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  • MALE SPEAKER: I'm really happy to welcome

  • our two guests and my friends here today,

  • Steven Kotler and Jamie Wheal.

  • As you know, wellness, optimum living

  • have been big topics at Google for a while.

  • And they are complex issues.

  • I know my colleagues wrestle with these issues a lot,

  • trying to figure out solutions.

  • And today, what they will be presenting

  • and what we'll learn more about, flow,

  • I think is a big part of this complex puzzle.

  • And so I want to give you a little bit of background

  • with both of these folks before we get started.

  • So Steven is a "New York Times" best-selling author.

  • He's an award-winning journalist and co-founder

  • of the Flow Genome Project.

  • And he has many books, including "Abundance."

  • And his new book, "The Rise of Superman"

  • will be the focus on today.

  • His books have been translated in many different languages.

  • Articles have appeared in more than 70 publications,

  • including "New Times Magazine," "Atlantic Monthly," "Wired,"

  • and "Forbes."

  • Jamie Wheal is the executive director

  • of the Flow Genome Project.

  • And he's a leading expert in neurosemantics

  • of ultimate human performance.

  • And he works with Fortune 100 companies, leading business

  • schools, Young Presidents' Organization,

  • an also Red Bull, with their world-class athletes.

  • So with that, I'm going to turn it over to Steven.

  • [APPLAUSE]

  • STEVEN KOTLER: Hello.

  • Thank you guys for coming out.

  • I very much appreciate you being here.

  • I want to kind of just orientate you

  • a little bit to what we're going to do.

  • I'm going to kind of give you an introduction

  • to flow and start breaking down some of the neurobiology, how

  • it works under the hood and giving you

  • kind of the broad spectrum of importance.

  • And then Jamie's is going to take over

  • and he's going to talk about practical applications

  • about how you can get more flow into your lives.

  • As a way to kind of begin, I want

  • to tell you kind of where I began with this, which

  • was when I was 30 years old, I got Lyme disease.

  • And I spent the better portion of three years in bed.

  • If you don't know what Lyme disease is like,

  • imagine the worst flea you've ever had,

  • crossed with paranoid schizophrenia.

  • So by the end of it, the doctors had pulled me off medicines.

  • My stomach lining was bleeding out.

  • There was nothing else anybody else anybody could do for me.

  • And I was functional, 5% to 10% of the time.

  • My mind was totally shut down.

  • My body was in so much pain, I could barely walk.

  • I was hallucinating.

  • My short-term memory was gone.

  • My long-term memory was gone.

  • It was all gone.

  • And at this point, I was going to kill myself out

  • of practicality.

  • The only thing I was going to be from here on forward

  • was a burden to my friends and my family.

  • And it was really a question of when and not if at that point.

  • And in the middle of all this kind of negative thinking,

  • a friend of mine showed up at my house

  • and demanded we go surfing.

  • And it was a ridiculous request.

  • First of all, it had been about five years

  • since I had surfed at that point.

  • And the last time I had surfed, I

  • had nearly drowned in a big way of accident in Indonesia

  • and wanted nothing to do with surfing.

  • And as I said, I could barely walk across the room.

  • And she was a pain in my ass.

  • She wouldn't leave and wouldn't leave.

  • And kept badgering me and kept badgering me.

  • And after finally about three hours of this,

  • I was like, what the hell, let's go surfing.

  • What is the worst that can happen?

  • And they she kind of walked me to their car.

  • And they put me in their car and they drove me to Sunset Beach

  • in Los Angeles.

  • And if you know anything about surfing in Los Angeles,

  • you know that Sunset Beach is just

  • about the wimpiest beginner wave in the entire world.

  • And it was summer.

  • And the water was warm and the tide was low.

  • And the waves were crap, like maybe two feet high.

  • And no one was out.

  • And they walked me out to the break, literally by my elbows

  • and kind of helped me out there.

  • They gave me a board the size of Cadillac.

  • And the bigger the board, the easier it is to surf.

  • This was enormous.

  • And I was out there about 30 seconds when a wave came.

  • And I'm not quite sure what happened,

  • muscle memory took over, whatever.

  • The wave came.

  • I spun the board around.

  • I paddled a couple times and I popped up.

  • And I popped up into a completely different dimension.

  • My senses were incredibly incredibly, incredibly acute,

  • I was clear headed for the first time in years.

  • I felt like I had panoramic vision.

  • And time had dilated.

  • It had slowed down.

  • So that freeze-frame effect, if you've ever

  • been in a car crash, that was my experience.

  • And the most incredible thing was I felt great.

  • I mean I felt alive, that thrum of possibility.

  • And it was the first time in about three years

  • that I had felt it.

  • And that wave felt so good, I caught four more in a row.

  • And after that fifth wave, I was disassembled.

  • I was gone.

  • They had to carry me to the car.

  • They put me in the car.

  • They drove me home.

  • They had to put me into bed.

  • And people actually had to come and bring me food

  • because for 14 days, I couldn't walk again.

  • So I couldn't make it 50 feet away to my kitchen

  • to make a meal.

  • And on the 15th day, which was the day

  • that I could walk again, I got back in my car

  • and I went back to the ocean and I did it again.

  • And again, I had this kind of crazy, quasi-mystical

  • experience.

  • And again, it felt great.

  • And the cycle kept repeating itself.

  • And over about six months' time, when

  • the only thing I was doing different was surfing,

  • I went from about 10% functionality to about 80%

  • functionality.

  • So my first question was what the hell is going on?

  • Because surfing is not a cure for chronic

  • autoimmune conditions, first of all.

  • Second of all, I'm a science writer by training.

  • I'm a rational materialist.

  • And I don't have mystical experiences.

  • And I certainly don't have them in the waves while surfing.

  • The whole thing seemed ludicrous.

  • Lyme is only fatal if it enters your brain.

  • And I was pretty certain that the reason

  • I was having these quasi-mystical experiences out

  • in the waves was because I was dying.

  • So where all this started for me was a giant quest

  • to figure out what the hell was going on with me.

  • What I discovered was this altered state of consciousness

  • I was experiencing had a name, flow states.

  • Now, you may know this by other names, being in the zone,

  • runner's high.

  • If you happen to be a beatnik jazz musician,

  • then you're in the pocket.

  • If you're a stand-up comic, it's called the forever box.

  • The lingo goes on, and on, and on.

  • The term researchers prefer is flow.

  • And they prefer this term for a reason.

  • It's actually a technical term.

  • And we'll come back to why in a second.

  • But in flow, what happens is attention

  • becomes so focused on the task at hand

  • that everything else disappears.

  • Your sense of action or awareness merge together.

  • So the doer and the beer become one.

  • A sense of self, our sense of self-consciousness

  • disappear completely.

  • Time dilates.

  • So that means it slows down like I mentioned.

  • You can that freeze-frame effect, like in a car crash.

  • Sometimes it speeds up.

  • And five hours will go by in like five minutes.

  • And throughout all aspects of performance,

  • mental and physical go through the roof.

  • I'm not going to dwell too much on it.

  • I'm just going to kind of explain it.

  • And we're going to go on to a lot of things.

  • But I want to talk about why flow actually healed me

  • from Lyme disease, just so you guys understand

  • what was going on.

  • We're going to talk later about the neurochemicals involved

  • in flow.

  • All of them significantly jack up the immune system.

  • More importantly, they reset the nervous system back

  • towards zero.

  • So they calm you down.

  • An autoimmune condition is essentially

  • a haywire nervous system.

  • So the fact that periodic flow states were calming my system

  • back down is allowing me to form new neural nets.

  • Neural nets that didn't lead immediately back to illness.

  • And this is what kind of gave me a toehold and possibility

  • to get better.

  • What I also discovered when I was

  • researching flow and learning all this stuff

  • is that the exact same state that

  • helped me get from seriously subpar back to normal

  • was helping a lot of other people

  • go from normal up to superman.

  • Another thing that I learned very quickly on

  • is that I really was not the first person

  • to come to this conclusion.

  • Flow science dates back about 150 years, to the early 1870s.

  • By the turn of the century, Harvard psychologist

  • and philosopher William James was looking at the state.

  • And he was the first person to figure out

  • that the brain can radically alter consciousness

  • to improve performance.

  • More importantly was the work of one of James' students,

  • Walter Bradford for Cannon, who was a great physiologist.

  • Bradford Cannon discovered the fight or flight response.

  • And in doing so, he kind of give us our first window

  • into where this accelerated performance

  • might be coming from.

  • This was a very, very big deal.

