1 00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:05,680 Music. 2 00:00:05,671 --> 00:00:10,523 Hello and welcome to the Biohacker's Podcast. I'm your host Teemu Arina from Biohacker Center. 3 00:00:11,121 --> 00:00:16,843 And in today's episode, we are going to talk about how to access the mythical flow state. 4 00:00:17,361 --> 00:00:22,685 Our guest is Max Gotzler, a German biohacker, athlete, professional flow seeker, 5 00:00:22,739 --> 00:00:24,216 and the founder of Flowgrade. 6 00:00:24,720 --> 00:00:30,561 He has been working in the biohacking scene for over a decade and has helped thousands of people live their lives 7 00:00:30,561 --> 00:00:35,522 to the fullest through his podcasts, events, books, and Flowgrade products. 8 00:00:36,221 --> 00:00:40,339 I heartily recommend you to check out his annual FlowFest in Munich, Germany. 9 00:00:40,881 --> 00:00:45,721 I have been one of the speakers and I can tell you it's an amazing conference, 10 00:00:45,721 --> 00:00:47,045 especially if you live in Germany. 11 00:00:47,701 --> 00:00:51,600 The following presentation was recorded at Biohacker Summit in London, 12 00:00:52,081 --> 00:00:55,877 and the topic is on how you can hack the Flow state. 13 00:00:56,444 --> 00:01:05,341 Without further ado, the floor is yours, Max. (Max speaking) Oxygen is a great trigger for flow and I tried holotropic breathing. 14 00:01:05,626 --> 00:01:11,793 I wasn't aware of that? That's meditation where you use oxygen to get into flow state where you knock off your 15 00:01:12,141 --> 00:01:20,141 prefrontal cortex and you're almost transcendent, in a meditational way, thinking about... nothing. 16 00:01:20,141 --> 00:01:23,861 And this concept is so interesting to me and I know my company is also called, the first 17 00:01:23,861 --> 00:01:31,261 syllable of it is FLOWgrade. And I'm excited to present to you my passion for this topic because I think it's this one 18 00:01:31,261 --> 00:01:35,021 state that really makes life worth living. 19 00:01:35,315 --> 00:01:37,035 And I will explain to you why that is. 20 00:01:37,629 --> 00:01:41,554 So let me tell you two versions of the same story. So I'm sure you can relate to that. 21 00:01:41,833 --> 00:01:49,179 Sometimes I wake up, have no idea what this day is going to be like, and I reach to my phone and I open it and you see all these notifications popping up 22 00:01:49,926 --> 00:01:51,679 and Facebook is trying to get your attention. 23 00:01:51,679 --> 00:01:54,814 Everyone's competing for your time for this little bit of attention. 24 00:01:55,093 --> 00:02:01,579 That also creates this little dopamine burst and you actually are like a gambler in a casino and you're just scrolling down your timeline and opening 25 00:02:01,579 --> 00:02:06,733 all these apps and then you get up and you don't really want to check your email. 26 00:02:07,012 --> 00:02:11,415 But what I do, I sit down anyways and I check my email in my pajamas and it's 10 o'clock. 27 00:02:11,946 --> 00:02:16,582 And I said, ah, damn it, I already used half of my morning doing pretty much nothing productive. 28 00:02:16,870 --> 00:02:20,939 And then I choose to do something random, like taking a shower or then going for a workout. 29 00:02:20,939 --> 00:02:26,459 And I get nothing done in the end. So I feel totally unproductive. I was never in a state 30 00:02:26,459 --> 00:02:31,179 where I felt I created something or I brought my projects ahead or created value for the people 31 00:02:31,179 --> 00:02:35,046 people around me and it is an unsuccessful, unproductive day. 32 00:02:35,479 --> 00:02:38,502 So another version of this day would be I wake up. 33 00:02:38,979 --> 00:02:40,195 I know what I'm going to do. 34 00:02:40,719 --> 00:02:45,677 I don't let myself distract by any apps or my phone or anything popping up. 35 00:02:46,064 --> 00:02:50,394 I go for a little walk, sit down for some meditation, make my bulletproof coffee, take. 36 00:02:51,119 --> 00:02:55,823 A cold shower, sit down, work on the one task that I decided to work on the night before, 37 00:02:56,499 --> 00:03:00,468 feel really productive, get into a sort of flow state, get everything done before, get, 38 00:03:01,080 --> 00:03:05,329 to spend time outside with my friends and family, and I go to bed feeling really productive 39 00:03:05,619 --> 00:03:07,301 having had a very successful day. 40 00:03:07,879 --> 00:03:09,893 And so there is a way. 41 00:03:10,559 --> 00:03:17,249 To create days like that. And