Cultivating Flow

1. Wake up to a specific goal to look forward to

- Before falling asleep, review the next day and choose a particular task that is relatively more interestingand exciting.

- Next morning, open my eyes and visualize the chosen event and get myself excited about it.

2. If I do anything well, it becomes enjoyable.

- Have clear goals and expectations, pay attention to the consequences of my actions, adjust skills,concentrate on the task at hand without distractions

3. To keep enjoying something, I need to increase its complexity

Habits to control attention

a. Take charge of my schedule

- Pay attention to how well my schedule fits my inner states: when we feel best eating, sleeping, working,etc.

b. Make time for reflection and relaxation

- Schedule times in the day, the week, the month, the year to take stock and review what has beenaccomplished and what needs to be done

- Combine periods of reflection with activities that facilitate subconscious creative processes, e.g. walking,showering, driving, gardening, weaving, etc.

- Neither constant stress nor monotony is good for creativity.

- Best relaxation involves doing something very different from my usual tasks.

c. Shape my space

d. Find out what I like and what I hate about life

- Creative individuals always know the reason for what they are doing, and they are very sensitive to pain,to boredom, to joy, to interest, etc.

- Keep a record of what I did each day and how I felt about it.

e. Start doing more of what I love, less of what I hate

- Review the daily record and suss out what I like and what I don't like. 

- Once I know what my daily life is like, and how I experience it, it is easier to gain control over it.

Summary: Developing schedules to protect my time and avoid distraction, Arranging my surroundings to heighten concentration, Cutting out meaningless chores that soak up psychic energy, Devoting energy to what I really care about.

Develop Internal Traits

1. Develop what I lack

- Identify my key traits and attempt something completely opposite that would expose myself to the opposite trait

2. Shift often from openness to closure

- Take a task that I often do at work

- Relax my mind, look out of the window

- Try to grasp the most important issues for the task, What's really important? What gives me a goodfeeling? What scares me? Picture people involved; what are they doing? How are they feeling?

- Jot down some words, anything that concerns my feelings about the project or people. Words thatdescribe facts, events or persons. 

- Choose words carefully, keeping in mind the goals of the task, the department, as well as interests, tastes and prejudices of the intended audience.

3. Aim for complexity

- Be differentiated and integrated at the same time.

- Follow my own star and create my own career, but at the same time be steeped in the culture, learn andrespect rules of the domain, and be responsive to opinions in the field.

Mental Training

a. Find a way to express what moves me.

- The first step to solving a problem is to find it, to formulate the vague unease into a concrete problem

b. Look at problems from as many viewpoints as possible.

- Do not rush to define the nature of the problem.

- Look at the situation from various angles first and leave the formulation undetermined for a long time.

- Consider different causes and reasons. Test my hunches in my mind and then in reality, try tentativesolutions and check success, and be open to reformulating the problem

c. Figure out the implications of the problem

- Once a formulation is created, consider a variety of solutions and enetertain different possibilities. 

- Think of a good solution and then think of the opposite one.

d. Implement the solution

- The longer I can keep options open, the more likely the solution will be original and appropriate.

- Stay flexible by paying close attention to the process, and be sensitive to feedback to correct the course as appropriate. 

e. Produce as many ideas as possible and try to produce unlikely ideas

- E.g. jot down summaries of what people say in meetings and generate alternative positions, and integrate various perspectives into a more comprehensive one

- Instead of stating views that are based on my previous positions, use lines of force emerging in themeeting to suggest new ways of thinking