  • Before that moment in time, performance enhancement

  • was essentially a gift from the gods.

  • You want a better time in 100-yard dash, Hermes can help.

  • You want to write a better poem, talk to the muses.

  • But Walter Bradford Cannon turned a gift from the gods

  • into standard biology.

  • He give us our very first toehold into the mystery.

  • In 1940s, psychologist Abraham Maslow

  • picked up on this thread.

  • He discovered that flow was a commonality

  • among all successful people.

  • And then in the 1960s and '70s, the real revolution began,

  • a guy named Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi,

  • who is then the chairman of the University of Chicago

  • psychology department.

  • Csikszentmihalyi sort of-- well, Maslow discovered the state

  • in successful people.

  • Csikszentmihalyi got curious about kind of everybody else

  • in the world.

  • So he made what is now considered

  • one of the largest global psychological studies ever.

  • He went around the world, asking people

  • about the times in their life when I felt their best

  • and they performed their best.

  • And it was a huge group.

  • He started out talking to experts.

  • He talked to expert rock climbers,

  • ballet dancers, artists, surgeons.

  • It didn't matter.

  • They all said same thing.

  • They felt their best.

  • And they performed their best in the state he termed flow.

  • Then he blew it out to everybody else.

  • And by everybody else, I really mean everybody else.

  • He talked to Navajo sheepherders.

  • He talked to Italian grape farmers.

  • He talked to elderly Korean women.

  • He talked to Japanese teenage motorcycle gang members.

  • He talked to Detroit assembly line workers.

  • Everybody he talked to told him the same thing.

  • They felt their best, they performed their best

  • when they were in the state of flow.

  • Csikszentmihalyi also came up with the term "flow."

  • One of the reasons was when he was talking to all these people

  • and they describing this state, they always said,

  • well, I'm using my skills to the utmost.

  • I'm pushing myself as far as I possibly can.

  • But it feels effortless.

  • When I'm in this state, every decision,

  • every action leads seamlessly, fluidly to the next.

  • In other words, flow felt flowy.

  • The other major finding that came out of this,

  • as I hinted at a second ago, flow is ubiquitous.

  • It shows up everywhere, in anyone, anywhere,

  • provided certain initial conditions are met.

  • What this means is that everybody from jazz musicians

  • in Algeria, to software designers in Mumbai,

  • to coders here in Silicon Valley are using flow

  • to massively accelerate performance.

  • And it is a considerable bit of acceleration.

  • Flow amplifies all of our physical skills.

  • So in this state, we are better.

  • We are faster.

  • We are stronger.

  • We are more dexterous.

  • And we are more agile.

  • So our brains.

  • Flow jacks up information processing.

  • So when we're in the state, our senses

  • are actually taking in more information per second.

  • We're processing it more deeply.

  • So that is using more parts of our brain at once.

  • And while there's a lot of debate about this,

  • it does appear that we are processing it more quickly.

  • And it's not just information processing

  • that is getting jacked up.

  • Pattern recognition, future prediction, basically all

  • the fundamental neuronal processes in the brain

  • are amplified by flow.

  • As a result of this, scientists now

  • believe flow sits at the heart of every athletic championship.

  • So almost every gold medal that has ever been won.

  • But it also accounts for significant, significant

  • progress in the arts and major scientific breakthroughs.

  • In business, McKinsey did a 10-year study.

  • They found that top executives report being five times more

  • productive in flow than out of flow.

  • So you got to stop and think about that.

  • Normally, I have to explain to most audiences

  • that five times is actually a 500% increase.

  • I'm guessing you guys got it.

  • But what that means is you can go to work on Monday,

  • spend Monday in flow, take Tuesday through Friday off,

  • and get as much done as your steady-state peers.

  • So it is a huge, huge, huge amplification.

  • And that 500% increase may sound ridiculous

  • until you consider action-and-adventure sport

  • athletes.

  • So one of things McKinsey discovered

  • is that average people, average workers, spend less than 5%

  • of their work life in flow.

  • One place where this is definitely not true

  • is in action-and adventure sports.

  • Action-and-adventure sport athletes,

  • for reasons that Jamie is going to get into later,

  • have essentially become the best flow hackers on Earth.

  • And this has happened over about the past 25 years.

  • And there are reasons for it.

  • And we'll talk about them later.

  • But I want to tell you what this has produced.

  • It has produced near exponential growth

  • in what's termed ultimate human performance, which

  • is performance when life or limb is on the line.

  • Nothing like this has ever happened before.

  • Sports progression, it's slow.

  • It's steady.

  • It's governed by the laws of evolution.

  • At no point in history does it quintuple in a decade.

  • Yet this is exactly what's been happening in surfing, skiing,

  • snowboarding, rock climbing, mountain biking, et cetera, all

  • the action and adventure sports.

  • I'll give you a couple of examples.

  • Surfing is a great one.

  • This is a thousand-year-old sport.

  • From 400 AD to 1996, the biggest wave anybody has ever surfed

  • is 25 feet.

  • Above that, it's believed impossible.

  • Scientists don't think it's possible.

  • Surfers don't think it's possible.

  • Today, we're pushing into 100-foot waves.

  • In snowboarding, in 1992, the biggest gap jump

  • that anybody had ever cleared is 40 feet.

  • Now, 40 feet is a big jump to clear on a snowboard.

  • Today, as you can tell from this image,

  • snowboarders are pushing into 230, 240 foot jumps.

  • So near exponential growth in ultimate human performance.

  • The better news, at the same time all this is going on,

  • they solved a couple of problems.

  • For a long time, one of the big problems in flow research

  • was the subject of state.

  • How the hell do know if your research subjects are in flow?

  • The good news about action adventure sport athletes,

  • sort of, is that the level of progression

  • has advanced so much in recent years

  • that if people are not in flow on their performing,

  • they're ending up in the hospital or dead.

  • So this gives you a hard research set to work with.

  • It's a hard data set.

  • If they lived through the experience,

  • we know they're in flow.

  • Simultaneously, combined with this-- flow science, as I said,

  • goes back to 150 years.

  • Most people are really aware of the first 130 years, which

  • is when we figured out the psychology of the state.

  • And we got really good at the psychology of the state.

  • What's happened since 1990ish is that our neurobiology

  • has gotten very good.

  • Our brain imaging technology has gotten very good.

  • EEG has gotten a lot better.

  • And for the very first time in history,

  • we can look under the hood and we

  • can figure out what's going on in flow.

  • One of the first things that we discovered is there's-- the old

  • idea about ultimate human performance was based

  • on what's called the 10% brain myth.

  • It was actually a misinterpretation

  • of William James.

  • But it's the idea-- and I'm sure you're all familiar with it--

  • that most of us only use 10% of our brain.

  • For ultimate performance, a/k/a flow,

  • it has to be all of our brain firing on all of our cylinders.

  • That was the idea.

  • It turns out that's exactly backwards.

  • What's happening in flow is the brain

  • isn't becoming hyperactive.

  • It's actually starting to deactivate.

  • So this is happening for a number of reasons.

  • The simple reason is it's an inefficiency exchange.

  • The brain is a giant energy hog.

  • It's 2% of our mass.

  • It uses 20% of our energy.

  • So one of the fundamental rules of the brain

  • is how do I can conserve energy?

  • So conscious processing is very slow

  • and it's extremely energy expensive.

  • Subconscious processing, on the other hand, is very, very quick

  • and it's very, very energy efficient.

  • So what's happening in flow is we

  • are trading conscious processing for subconscious processing.

  • As this is happening, huge swatches of the brain

  • are being shut off.

  • The technical term for this is "transient," meaning temporary,

  • "hypofrontality," hypo, H-Y-P-O, it's the opposite of hyper.

  • It means to deactivate, to slow down, to shut off.

  • Frontality refers to the prefrontal cortex,

  • the part of your brain that's back here,

  • that houses all of your higher cognitive functions.

  • So why does time dilate in a flow state?

  • Why does it speed up or slow down?

  • Because time, as Baylor neuroscientist David Eagleman

  • figured out, is calculated all over the brain, especially all

  • over the prefrontal cortex.

  • As parts of it start to wink out,

  • we can no longer separate past, from present, from future.

  • So we're plunged into what researchers

  • call the "deep now."

  • To give you another example of what goes on in flow,

  • another portion of the brain that goes off-- we

  • talked earlier about how self and self-consciousness

  • disappears.

  • Why does self-consciousness disappear in flow?

  • Because a portion of the brain known as the dorsal lateral

  • prefrontal cortex, which sort of is

  • responsible for self monitoring and impulse control,

  • shuts down.