it relates to the same state that athletes feel, 42 00:03:17,905 --> 00:03:18,644 when they're in the zone. 43 00:03:19,067 --> 00:03:24,049 So when I described to you that perfect day of mine, I was able to create an environment 44 00:03:24,049 --> 00:03:28,564 that triggered me to get into that flow state, to feel productive, to get things done, to shut off the ego. 45 00:03:29,041 --> 00:03:34,911 Athletes, I'm sure pretty much everyone has experienced this state and people have different names for it. 46 00:03:35,433 --> 00:03:37,539 For example, Michael Jordan called it to be in the zone. 47 00:03:38,106 --> 00:03:42,500 John Coltrane called it to be in the pocket when you played the saxophone and one note just came after the other. 48 00:03:42,761 --> 00:03:46,789 Robin Williams called it to be in the forever box, when he was on stage getting the feedback from the crowd, 49 00:03:46,789 --> 00:03:49,656 one joke came after the other, just like that, non-scripted. 50 00:03:50,169 --> 00:03:55,571 A runner might call it a runner's high. A mother seeing her child in danger might develop superhuman strength, 51 00:03:56,156 --> 00:03:57,875 to save the child. That's called helper's high. 52 00:03:58,479 --> 00:04:01,656 So this relates all to that same state we call flow. 53 00:04:02,287 --> 00:04:07,706 So there are three things that happen when you're in flow. And I will go into the neurobiology a little later. 54 00:04:08,309 --> 00:04:12,989 So in that state, time seems to dilate. You have sometimes the freeze frame effect. 55 00:04:12,989 --> 00:04:15,869 When you watch the matrix, you see that, where time speeds up sometimes. 56 00:04:16,717 --> 00:04:19,031 Where five hours pass by and it feels like five minutes. 57 00:04:19,629 --> 00:04:24,990 The self vanishes. Your ego is non-existent. You're as present as you could possibly be. 58 00:04:25,909 --> 00:04:32,399 And performance, physical as mental, skyrockets. You get everything done in less time. 59 00:04:32,569 --> 00:04:33,869 You learn a language in half the time. 60 00:04:34,515 --> 00:04:39,565 You perform, you hit the last second shot, score the last second goal to win the game. 61 00:04:40,114 --> 00:04:40,861 That's what it feels like. 62 00:04:41,446 --> 00:04:46,857 So now for the first time in history, we are able to hack this state, 63 00:04:47,406 --> 00:04:49,846 because it was this concept that nobody really understood. 64 00:04:50,309 --> 00:04:53,189 And now there are people researching it. That goes back about 15 years. 65 00:04:53,189 --> 00:04:55,909 It's been researched for more for about 150 years. 66 00:04:56,705 --> 00:05:02,971 But ever since some people really try to emulate, observe this effect, what it does, 67 00:05:03,574 --> 00:05:08,192 we have increased our capabilities and it's seen now in extreme sports. 68 00:05:08,804 --> 00:05:14,094 Tenfold, twentyfold amazing results. There's actually a project called the Flow Genome Project. 69 00:05:14,094 --> 00:05:14,980 You might be aware of it. 70 00:05:15,583 --> 00:05:19,534 The two guys running it, Stephen Kotler and Jamie Wheal. I have a podcast called The Flowgrade Show. 71 00:05:19,534 --> 00:05:23,854 I recorded episodes with both of them and with Jamie just a couple days ago in 72 00:05:23,854 --> 00:05:26,974 order to prepare for this talk. And it's super interesting what they found out. 73 00:05:26,974 --> 00:05:30,509 And pretty much what is happening right now, flow is universal. 74 00:05:30,914 --> 00:05:36,738 We can all have it. We can all create it in our lives, which makes us more powerful to get things 75 00:05:36,894 --> 00:05:41,113 done to get the projects done in time, to learn things quicker, to amplify our 76 00:05:41,294 --> 00:05:43,454 physical and mental performance on every level. 77 00:05:43,868 --> 00:05:51,169 So at the Bulletproof Conference last year, they had a flow playground and they tried to get people into that flow state. 78 00:05:51,547 --> 00:05:52,906 So this is the Flow Genome Project. 79 00:05:53,383 --> 00:05:57,813 They've done a lot of research. They found out that people who are in flow, they're about 80 00:05:57,930 --> 00:06:00,814 200 to 250% more productive. 81 00:06:01,233 --> 00:06:03,414 They saw that in military snipers. There was a study done. 82 00:06:04,033 --> 00:06:11,374 They learned about twice as much. So Malcolm Gladwell's 10,000 hours to obtain any certain skill is not valid anymore. 83 00:06:11,685 --> 00:06:14,611 In flow, you can cut that in half. You can learn in 5,000 hours. 