-focused.

Indeed, giving to others makes us healthier and happier because it makes us less preoccupied with ourselves, thereby reducing stress and reversing its damaging effects on the body. “One of the healthiest things that a person can do is to step back from self-preoccupation and self-worry, as well as from hostile and bitter emotions,” writes altruism expert Stephen Post; and “there is no more obvious way of doing this than focusing attention on helping others.”

One study showed, for example, that people who were feeling worried and stressed about their finances felt better when they offered social support to others. Another study found that people who tend to help others are far more resilient in the face of stress than non-helping people. Kindness redirects our energy toward things that make us feel good, reducing the toll that negative feelings have on our health and happiness.

This post is from a series about social connections from the “Science of Finding Flow,” an online course I created as a companion to my book The Sweet Spot: How to Accomplish More by Doing Less. Want to go on to the next class or start the course from the beginning? It’s free! Just go to The Science of Finding Flow course page. Enjoy!

by Christine Carter

The Happiness Tipping Point

Over time, our broadened vision and the other positive effects of happiness grow. There is, as doctors say, a dosage effect or, more accurately, a tipping point. All our accumulated moments of being able to see the forest and the trees—and of increased learning and creativity and connection with others—change who we are as people. Our better social skills over time build our relationships with others in ways that bring us new opportunities. Our increased motivation and self-discipline make us more productive, which can build greater mastery and success in our efforts. Fredrickson calls this the “broaden and build” effect of positive emotions. Happiness broadens our perception in the moment and builds our resources over time. It becomes an upward spiral of productivity and positivity.

This positive emotion tipping point is a psychological law just as the temperature tipping point at which ice melts into water is determined by a physical law. People whose ratios of positive to negative emotions are lower than 3:1 often “languish,” as researchers call it. Their performance at work suffers, they are more likely to be depressed (and not recover), their marriages are more likely to fail— and they aren’t happy. Their behavior becomes predictable to psychologists, and not in a good way. Languishing people become rigid. They tend to feel burdened by life.

“Happiness broadens our perception in the moment and builds our resources over time.” Share on X

Fortunately, something remarkable often happens when our ratio of positive to negative feelings hits or passes that 3:1 mark. We flourish. These flourishing people, who make up only 17 percent of the American adult population, are happier and more resilient. They are high-functioning individuals who score well on things such as self-acceptance, purpose in life, environmental mastery, positive relationships with others, personal growth, creativity, and openness. They feel good and they do good. They are highly engaged with their friends, their work, their families, and their communities.

We want to be happy both at home and at work, of course. But, at risk of being repetitive, happiness is key to how well we do at work. Happier people are 31% more productive. They have, on average, 37% better sales figures. They tend to hold higher paying and more secure jobs, and they are less likely to experience burn-out or lose their jobs.

This post is from a series about flourishing from the “Science of Finding Flow,” an online course I created as a companion to my book The Sweet Spot: How to Accomplish More by Doing Less. Want to go on to the next class or start the course from the beginning? It’s free! Just go to The Science of Finding Flow course page. Enjoy!

by Christine Carter

Some Final Thoughts

“It’s very important to remember that this work doesn’t end here.”

Join the Discussion
What helped you the most in this course? What do you most want to remember?

by Christine Carter

Flow Class: An Illness We Are Choosing

This video is from a series about how to focus in my online course, the Science of Finding Flow.

Busyness is a sign that we aren’t as physically healthy as we could be. Scott Dannemiller, in his post “Busy is a Sickness,” quotes Dr. Suzanne Koven, an internist at the Massachusetts General Hospital:

In the past few years, I’ve observed an epidemic of sorts: patient after patient suffering from the same condition. The symptoms of this condition include fatigue, irritability, insomnia, anxiety, headaches, heartburn, bowel disturbances, back pain, and weight gain. There are no blood tests or X-ray diagnostics of this condition, and yet it’s easy to recognize. The condition is excessive busyness.

Busyness causes health problems. And yet the type of busyness we are talking about is entirely within our control (as opposed to the busyness of someone living in poverty, working multiple minimum-wage jobs just to keep the lights on and the children fed). The busyness of the affluent and middle-class is an illness we are choosing, “like voluntarily licking the door handle of a preschool bathroom,” writes Dannemiller.

by Christine Carter

Flow Class: How Bad, Really, Are Interruptions?

This post is from a series about how to focus from my online course, the Science of Finding Flow.

Several years ago, I devised a system for quickly getting into the “zone” while I wrote (it is detailed later in this unit). Free from distractions and interruptions, I wrote quickly, joyfully, and with surprisingly little effort.