  • So self-monitoring, that's your inner critic, your inner Woody

  • Allen.

  • That's that nagging, defeatist voice

  • that's always on in your head.

  • In flow, it's turned off.

  • When it turns off, we experience this as liberation.

  • We are literally free from ourselves.

  • Creativity goes up.

  • Risk taking goes up.

  • Performance goes up.

  • We are much more open to experience.

  • So what we've just been talking about

  • is neuroanatomy, where in the brain

  • something is taking place.

  • If you really want to kind of map an experience in the brain,

  • you have to talk about neuroanatomy,

  • where in the brain it's taking place, neurochemistry,

  • and neuroelectricity, which are the two

  • ways the brain sends signals.

  • I'm going to talk a little about neurochemistry.

  • Then Jamie's going to pick it up and talk a little bit

  • about neuroelectricity.

  • In flow, we get five of the most potent neurochemicals

  • the brain can possibly produce.

  • So all of these are performance enhancing neurochemicals.

  • Norepinephrine and dopamine enhance focus.

  • They tighten focus.

  • They drive us more into the now.

  • It also speeds up muscle reaction time.

  • They lower signal to noise ratios in the brain

  • also so we have more pattern recognition.

  • Anandamide is a pain reliever.

  • But it also speeds up or increases lateral thinking,

  • thinking outside the box.

  • So pattern recognition is defined

  • as the linking of similar ideas together.

  • Lateral thinking is the linking of disparate ideas together.

  • That goes up in flow.

  • Endorphins, very, very potent painkillers

  • and very, very powerful social bonding chemicals.

  • And serotonin keeps us calm throughout.

  • That's the chemical at the heart of the Prozac revolution.

  • So the thing you need to know about all

  • of these neurochemicals, besides the fact

  • that they up performance, is how they impact motivation.

  • So for those of you who don't know much about neurochemistry

  • and drugs, all of these chemicals

  • are incredibly potent reward chemicals.

  • Let's talk about dopamine for a second.

  • Cocaine is widely considered the most addictive substance

  • on Earth.

  • When someone snorts cocaine, all that actually happens

  • is dopamine floods into their brain

  • and then the brains blocks its re-uptake.

  • So the substance is in your brain for longer.

  • Norepinephrine-- let me go back-- norepinephrine is

  • speed or Ritalin.

  • Anandamide is the same psychoactive

  • that's inside of marijuana, THC.

  • Endorphins are opiates.

  • And just to give you an example, there

  • are about 20 different endorphins

  • in the brain and the body.

  • The most common one is 100 times more potent

  • than medical morphine.

  • And serotonin is essentially MDMA.

  • The point here is that when all five of these chemicals

  • flood into your brain, it produces

  • an extremely, extremely, extremely addictive experience.

  • Flow is arguably the most addictive experience on Earth

  • because it's probably the only time, or the only time

  • that we know of, when all five of these chemicals

  • get flooded into your brain at once.

  • Researchers don't like the word "addictive."

  • It has very negative connotations.

  • So they prefer "autotelic," which means an end in itself.

  • What this basically means is that once an experience starts

  • producing flow, we will go extraordinarily far

  • out of our way to get more of it.

  • Which is why researchers talk about flow

  • as the source code of intrinsic motivation.

  • So why does this apply in daily living?

  • One reason is, as a recent Gallup survey pointed out,

  • 71% of American workers are disengaged

  • or actively disengaged on the job.

  • The other 29% have jobs that produce flow.

  • So we really know what the solution is to this problem.

  • The other thing I want to talk about,

  • flow doesn't just amp up motivation.

  • It also massively jacks up creativity.

  • It's hard to put numbers on this.

  • We did a kind of a loose study at the Flow Genome Project.

  • And I say loosen loose and preliminary.

  • And people reported a 7x improvement in creativity.

  • To give you another example of this,

  • an Australian study-- it's a neat study--

  • they took 40 people.

  • They give everybody a really tricky brain teaser to solve.

  • Nobody could solve it.

  • They induced flow artificially using transcranial stimulation.

  • They literally took an electric pulse

  • and knocked out the prefrontal cortex

  • and basically induced transient hypofrontality.

  • 23 people solved the problem in record time.

  • So creativity goes massively through there.

  • Again, this comes down to neurochemistry.

  • So creativity as a skill is usually,

  • not always, but usually recombinatory.

  • It's the product of a novel idea bumping into an old thought

  • to create something startling new.

  • So if you want to increase creativity,

  • you have to increase all of those things.

  • Well, norepinephrine and dopamine, they tighten focus.

  • The brain is taking in more information for a second.

  • So it's heightening our access to novelty,

  • which is on the front end of the creativity equation.

  • Because they lower signal to noise ratios in the brain,

  • they are also upping pattern recognition,

  • so our ability to link ideas together.

  • And then anandamide is increasing lateral thinking

  • or our ability to link disparate ideas together.

  • So literally the state of flow surrounds creativity.

  • And what's really interesting here is creativity,

  • as most of you I'm sure are aware,

  • is a quality that's really, really desirable.

  • IBM did a global survey.

  • I think it was 1,500 CEOs.

  • Of the quality most necessary in a CEO

  • today, creativity was the number one answer.

  • Yet how to teach creativity?

  • How do we teach people to be more creative, a big problem.

  • Teresa Amabile at Harvard did a study

  • where she discovered that not only are people

  • more creative in the state of flow,

  • but that heightened creativity actually

  • outlasts the state by a couple of days.

  • Which suggests-- and more work needs to be done--

  • but it suggests that the state of flow

  • actually trains the brain to be more creative.

  • The other things these neurochemicals do

  • is they exist to kind of tag experiences.

  • So a quick shorthand for learning and memory, the more

  • neurochemicals that show up during experience, the greater

  • chance that experience moves from short-term holding

  • into long-term storage.

  • Neurochemicals are essentially a big tag on experience.

  • It says, important, save for later.

  • So flow is a gigantic dump of potent neurochemicals.

  • So this has a radical impact on learning.

  • In studies run by the US military

  • by DARPA in advanced brain monitoring, which

  • is a team in Carlsbad, California,

  • they again induced flow artificially,

  • two different ways.

  • They used transcranial direct stimulation

  • and they also used neural feedback.

  • And they found that snipers in flow

  • learned an average of 230% faster than normal.

  • They then repeated this same study

  • with novices, nonmilitary personnel.

  • And they found that the time it took

  • to get from novice to expert by artificially inducing flow

  • could be cut in half.

  • So what this tells us is that Malcolm Gladwell's

  • famous 10,000 hours to mastery, flow cuts them in half.

  • So this is where I'm going to stop with learning,

  • and creativity, and motivation because I think

  • those are three big categories that apply in everybody's life.

  • As a way of kind of transitioning into Jamie, what

  • I want to say is what has also come out of all this research

  • is not just what's going on in flow.

  • And because we've had these athletes as a data set,

  • we can figure out what they are doing

  • to get into flow so successfully and we can work backwards.

  • And we can apply this knowledge across all domains

  • in societies.

  • So what we've discovered is that flow states have triggers.

  • These are preconditions that lead to more flow.

  • I'm going to turn it over and let Jamie talk about this

  • and why they're so important.

  • JAMIE WHEAL: Thank you.

  • [APPLAUSE]

  • So about 2,000 years ago, there was this epic, "Old Testament"

  • rap battle between Rabbi Hillel and the pharisees.

  • And the pharisees challenged him.

  • They said, OK, Rabbi Hillel, you think you're a hot shot.

  • Can you stand on one leg and recite all of scripture?

  • And he said yes, I can.

  • And he did it.

  • And he stood on one leg.

  • And he said do unto others as you

  • would have them do unto you.

  • The rest of scripture is mere commentary.

  • And here at Google, it's your guys' world

  • to be organizing the world's information.

  • And while that is ambitious and noble,

  • you guys know, too, that it's the insights

  • we gain, it's not simply the data we gather,

  • that makes a difference.

  • And where we are today is truly drowning

  • in information and just as we always

  • have been, starving for motivation.

  • We know better.

  • We know we're supposed to eat real foods, mostly plants,

  • not too much.

  • We know we're supposed to do work that matters.

  • We know we're supposed to practice gratitude.

  • We know that meditation is supposed to be amazing

  • if we ever get around to it and can sit still long enough.

  • We know all this stuff.

  • But if you just-- a quick glance at the stats behind me.

  • Look at the toll.

  • We are less healthy.

  • We are more obese.

  • There's higher workplace injuries.

  • There's dollar values attached to this stuff.