84 00:06:15,294 --> 00:06:22,694 So underneath the flow state, there is a math system, a neurobiological system that changes 85 00:06:22,694 --> 00:06:24,126 when you get into flow state. 86 00:06:24,694 --> 00:06:32,183 And there are actually three areas that are affected. It's neuroanatomical changes, neurochemistry, and neuroelectricity. 87 00:06:32,794 --> 00:06:35,181 And I'm going to explain quickly what they all refer to. 88 00:06:35,834 --> 00:06:39,484 So the predominant change and the most prominent change. 89 00:06:40,105 --> 00:06:44,035 That happens when you get into flow is that you experience something that scientists call 90 00:06:44,156 --> 00:06:50,296 transient hypofrontality. Transient meaning temporarily, hypo just a little, and frontality 91 00:06:50,566 --> 00:06:57,642 refers to the activity in your prefrontal cortex, this area in the brain. So that is where your ego, 92 00:06:57,903 --> 00:07:03,635 your self-perception, your sense of self, your moral standards are stored. So that is shut down 93 00:07:03,754 --> 00:07:08,768 in flow. So you don't think about yourself. You immerse yourself in your environment, 94 00:07:09,264 --> 00:07:12,838 and your task at hand, you're totally focused, you're totally present, 95 00:07:13,306 --> 00:07:17,875 you have everything available to pursue, to perform what you're about to do. 96 00:07:18,572 --> 00:07:22,595 So, there are also very powerful neurochemical changes. 97 00:07:23,316 --> 00:07:27,315 And there are five chemicals that I'm going to mention here that are super powerful 98 00:07:27,315 --> 00:07:36,883 if you find them, as you see here, in very powerful recreational drugs that people take in order to put themselves in a flow-like state. 99 00:07:37,396 --> 00:07:43,742 And that's why it's also so dangerous nowadays, by the way, because people have access to flow states by buying them. 100 00:07:44,174 --> 00:07:48,000 The altered states economy right now is a $4 trillion industry. 101 00:07:48,405 --> 00:07:51,205 People buy themselves into different states. 102 00:07:51,673 --> 00:07:53,060 They go to Burning Man, for example. 103 00:07:53,600 --> 00:07:58,435 In the beginning, Burning Man was about shutting down the ego, knocking off that prefrontal cortex, 104 00:07:58,641 --> 00:08:03,079 and totally living with other people in a happy place outside of normal reality. 105 00:08:03,655 --> 00:08:09,075 Now it became an ego thing again. People running around in feathers, people take substances, they go at their party, 106 00:08:09,174 --> 00:08:12,675 they get into a flow state, but by the time they wake up in the morning, they feel bad, 107 00:08:12,675 --> 00:08:16,673 they feel depressed, they run out of the neurochemicals, which is also happening in flow, 108 00:08:17,087 --> 00:08:19,949 and then they want to ring the bell again and again, and then they get addicted. 109 00:08:20,508 --> 00:08:25,846 Because flow is highly addictive. It's the most powerful state our brain can get into. 110 00:08:26,368 --> 00:08:31,795 And when we're not careful, it has destructive power. So we are really walking the line with 111 00:08:31,795 --> 00:08:35,595 flow. Extreme athletes, bass jumpers for example, they go to the extreme. One of 112 00:08:35,595 --> 00:08:39,555 the most famous flow hackers is Shane McConkey, a bass jumper. He died doing his 113 00:08:39,555 --> 00:08:42,545 craft because he was looking for the next kick and the next kick. There's a. 114 00:08:43,195 --> 00:08:44,292 Theory that actually. 115 00:08:44,931 --> 00:08:50,061 Comedian Robin Williams. He was so addicted to that flow state that he got when he was performing on stage, 116 00:08:50,557 --> 00:08:55,821 that he was drawn to drugs offstage because he wanted to imitate that effect. Now we have neuroanatomy. 117 00:08:56,541 --> 00:09:00,081 Neurochemistry, and there are also some neuroelectrical changes. 118 00:09:00,739 --> 00:09:05,581 So when you're in a normal conscious state, your brain is usually operating at a beta wave. 119 00:09:06,473 --> 00:09:11,741 State. So it's a fairly fast wave and when you hit that struggle, 120 00:09:11,741 --> 00:09:15,385 nor a penephrine and dopamine are released, you're focused. 121 00:09:15,628 --> 00:09:19,301 You know, when back in the day a tiger approached, you were just, you had to be present. 122 00:09:19,850 --> 00:09:21,390 So that's what happened, fight or flight response. 