But then we moved, and my husband and I both worked mostly from home for 18 months. It was the least productive 18 months of my life. Although we worked in separate rooms, at opposite ends of the house, he was forever interrupting me, jarring me out of that coveted state of flow. He’d saunter into my office to use my recycling bin (not because that was the closest one, mind you), and even if my attention was clearly fixed on my work, he’d put his face right in front of my computer screen and lean in for a smooch.

I recognize how sweet this is. And I am super grateful to have such a loving and affectionate husband. And I appreciate being able to work from home, because it allows me more time with both my husband and my children (who also interrupt me constantly once they are home from school).

By 4:00 pm, each interruption was causing me so much irritation it sometimes bordered on rage. Even when the person interrupting me was a considerate and whispering middle-schooler needing homework help, or a loving husband who wanted to shower me with affection, I felt frustrated and snappish.

Was I overreacting? Perhaps I could have tried harder to keep my irritation in check, but research gives me some good grounds for it. In fact, studies have found that being interrupted isn’t just a nuisance; it’s costly and problematic.

Here are three, sometimes hidden, costs to interruptions:

1. They cost us a lot of time.

On average, interruptions take 23 minutes and 15 seconds to recover from—even if the distraction is only for a minute!

For example, say I’m uber-focused, but then my hubby (or perhaps your co-worker) comes in for a minute or two to chit-chat about dinner plans (or prepare for an upcoming meeting). Or you get an IM from your manager asking about something that happened yesterday. Before we turn our attention back to our work, we might decide to take a quick peek at our email, and while we’re doing that, notice that we’ve missed a call and three texts. If we answer just a few of these incoming communications, it may well be longer than 23 minutes before we actually get back to work.

On average, interruptions take 23 minutes and 15 seconds to recover from— even if the distraction is only for a minute! Share on X

I suppose, if I tried really hard, I could get back on track faster. But that effort takes focus and energy that I could be putting toward my writing or other work.

2. Interruptions lower the quality of our work.

A mountain of research has demonstrated time and again that interruptions increase our error rate. For example, when college students that are concentrating on a task that taxes their working memory and they are interrupted for 2.8 seconds, they make twice as many errors as those who are not interrupted. When they are interrupted for 4.4 seconds, their error rate triples.

According to Glenn Wilson at the University of London, just being in a work situation where you can be interrupted by text and email can decrease your IQ by 10 points. For writers like me, the news here is even more depressing: Interruptions measurably lower both the quantity and the quality of writing we can do in even a very short period of time (20 minutes).

3. Interruptions contribute to stress and overwhelm, making us feel conflicted and time-pressured.

They make us feel BUSY. And possibly important. But as we shift our focus between tasks—as when we steal a glance at our email while we are working on a presentation—it increases our perception that we have too much to do in the time that we have to do it.

According to Gloria Mark, who studies interruption at UC Irvine, when we are diverted from one task to another, we can pick up our work pace to make up for lost time, but this increased speed comes at a cost: People who’ve been interrupted report having a greater workload, more stress and frustration, feeling more time pressure, and exerting more effort.

And guess what? This makes a lot of people feel annoyed, anxious, and irritable, as I do. Behavioral scientist Alan Keen believes that the stress and overload that comes from constantly being expected to multitask is causing an “epidemic of rage.” Interruption and task switching raises stress hormones and adrenaline, which tends to make us more aggressive and impulsive.

The takeaway: Interruption drains our energy and dampens our performance. The stress, inefficiency, inaccuracy, and time pressure that interruptions create are the very opposite of being in the sweet spot.

by Christine Carter

Flow Class Activity: Schedule Time to Single-Task

This is a recommended practice from a series about how to focus in my online course, Science of Finding Flow.

Do you want to focus more and multitask less? Here’s the thing: Unless you actually schedule time during which you can focus uninterrupted, it is unlikely that the time will just magically appear.

Try grouping your daily tasks into two categories: “Think Work” and “Action Items.” Then block off time on your calendar for both things. I do my “Think Work” totally uninterrupted, and I try to take a break every 60-90 minutes. If you are just starting out, aim for 20 minutes of uninterrupted work before you take a break. I have to do this when I’m just coming back from vacation. It takes some practice to focus for long periods of time.

My “Action Items” take less concentration, but I still tackle them one at a time in sequence—not parallel. Unless I’m working my way through my email, my email application is closed. I answer the phone only for scheduled calls. I leave my iPhone in do-not-disturb mode (so that I can see if my kids’ schools call, but that’s about it) and reply to texts before breakfast, lunch, dinner, and before I put my phone away for the evening. Having these “rules” for myself has dramatically increased my productivity.

Join the Discussion

When during the day will you do your deep work? When will you tackle your action items? Block those times off as recurring events on your calendar now.