  • Lifetime fitness, arguably the kind

  • of access to embodiment and wellness

  • for like the suburban masses, 75% attrition rate.

  • And that's an internal statistic.

  • 75% of the people that say yes, I

  • want you to take my $150 a month, I want the outcome,

  • never show up again.

  • And most chillingly, a study at Harvard conducted--

  • that, hey, when you are faced with a chronic lifestyle

  • disease, diabetes, heart disease, smoking

  • chronic stress, and your doctor says, hey, look, here's

  • the deal.

  • You really have to change your ways

  • and if you don't, it might kill you.

  • This is what we're left with.

  • Seven out of eight of us would rather die than change.

  • Mind boggling.

  • So back to these guys.

  • [INAUDIBLE] is not just kind of noodling around on the sides.

  • They actually have a full-bore research project.

  • It is global.

  • It is interdisciplinary.

  • It's called the Quantified Warriors.

  • So forget you're kind of Quantified Self meet-ups

  • here in the Valley.

  • These guys are building these supersoldiers of 2030.

  • And what they're doing is sort of alternately

  • fascinating and horrifying, depending

  • on your point of view.

  • But there's something really interesting

  • that's been going on.

  • And Steven talked a little bit about there's

  • a 150 years of research.

  • The last 10 to 20 years has been getting super-interesting.

  • And if I was in your seats, I'd be saying, OK,

  • this sounds OK, cool.

  • But how come I don't know about it?

  • If it was really all that, we'd know about it right now.

  • And there's actually a problem.

  • There's a reason why we don't have

  • this as shared working knowledge.

  • Which is really how do we take information and translate it

  • into motivation?

  • Because as Steven said, flow is autotelic.

  • Flow has this massive neurochemical dump.

  • It encodes and rewards us to do more of it.

  • And if we could unlock that, intrinsic human motivation,

  • what's possible next?

  • Because these guys, the Special Operations forces,

  • Yale is working with Delta Force and the Rangers,

  • and Red Bull is working with the Coronado SEAL Team Six,

  • these guys are getting way into the fine details.

  • But they are explicitly disincented

  • to share this knowledge.

  • One of them wants to stay a step ahead of the bad guys.

  • And the other guys want to step up on the podium.

  • So what they've been learning has not been shared yet.

  • And certainly part of our mission

  • is to actually take this extreme, the folks who

  • risk their lives for a living, and bring it

  • more into the mainstream.

  • Bring it to impact entrepreneurs.

  • Bring it to communities of innovation

  • where we can harness the same rocket fuel.

  • So to go back and just kind of shake out

  • three of the more practical takeaways of what--

  • if you remember nothing else from today,

  • please think through these ones.

  • Number one is what we were just talking about.

  • Flow is the source code of intrinsic motivation reinforced

  • with the most potent neurochemical set

  • we have access to.

  • Next, it shortens learning.

  • Which means either I get to spend a lot more time

  • on the couch or I can actually go further

  • in my domains of inquiry.

  • I can learn more.

  • What happens to human progression

  • when we can double its efficacy?

  • And lastly, again Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi,

  • the godfather of flow, did a 10-year global study.

  • And one of the additional benefits

  • was that the people who have the most flow in their lives

  • are in fact the happiest.

  • So as far as the bottom line in optimal psychology,

  • that is the "so what" at the end of it.

  • So to go back to these action sports athletes as a case study

  • because they've been kind of a fringe population.

  • People don't pay much attention to them.

  • The notion ski bum and surf bum aren't exactly warm

  • embraces of people who have dedicated

  • their lives in these domains.

  • But they really have come up with three

  • very good and transferable ways for all of us

  • to get more flow in our life.

  • And the three re deep embodiment.

  • When they are doing things, they are

  • feeling the forces of gravity.

  • So their proprioceptive sense, like where

  • are my limbs in space, my vestibular sense,

  • where is my inner ear in relationship to my hips,

  • compression, weightlessness, rotation, all of these things

  • are giving very strong sensory motor inputs

  • into our body and brain.

  • And as Steven was mentioning, cells that fire together,

  • wire together and we create richer and more robust

  • neural networks.

  • So we've some fascinating studies.

  • They did a sort of human life-sized Frogger experiment

  • with college athletes versus just

  • frat boys and sorority girls.

  • And they said, OK, who's going to do better

  • at this life-size Frogger game and who would you

  • put your money on?

  • Well, the athletes and the athletes won.

  • But not for the reasons we would think.

  • They didn't win because they had faster reaction time.

  • They didn't win because they could-- explosive box jumps.

  • They won because they could process complex multivariable

  • equations faster and then act on that information.

  • So the notion of the dumb jock was also absolutely wrong.

  • And in comparison-- so this goes back

  • to the sort of ancient Shaolin temple-- mastery

  • and control of body yielding mastery and control of mind.

  • So you go from basically going on

  • a dial-up modem-- I'm just a brain on a stick, disembodied,

  • disconnected, only perceiving and receiving information

  • through one data feed-- into broadband or even satellite.

  • I am now picking up all channels available to me

  • as a sensing cognition machine.

  • And those neuron nets are now fired and wired together.

  • Next, rich environments.

  • Think about the difference in a surfer

  • or a skier, big mountain skier, any of these things,

  • between just playing ping-pong.

  • And every day that ping-pong table is exactly the same.

  • And my paddle is.

  • And the ball bounces the same way.

  • It all works.

  • And I can kind of check out.

  • But in a situation where the environment

  • is so rich it's overwhelming and stimulating,

  • it actually sort of can knock out my waking sense of self

  • and forces me to pay explicit, acute attention

  • because if I don't, I get knocked down.

  • And lastly, high consequences, which

  • I just kind of foreshadowed.

  • In fact, Oscar Wilde I think famously said,

  • there's nothing like the prospect

  • of being hung in the morning to clear one's mind.

  • So immediate high consequences have this wonderful effect,

  • which is very hard in this day and age.

  • We're always elsewhere and elsewhen.

  • I'm thinking about tomorrow.

  • I'm on my phones.

  • I'm pitching this.

  • I'm posting that.

  • Like high consequences bring me back into the incontrovertible

  • now.

  • It is the only place that flow can happen.

  • And if I get out of it, if I drift, I get spanked.

  • And it hurts and I learn.

  • Now, think about how much of our learning and experiences

  • these days are disconnected from those kind of tight feedback

  • loops.

  • So let's translate this to your guys' world

  • a little bit because that's the beauty.

  • And this would just be kind of a curiosity

  • if it didn't matter to us as well.

  • So think about rich environments.

  • You guys are obviously in one.

  • The cross pollination-- a lot of the sort

  • of cutting edge organizational design of workplaces,

  • whether it's at Pixar with the atrium

  • and the serendipitous meetings.

  • Whether it's your guys' cafeterias and restaurants,

  • with the lines and the management

  • and all of your commons areas explicitly

  • designed to create novel, changing

  • environments, high consequences.

  • I mean obviously, next door Facebook's got the shit fast,

  • break stuff, lean and agile design and development.

  • The entrepreneurial mentalities that you guys

  • have where failure is expected because if you're not failing,

  • you're not learning as rapidly as you might.

  • And deep embodiment, I mean it's no mistake I think that you

  • guys here at Google, with founders who

  • were both Montessori children-- which in the flow research

  • is the most flow-prone educational method

  • in the world, with sensorial, manipulative children sweeping

  • and cutting and actually using body and brain simultaneously,

  • as well as the founders' passion for all things action

  • sports and adventure, the DNA of this place

  • is pretty much set up to be about an optimal an environment

  • for cultivating this as anywhere you could think of.

  • So Steven described the five neurochemicals

  • and described the neuroanatomy a little bit.

  • But let's put this in motion.

  • Let's actually put this in time, through time

  • as we might experience it.

  • Because what this is, what we're calling the flow genome

  • matrix, which is literally what's the genome?

  • What are the core components?

  • How do they work.

  • And if we have that knowledge, what can we do with it?

  • And just so you guys kind of track

  • the research, the lineage behind this model,

  • this comes largely out of Herbert Benson's work

  • at Harvard, as well as Dr. Lesley Sherlinis, who

  • is the sort of mad scientist, EEG guy

  • behind a lot of the SEAL team and Red Bull

  • work that we just mentioned earlier.

  • But let's just take a look at this process

  • because the first thing to dispel is that flow is a state.

  • So it comes and it goes.

  • It's not an ever on kind of thing.

  • But it's not like a light switch.

  • It's not just, it's on and I'm in it, or it's off

  • and I'm someplace else.

  • It's a cycle.

  • And it has at least four distinct stages.

  • So if we take a look at how those progress,

  • the first-- whether you're a more of a fan of M. Scott

  • Peck and "The Road Less Traveled" or Buddha

  • and his Noble Truths, either way, life's a bitch.

  • Life is struggle.

  • And that's how it starts.

  • And we start by being in over our heads.

  • We start by finding ourselves in a situation or a condition--

  • and this could be late night code delivery.

  • This could be some new, big business problem.

  • It could be relational, whatever it is.

  • And we start out of our depth.

  • And we end up with a bit of a sort of angel

  • and a devil dialogue on our shoulder.

  • So our prefrontal cortex that houses our executive function,

  • what we normally think as me and the thing we've

  • been rewarded in school and rewarded in work

  • for being smart and controlled and precise

  • and delivering things on time, we try and solve it

  • full frontal assault.

  • But the problem is bigger than that.

  • It's bigger than our capabilities.

  • So we start toggling back to kind

  • of our primitive sense of self, our amygdala,

  • and is this a fight or flight situation?

  • Do I need to pull the rip cord?

  • And meanwhile, my brain waves are in quite rapid beta.

  • This is me trying to solve binary problems

  • and this may not be one.

  • And then I start getting cortisol

  • and I start getting adrenaline in my system.

  • And I'm really starting to get jacked.

  • And it's either I'm going to collapse at this point,

  • right, it's going to be a fetal position or--

  • or has anybody ever like put on boxing gloves at the gym

  • or tried to do something like that

  • and then you get like Mike Tyson?

  • You say everybody's got a plan until they get hit?

  • Have you guys ever experienced an adrenalized response

  • where your knees are wobbly?

  • Or even if it's just like cop lights in the car behind you

  • and it drives by.

  • And it just pools in your legs and you're like grrh.

  • And you still feel like you need to like puke

  • on the side of the road.

  • That's the adrenaline response.

  • So that'll take most of us out.

  • Unless, either through just sheer fatigue, or dumb luck,

  • or knowing that there's this actually loop on then,

  • I get into the next phase, which is the relaxation response.

  • And typically, and sort of pro tip,

  • when they did the research with the darker snipers,

  • as well as Olympic archers and everybody else,

  • the way they got into this, the way

  • they made that shift was focusing on breath.

  • So tip of the hat to all your guys' meditation practices.

  • Focus on breath, lower your respiratory rate.

  • And you start approaching equilibrium.

  • Nitrous oxide enters the bloodstream

  • and flushes away the fight or flight chemicals,

  • flushes away the cortisol, flushes away

  • the norepinephrine.

  • And then brings in the dopamine, the endorphins,

  • and the anandamide.

  • At that point, my brain waves go from faster beta

  • into a slower alpha wave.

  • And I'm right there on the doorstep of the flow state.

  • I move into the flow state.

  • And again, there are four gradations.

  • I mean you can have what Steven had,

  • which was this sort of spontaneous, healing,

  • quasi-mystical experience, like, ah, man, I'm

  • one with everything.

  • Or you could just have it, hey, all the lights were green

  • and I got to work five minutes early.

  • How's it going?

  • So the point here is that if you go into the deeper flow state,

  • you don't just hang out in that alpha where I'm resourceful,

  • I've got insights.

  • I actually move into an even deeper, slower state

  • known as theta.

  • And typically, that's one that only shows up

  • in lifetime meditators.

  • Any of the studies at Madison on Tibetan meditators, that's

  • what you would see those guys be able to get into way

  • more often than us.

  • And the other time is kind of in that threshold between waking

  • and sleeping.

  • So if you've ever been lying on the couch

  • and you're watching TV-- "West Wing" used to do this to us all

  • the time, just soporific, grrh.

  • But in that moment before you're unconscious,

  • you're in a hypnogogic state.

  • And it's so deeply relaxed, most of us just miss it.

  • We just go to sleep.

  • We nod off.

  • But if you've got discipline and training,

  • you can actually stay there and be alert and aware.

  • And there and only there can come these lightning bolts

  • of gamma.

  • And that becomes these gestalt integrations.

  • That become sort of your chocolate and my peanut butter

  • and yee-haw, we got some Reese's.

  • It becomes those moments of massive lateral integration

  • that absolutely change the game.

  • And finally-- and this is a critical stage that most of us

  • forget about.

  • We just don't-- oops, I just did that.

  • There we go.

  • Most of us forget about the recovery phase.

  • But I'm sure you guys have come across all this stuff

  • within the learning theory, which

  • is that when we think we're learning,

  • we're not really learning.

  • When we're doing stuff, all we're doing is collecting data.

  • And that most of our pattern consolidation

  • and actually annexing of new skills

  • is happening as we sleep, and specifically

  • when we sleep, in delta waves.

  • So by no means are we just have camping out for the week

  • after a flow state in delta.

  • We wanted to highlight that a lot of that integration, a lot

  • of my level up to what's possible

  • for me now occurs in the delta frequencies of deep sleep.

  • So that in a nutshell is the cycle.

  • And think about what this means?

  • Because now that we know this we can hack it.

  • And what's so interesting and exciting about that

  • is that think about the entire there sort of human development

  • track, including mindfulness, including optimal psychology,

  • including tons of the wonderful stuff that's

  • both present inside this organization

  • and kind of happening more and more in the world, most of it

  • is trying to get our waking, conscious selves, our egos,

  • to go quiet, back to Steven's slide

  • with our inner Woody Allen.

  • But that's a real tar baby experience.

  • Because if I'm reading a book on how

  • to get rid of the very part of me that's reading the book,

  • it's kind of like hiding your own Easter eggs.

  • It's pernicious.

  • It's sticky.

  • And the more I struggle with it, the stucker I get.

  • That's why you see so many uptight baby boomers at Esalen.

  • I mean it's one of those situations.

  • I'm trying so hard that I cannot actually decouple from

  • the thing I'm trying to release.

  • So what this lets you do is back into it.

  • Don't worry about who you are now and trying to change it.

  • Just optimize your bio, neuro self system and then

  • see what your subjective inner experience is.

  • And that's potentially game changing and that's kind

  • of right where we are on the verge of these days.

  • So I want to leave you guys with Steven,

  • on just kind of a sense of the direction of things,

  • where things are going next.

  • And then we'd love to invite your questions or queries

  • and potentially just have a conversation of what's

  • possible.

  • Thank you very much guys.

  • [APPLAUSE]

  • STEVEN KOTLER: So two things.

  • Jamie gave you a look, high consequence, deep embodiment,

  • rich environment.

  • These are three flow triggers.

  • There are, we believe, 17 total flow triggers.

  • There are these three environmental triggers.

  • They're external triggers.

  • There are three internal triggers.

  • These are psychological triggers.

  • There are 10 social triggers.

  • There is a shared version of a the flow state,

  • a collective version known as group flow.

  • There are 10 triggers that bring that on.

  • And as far as we know, there is one creative trigger.

  • There is also the flow cycle, which we just broke down.

  • So the flow cycle sort of functions

  • as a map for the experience.

  • And the triggers tell you what to do,

  • where you are in that map.

  • The really important thing and the thing

  • that I want to leave you with is that we

  • are at the very, very front edge of this research.

  • We have a pretty solid understanding

  • of the psychology of flow.

  • We understand the neurobiology.

  • What we don't know is huge.

  • We don't know, for example, the order of the cascade.

  • Neural chemicals proceed.

  • Neuroanatomical changes proceed.

  • Brain waves, we don't know.

  • Nobody has a clue.

  • And the physiological questions, right?

  • We've got mind.

  • We've got brain.

  • But what's actually going on in the body,

  • we're at the front, front edge of that revolution.

  • We're just starting to answer those questions.

  • And we're not going to really get all this done until we have

  • what we're calling a heat map of flow which

  • maps the psychology onto the neurobiology,

  • onto the physiology.

  • And the reason I'm telling you all this

  • is we know from the McKinsey study

  • that top executives are five times more productive in flow.

  • We know that action-and-adventure sports

  • athletes have produced near exponential growth

  • in ultimate human performance.

  • But we are just asked getting started.

  • If you talk to a lot of people in this world

  • and ask them what percent of our capabilities

  • do you think we've actually used,

  • even with all this kind of flow hacking stuff that we're doing,

  • the answer you get is 1%, 2%, 3%, 4% 5%.

  • I've never actually heard anybody

  • give an answer above 5%.

  • Which is to say we are at the very

  • front end of this revolution.

  • The near exponential growth in ultimate human performance

  • showing up in action-and-adventure sports

  • may not be the endpoint.

  • It may be the starting point for possibility.

  • So that's where I want to leave you guys.

  • And then we'll open it up.

  • We'll take questions.

  • We'll have a discussion, whatever you want.

  • But thank you so much for listening.

  • [APPLAUSE]

  • AUDIENCE: So thanks a lot for the talk.

  • I'm a snow boarder, a kite surfer, a motorcycler.

  • And now I realize why I like those things so much.

  • I guess it was pretty evident.

  • But there was also research that showed

  • that people who ride motorcycles regularly kind of live longer.

  • [INAUDIBLE]

  • Your research--

  • STEVEN KOTLER: It definitely-- I mean it certainly

  • jives with what we know about flow and the immune system.

  • But I would just assume that most who ride motorcycles

  • actually probably die younger.

  • AUDIENCE: That's OK.

  • Accidents aside, yes.

  • But what I wanted to ask is generally

  • like in the computer world-- or we also

  • have several courses at Google here

  • that claim that if you overclock your processor,

  • the lifespan decreases.

  • And what you claiming with your research or some

  • of the research you mentioned is that it actually improves

  • various aspects and creates long-term positive effects.

  • Is that true?

  • STEVEN KOTLER: Flow?

  • AUDIENCE: Yeah.

  • Yeah.

  • Having more flow in your life, which

  • means overclocking your processor.

  • And you mentioned about the release state

  • and the importance of that.

  • And I think we have several courses.

  • And [INAUDIBLE] and that talk about that and how important

  • it is to take breaks and stuff like that and so on.

  • But what I'm interested in is let's

  • say I find a way to induce more flow in my life.

  • Is it actually going to also produce like long term--

  • or am I going to die early, like Steve Jobs?

  • STEVEN KOTLER: OK.

  • So there's two kind of answers to this question.

  • The first is that the research shows

  • that the people with the most flow in their lives

  • are quote, unquote "the happiest people on Earth."

  • That is something of a misnomer.

  • So flow always, always, always, always includes

  • kind of pushing yourself to the utmost.

  • You're rising to the challenge.

  • One of the psychological triggers

  • is known as the challenge/skills ratio.

  • So all of these flow triggers that we

  • talk about, high consequence, deep embodiment, et cetera,

  • flow follows focus.

  • So all of these flow triggers are

  • ways of driving attention to the now.

  • So one of the ways we know we pay the most attention when

  • the skills we bring to the task are slightly less

  • than the challenge at hand.

  • It's known as the challenge/skills ratio.

  • Flow exists when we are stretching, but not snapping.

  • You are constantly rising to meet your challenge.

  • The studies show that flow correlates directly

  • to life satisfaction.

  • You get more meaning.

  • You get more purpose.

  • Happiness is fleeting.

  • It's in the moment.

  • It's I feel really good right now.

  • That may not always be the case with flow

  • because rising to challenges are difficult.

  • It's uncomfortable.

  • I always say that people who get really good at flow hacking,

  • get really, really good at being uncomfortable.

  • The other thing I wanted to say to kind of go back this

  • is-- and I want to talk about why this is not self-help.

  • And it's not self-help for a couple of reasons.

  • On the positive side, self-help is

  • about 5% increase, 10% increase.

  • It's about three things I can tell you today

  • that you can start doing tomorrow

  • and your life is going to get better.

  • Flow is not like that at all.

  • It is not 5%.

  • It's not 10%.

  • It is a step function-worth of change.

  • It is a big shift forward.

  • But it comes at a price.

  • Flow is dangerous.

  • These neurochemicals are very addictive.

  • So you're playing with fundamentally

  • addictive neurochemistry.

  • Flow always requires what we call

  • an escalating ladder of risk.

  • You're going to keep taking greater and greater chances,

  • pushing yourself farther, and farther, and farther.

  • That can get dangerous as well.

  • And you're also playing with very fundamental

  • human motivations, autonomy, mastery, and purpose, which

  • is sort of what passion looks like under the hood.

  • These are all big flow triggers.

  • These all show up in flow.

  • They all produce more flow.

  • You don't get to play with addictive neurochemistry

  • and these kind of fundamental human motivations

  • without danger.

  • People find themselves-- they join a startup.

  • They get into lots of flow.

  • Startups are great at producing flow

  • for a lot of different reasons.

  • A lot of the flow triggers are kind of concentrated

  • in startups.

  • And then the startup phase ends and they're sort of

  • locked out of flow.

  • There is a depression that can come from this.

  • If you get a lot of flow in your life

  • and some day are locked out, you can get very, very, very

  • deeply depressed.

  • JAMIE WHEAL: Just to speak specifically

  • to your overclocking the processor piece as well,

  • which is that the action sports athletes, when the swell is

  • breaking for [INAUDIBLE] in Maui,

  • like they all sit and do nothing.

  • It's kind of almost a hunter/gather style.

  • We sit around, we tell stories, we talk shit,

  • and then something big and crazy happens.

  • We go and do it.

  • And then the swell has come.

  • The big storm has gone.

  • And I have a natural downtime.

  • And so that's my life as an action sports

  • athlete cultivating flow.

  • But what's my life in your guys' world as knowledge workers

  • cultivating flow?

  • I do it.

  • I crush the project.

  • I come up with a novel solution.

  • What happens to me then?

  • I get promoted.

  • And so the pressure in our controlled environments

  • to continue to do it and to continue to tap and to go back.

  • And now, I'm just revving at a higher level.

  • And I've got all kinds of obligations and commitments

  • to do this on command, I think is real.

  • And that-- which we don't have up now, but back

  • to that recovery phase-- becomes vital to ensure that I'm fully

  • replenishing that very expensive state I've just produced.

  • That I'm annexing the information and that

  • I'm stably integrating it into my both psychology

  • and physiology.

  • AUDIENCE: And the question is, for example,

  • all these sport or energy drinks can boost your adrenalin

  • and stuff.

  • It looks like it doesn't go really well with flow.

  • Like you can't release because your body

  • is like filled with chemicals that actually boost you up.

  • And so, for example, Red Bull and all these pro athletes,

  • how does it go together?

  • STEVEN KOTLER: It's a tricky question.

  • And part of the answer is we don't know.

  • But one of the things that it does appear

  • is that at the front end of the flow state,

  • you've got cortisol rising, that norepinephrine rising.

  • If there's too much of that stuff-- and a lot

  • of these energy drinks flood the body

  • with more of these chemicals-- it

  • does appear that that can block the relaxation response.

  • So essentially what's happening when

  • you go from kind of the heightened focus

  • and the struggle phase into the relaxation

  • sometimes, that's when the switch

  • from conscious to subconscious processing is taking place.

  • Norepinephrine sort of, when you have too much of it,

  • it functions sort of like OCD.

  • You can't let go.

  • You're holding on to the problem and you're thinking it,

  • you're thinking it, and you're thinking it.

  • And that could absolutely block the release state.

  • It could block the rest of the flow state.

  • That said, there's caffeine.

  • There's a whole bunch of other things in Red Bull.

  • You can say that Red Bull is a flow precursor in some cases.

  • It can be a flow blocker.

  • It's very individual.

  • And neurochemistry appears to be individual.

  • All of our receptors, our receptors

  • for these neurochemicals are essentially coded genetically,

  • how receptive they are.

  • So it really could differ at an individual level.

  • And we just don't now.

  • JAMIE WHEAL: And on the healthy side,

  • if you really are looking for something like what

  • might I take or do, the most interesting stuff-- and I

  • just down at Red Bull on Friday and was talking with a Ph.D.

  • candidate specializing into this, which is-- nitric oxide,

  • we talked about, right, was the neurotransmitter

  • that prompts you go from struggle to release.

  • The best exogenous form of it is high concentrate beet juice.

  • It's high nitrate.

  • Most pro-endurance athletes in the world are using it.

  • It sort of debuted in between Beijing and maybe even

  • London as far as the Olympic stuff.

  • And there's a company, James Smith,

  • which we have no affiliation with.

  • But they're out of England.

  • They're royal insignia stuff.

  • And they do the both high nitrate, measured

  • in joule shots, as well as placebo ones.

  • So all the academic community globally uses them.

  • So two or three hours after ingestion of high nitrate beet

  • juice, it can transform into nitric oxide.

  • And that's potentially, as far as healthy.

  • And actually has some mechanical impact on this.

  • It's probably one of the best things to look at.

  • AUDIENCE: Sorry.

  • I don't want to talk too much.

  • And omega-3 might have some positive influence

  • on like getting into flow.

  • Is it like research some behind it?

  • JAMIE WHEAL: What might?

  • AUDIENCE: Omega-3.

  • JAMIE WHEAL: That's a mixed bag, man.

  • I mean in the last six months, there's

  • been a fair amount of sort of not so positive stuff

  • on omega-3's, and just questions on prostate cancer in men,

  • and various other sort of ancillary things.

  • That said, the chief physician for the Coronado SEAL teams

  • gave a presentation specifically on the role of fish oils

  • and high-grade fish oils, on depression,

  • on physiological recovery, on sort

  • of stability of mental states, all kinds of things.

  • And their evidence, at least with the data

  • sets they were working with, was overwhelmingly positive.

  • So I don't know right now.

  • And I kind of wish I did because I like that certainty.

  • AUDIENCE: So you mentioned the researcher

  • who had done a lot of work on the brain waves and then

  • with your diagram.

  • Can you tell us a little bit more

  • about him or her and how they came up

  • with their research, et cetera?

  • STEVEN KOTLER: Yeah, Dr. Leslie Sherlin.

  • He is probably the world's leading researcher

  • on kind of the brain waves, neuroelectricity

  • of high performance.

  • He-- five years ago, six years, I

  • don't know when they actually started the project--

  • he teamed up with Red Bull.

  • So there was at guy Red Bull, whose name

  • is Andy Walshe, a friend of ours,

  • who's the head of high performance.

  • His job is to take the best athletes in the world

  • and make them better.

  • He teamed up with Leslie and they

  • built essentially a neuroscience skunkworks.

  • So the problem with EEG has been noise.

  • So I can put an EEG on your head and I can look at brain waves.

  • But if you yawn, if you blink, all that stuff

  • is going to register as static, as noise.

  • It's going obscure the signal.

  • So motion, which is if you want to look

  • at action-and-adventure sport athletes, it's a real problem.

  • And we've only recently gotten to the point

  • that our algorithms can actually filter out the noise of motion.

  • So Leslie has developed what they call Brain Sport.

  • It's a wireless, portable EEG.

  • And I think they've looked at 5,000 athletes.

  • They've compared the top 1% athletes,

  • the elite of the elite, with the top 5%, with the top 20%.

  • And just kind of looked at them across the board.

  • So that's where a lot of this research came from.

  • JAMIE WHEAL: Yeah.

  • And actually just to finish on that,

  • the interesting thing they found was there was not a default MO.

  • There wasn't a consistent pattern.

  • It wasn't like the action-and-sports athletes

  • all performed like Tibetan monks or something like that.

  • But what they realized was it was

  • almost like the shock absorber on a motorcycle.

  • It was resilience and the ability to-- they

  • could come into the flow state from a bunch

  • of different locations, depending on sports-specific,

  • genealogy, training, whatever.

  • But it was their resilience and their adaptiveness

  • that distinguished the elite from even the advanced right

  • below them.

  • AUDIENCE: A quick question on audio stimuli.

  • I know there are software programs, CDs out there,

  • that can supposedly bring your mind down

  • to these different wave patterns.

  • Have you done any research on that?

  • If those things actually work or if they

  • can help advance the flow?

  • STEVEN KOTLER: I'm going to let Jaime talk

  • about this in a second.

  • But there's one thing I really want

  • to say because it's a pet peeve.

  • It makes me crazy.

  • There are a lot of companies out there

  • who are, hey, this produces flow.

  • And its single correlate research.

  • It's we can get your brain waves to alpha-theta.

  • Or there's some data that says cardiac coherence produces

  • flow, and blah, blah.

  • So there's a lot of companies, a lot of widgets,

  • and a lot of things that trigger one of these things.

  • Flow is a huge cascade.

  • It's a full body/brain reaction.

  • There is nothing out there that produces--

  • except some of the work that we're

  • doing at the Flow Genome Project.

  • And we're not there yet.

  • But we're sure trying to map it.

  • But most everything's that's out there is a single correlate

  • thing.

  • So we've got music that can drive your brain

  • waves towards alpha, towards alpha-theta.

  • That's great.

  • That's neat.

  • It's going to produce parts of this experience.

  • But it is a full-on, deep flow experience

  • with a full neurochemical dump?

  • No.

  • There's nothing that says that it can happen.

  • And there's not any evidence of it.

  • So these single correlate fixes, they're getting at it.

  • They're moving in the right direction.

  • But the truth claims make me pretty nervous.

  • JAMIE WHEAL: Yeah.

  • And simply from the research I've

  • seen, bineural beats, which is what you'll see a lot of those.

  • And they stagger themselves slightly

  • and it's supposed to entrain your brain.

  • I haven't seen a lot of corroborating research

  • to actually support all of those truth claims.

  • The stuff that has had a little bit stronger evidence based

  • on backing is isochronic brain wave entrainment.

  • And the nice thing about it is you

  • don't have to have headphones on.

  • You can actually just listen to it.

  • But even beyond that-- I mean there's a reason

  • that the whole electronic scene has blown up

  • so hugely in the last five to 10 years.

  • There's a reason, Burning Man culture,

  • all of those bits and pieces, is that very high fidelity, loud,

  • cleanly separated sounds absolutely

  • have a psychodynamic effect.

  • And you can take that to West Africa.

  • I mean there's ancient traditions on that.

  • So even without the fancy technology under the hood

  • that someone may be selling you, clearly music

  • has a powerful psychosomatic effect.

  • AUDIENCE: How do the sympathetic and parasympathetic

  • nervous systems come into play in all this?

  • JAMIE WHEAL: Well, can you go ahead

  • and just take another couple of steps into that and give us a--

  • AUDIENCE: Yeah.

  • So specifically in the struggle, release, recovery-- or sorry,

  • struggle, release, flow recovery phases you showed earlier,

  • the struggle phase kind of reminded me

  • of what I had heard very anecdotally and

  • unscientifically about the sympathetic nervous system.

  • And then the alpha waves kind of reminded me

  • of the parasympathetic nervous system.

  • And I was wondering if that's true?

  • JAMIE WHEAL: Yeah.

  • I mean the short answer is don't know.

  • And I think it's the tracking-- I

  • mean being able to track the neurotransmitters

  • in a live human, right, tricky, as well as to be

  • able to have multivariable sensing.

  • So just to give you guys an understanding,

  • like where is the marketplace?

  • Where's the cutting edge?

  • So we mentioned that darker, Quantified Warrior project.

  • They love the Red Bull guys because the Red Bull guys

  • are just trying real stuff with people.

  • They're actually out there with their athletes

  • and trying to get them better.

  • Where government and military projects are much more

  • kind of-- just the way they move, and innovate, and think

  • is just distinct.

  • And so they love the Red Bull guys

  • because they're trying stuff.

  • We go to the Red Bull guys and we're

  • talking with the scientists.

  • And we're like, hey, have you put this together with that?

  • Well, what about these three things?

  • And even those guys, bless their hearts,

  • aren't actually doing an integrated, multivariable

  • metrics and management.

  • So the short answer is we don't know yet.

  • And I would picture that those are

  • the kind of fascinating questions that

  • hopefully in the next five years or so we'll be starting

  • to help facilitate those conversations and those

  • [INAUDIBLE].

  • AUDIENCE: Is the fight or flight response,

  • would that be an example or symptom of that struggle phase?

  • STEVEN KOTLER: So the fight or flight is.

  • It's one example.

  • It's one extreme example.

  • But when you talk to the action-and adventure sport

  • athletes about it, what they will tell

  • you is that they ride the heightened focus of the fight

  • or flight response in the flow.

  • They sort of get into the gap before actually the fear

  • becomes an emotion.

  • They see it kind of rising and they just

  • ride that focus into flow and block that response.

  • Flow is flowy because its choice is wide open.

  • One of the reasons you can make almost picture-perfect decision

  • making is because you have lots of options.

  • You're taking in more information, et cetera,

  • et cetera.

  • In the fight or flight response, your options

  • are fight, flight, or flee.

  • It's totally the opposite.

  • So you are right, it is totally the opposite.

  • But you can ride one into the other.

  • JAMIE WHEAL: So the first thing is, yeah,

  • anyone in their right mind should be afraid

  • when you're rolling the dice on 16 feet per second per second.

  • So natural and healthy.

  • And then the question is, is it back to Steven's point

  • about the challenge and skills?

  • Is it enough out of my comfort zone that I am nowhere else?

  • In fact, I have a friend who is the CEO of a big company.

  • He says I don't like road biking because when I'm on the road,

  • I'm still in my day.

  • I love that trail that we ride because I am nowhere else

  • for the three minutes it takes to get down it.

  • And so the beauty is can I find that place where I'm nowhere

  • else, but not in the hospital?

  • [LAUGHTER]

  • STEVEN KOTLER: Most people have had tons of flow experiences.

  • You probably have them almost on a daily basis

  • and you don't actually realize it.

  • And here's why.

  • Flow exists on a spectrum.

  • It like any emotion, like anger, right?

  • You can be a little irate or you can be homicidally murderous.

  • So there's micro-flow when action and awareness start

  • to mere, maybe time starts to dilate,

  • and you're paying attention to the [INAUDIBLE].

  • Macro-flow, where you get all of the various conditions of flow

  • at once.

  • If you've ever lost yourself in a great conversation,

  • the whole afternoon disappears.

  • If you've ever gotten so sucked into a work project

  • that nothing else seems to matter for a little while,

  • those are all micro-flow experiences.

  • They're on the same spectrum leading up

  • to these giant, deep flow experiences.

  • So, as I said, there are 17 flow triggers.

  • The more flow triggers that get packed into an event,

  • the greater the chance you're going

  • to move into a really like truly deep flow

  • experience rather than a micro-flow experience.

  • But we have these micro-flow experiences.

  • We recognize deep flow.

  • We know it immediately, time dilated or something.

  • Like you're like, oh, my god, I'm in that state.

  • But what we miss is that we're in micro-flow all the time.

  • And if you actually can start watching for it,

  • you can start extending it and deepening it.

  • You can play with it and really start to utilize it.

  • STEVEN KOTLER: By the way, when they do flow studies,

  • as a manager, one of the most common flow

  • experiences among middle managers in conversation

  • at work.

  • Why?

  • Work usually involves money.

  • So it's high consequence.

  • It's a higher consequence environment.

  • And then you start looking at the social triggers, group

  • flow.

  • Work conversations tend to drive them.

  • You don't have them in casual conversations at home

  • when you're hanging out with your friends.

  • But work conversations tend to produce this more often.

  • AUDIENCE: Yeah.

  • Can you tell us a bit more about the flow dojo?

  • And is there a physical space that exists?

  • What are you doing there?

  • When do you plan to do with the dojo?

  • JAMIE WHEAL: What I'll do is I'll just describe it to you.

  • But yes, I mean our answer really

  • is what would it be like to sort of combine

  • a Montessori-prepared environment, but for grown-ups,

  • and exploratory style, interactive, sort of

  • exhibits in installations?

  • But instead of for science, have it be for embodied cognition,

  • with a sprinkling of X-games.

  • So you have fun, safe ways to give people the sensorimotor

  • inputs that these athletes typically use themselves

  • and then put a layer of quantified self on top of it.

  • So giant geodesic dome playground training centers,

  • whereby we can all train our games.

  • We can all burn and fuse additional neural pathways.

  • And we can put ourselves into that nonseeking

  • state of hyperperformance.

  • And ultimately back to the drowning

  • in information, starving for motivation.

  • At least our assessment of most developmental technologies--

  • there's so much great stuff out there.

  • Most of us fail in long-term practice.

  • So if we can go back to that autotelic piece

  • and harness flow states in service of whatever

  • my goals in life and work are, but ultimately even

  • the following of well-worn lineage paths in the wisdom

  • traditions or whatever else is up, if we can do that,

  • it's something pretty amazing.

  • And certainly communities with you guys,

  • places like this where there's such sort

  • of high-value human capital, the ability

  • to optimize that, both in the moment and longitudinally,

  • feels really useful.

  • It feels like a way to help impact it.

  • STEVEN KOTLER: Let me add two quick things to that.

  • One, the more flow you have, the more flow you have.

  • So this all about attention.

  • You're training the brain go into the flow.

  • So you can train the brain on the ski slope to go into flow.

  • It's going to bleed into your work at the office.

  • You're going to find yourself getting to flow more easily.

  • If you can learn how to do this one area, it transfers over.

  • And I want to just kind of give you

  • an ephemeral look at the flow dojo.

  • I want to give you just kind of like this is the gear,

  • this is what we're doing, this is what it looks like.

  • One of things we have-- and there's lots and lots of toys--

  • but one thing is we have is a 20-foot looping surf swing.

  • So you stand on a surfboard.

  • Your feet are strapped in.

  • Your writs are strapped in.

  • And you can be upside down, 25 feet off the ground or pulling

  • 3 and 1/2 gees at the bottom of the loop.

  • So you've got high consequence, novelty, unpredictability,

  • and complexity, our rich environment,

  • lots of those things as well.

  • All of those flow triggers are there.

  • So we've got that.

  • Simultaneously, you are wearing Leslie Sherline and the Brain

  • Sport helmet, the EEG helmet.

  • So we know flow exists near alpha-theta.

  • So the entire giant surf swing is lined in LED lights.

  • So it is real-time neurofeedback.

  • So you're wearing this thing.

  • You're pulling all these flow triggers.

  • But you can also drive your brain.

  • If you are in alpha-theta, it glows red.

  • If you are in beta, it's blue.

  • So you have real-time neurofeedback.

  • And to solve the mystery-- because our real goal-- well,

  • one of our real goals is to really advance

  • flow science and culture-- you are wired head to toe

  • with all the quantified self, data-gathering stuff.

  • So not only are we using these flow triggers and neurofeedback

  • to drive you into flow, we are data capturing along the way.

  • And I hate the term "big data."

  • I don't think it means anything.

  • But hopefully, this allow us to take a big data approach

  • to flow, which hasn't been done before.

  • Csikszentmihalyi did it at psychological level.

  • Nobody has done it at the neurobiological level.

  • And that's what this is about.

  • AUDIENCE: Have you considered looking

  • into the personalization aspect of flow?

  • Because I'm not sure that everybody

  • experiences flow in the same way.

  • I mean not for the same activities.

  • For example, some people this you studied are like athletes.

  • But-- I don't know.

  • I mean there are scientists who think

  • that differently, et cetera.

  • There's all this research about personality types, et cetera.

  • The Gallup organization itself, to solve their problem

  • of 71% of engagement, developed their own system,

  • which is called StrengthsFinder.

  • STEVEN KOTLER: Yeah.

  • Sure.

  • AUDIENCE: And I think people who use their talents according

  • to them are a kind of like in the flow states

  • because they are using their talents.

  • JAMIE WHEAL: Yes.

  • Exactly.

  • So what is my typology?

  • What kind of a person am I and what

  • is my unique signature and entry points?

  • Absolutely.

  • We've actually been doing, again,

  • a very preliminary, but intriguing initial flow

  • profile.

  • And we've had several thousand folks

  • take it just in the last three or four weeks.

  • And interestingly-- the categories we had was

  • hard-charger, so the classic action sports profile we just

  • described and most of what you just described; a deep thinker,

  • someone a little bit more introspective,

  • potentially doing coding or creative work;

  • one more socially oriented; and then potentially one more sort

  • of--- the quintessential kind of [? Loewe Haas ?] personality

  • types, sort of the yoga, meditation, et cetera.

  • And 50% of the respondents were deep thinkers.

  • They actually found themselves more

  • introverted, quiet, reflective avenues into flow.

  • And again, to Steven's point, what

  • we anticipate-- I mean I would be stunned if it didn't show up

  • this way-- is that there is no such thing as a monolithic flow

  • state, as we really get into it.

  • There will be kind of a scatter plot on a heat map.

  • And it will depend on the person,

  • it will depend on the environment,

  • and it will depend on the tasks at hand,

  • how exactly they get in there, which cascade they trigger

  • and to what extent.

  • And we will see probably areas of clustering.

  • But probably a much broader, complex equation than we

  • first talk about.

  • STEVEN KOTLER: And the one thing I want to add

  • is we talk about the action-and-adventure sports

  • athletes as this great example of flow hacking.

  • But we're in Silicon Valley.

  • The three things that built this Valley

  • are network design, circuit design, and software design

  • pretty much.

  • And you can't do any of those things well,

  • really, really well, without flow.

  • Coding and flow goes hand in hand.

  • The research goes all the back.

  • The same thing with all those categories.

  • So if you're looking for a nonathletic example of what

  • happens when groups of people start getting into flow

  • on a regular basis, Silicon Valley

  • is not a bad place to start.

  • MALE SPEAKER: Big hand for Steven and Jamie.

  • Thank you.

  • STEVEN KOTLER: Thanks guys.

  • [APPLAUSE]

MALE SPEAKER: I'm really happy to welcome

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