123 00:09:21,975 --> 00:09:26,719 So what has to happen for you in order to get into flow is a release of nitric oxide. 124 00:09:27,052 --> 00:09:31,959 And with that, your brain waves also change to an alpha state, which is a daydream state. 125 00:09:32,508 --> 00:09:39,142 So now you flush out these stress hormones with nitric oxide, and you get into that alpha state, 126 00:09:39,439 --> 00:09:44,157 and then you even push to a theta state, which theta is usually what's happening when you're in REM sleep 127 00:09:44,364 --> 00:09:46,110 or when you're in very deep meditation. 128 00:09:46,425 --> 00:09:49,945 So, and the flow, you're pretty much in between alpha and theta. 129 00:09:50,233 --> 00:09:55,427 And what happens when you're pushed to theta, you might get these really powerful gamma spikes. 130 00:09:55,869 --> 00:09:59,686 And gamma is associated with epiphanies, with these aha moments. 131 00:10:00,253 --> 00:10:05,381 I got it. I know what to do. So that's actually the powerful ingredient here in the neuroelectrical world. 132 00:10:06,230 --> 00:10:11,680 That you get these gamma spikes, aha moments. Flow leads you to get these deep insights 133 00:10:11,680 --> 00:10:12,919 that you wouldn't get otherwise. 134 00:10:13,333 --> 00:10:15,151 So now how can you trigger flow? 135 00:10:15,836 --> 00:10:19,920 So the flow genome project that I mentioned before identified 17 triggers right now. 136 00:10:19,920 --> 00:10:23,361 I'm not gonna go into each one of them because they're very individual. 137 00:10:24,010 --> 00:10:30,240 For everyone, there are different triggers that work. One universal one, and one I wanna talk about right now 138 00:10:30,240 --> 00:10:34,749 because I think that's a hack that you can use right away is high consequences. 139 00:10:35,335 --> 00:10:38,720 That's the same thing when you're approached by a tiger. There are high consequences. 140 00:10:38,720 --> 00:10:42,059 We might lose our lives. So you quickly get into flow. It's a great trigger. 141 00:10:42,437 --> 00:10:47,578 However, there's one little hack that we can use because physical danger is, 142 00:10:48,160 --> 00:10:51,458 on the same level in our brain as social danger. 143 00:10:52,043 --> 00:10:57,880 So actually, it's probably like when we were hunters and gatherers, we were threatened by death 144 00:10:57,880 --> 00:10:59,749 when we were left alone away from the group. 145 00:11:00,200 --> 00:11:02,134 So we're really afraid of social rejection. 146 00:11:02,674 --> 00:11:07,880 But we can use that in order to create flow triggers. We can actually, for example, I can tell everyone 147 00:11:07,880 --> 00:11:13,567 I want to lose five pounds over the next eight weeks, and I'm going to give every one of my friends 10 euros if I don't make it. 148 00:11:14,170 --> 00:11:17,600 And it's not really about the money, but it's about the embarrassment I will encounter 149 00:11:17,600 --> 00:11:21,525 if I don't do that. So that actually pushes me. That's a social fear of embarrassment 150 00:11:21,732 --> 00:11:23,686 that I can use in order to create a flow trigger. 151 00:11:24,280 --> 00:11:28,556 Now, if you want to find the flow triggers that work for you, it makes sense, 152 00:11:29,078 --> 00:11:31,131 to find out which flow type you tend to. 153 00:11:31,671 --> 00:11:37,081 You might find yourself in each one of those four types, but you might tend to one of them. 154 00:11:37,639 --> 00:11:42,240 So there are the hard chargers, the MMA fighters, the base jumpers, the extreme athletes. 155 00:11:42,240 --> 00:11:48,352 They look for the push, they need the high consequences, the dangerous wave, dangerous ride for the snowboarder. 156 00:11:48,946 --> 00:11:53,400 Then there are the deep thinkers, the engineers, that take things apart in their back room. 157 00:11:53,400 --> 00:11:57,220 They get lost in the system, they put it back together in better ways. 158 00:11:57,220 --> 00:11:58,479 Taming might actually be one of them. 159 00:11:58,993 --> 00:12:01,729 The flow goers, they're the ones that... 160 00:12:02,314 --> 00:12:03,314 They need some sort of... 161 00:12:03,935 --> 00:12:11,225 Meditation, some practice, yoga, the vegans that create mindfulness for themselves as a flow 162 00:12:11,225 --> 00:12:16,610 trigger. And then there are the crowd pleasers. We all know them. The extroverts, they're the ones 163 00:12:16,889 --> 00:12:21,305 having fun at the party, jumping in, getting the energy from outside and making everyone feel good. 164 00:12:22,074 --> 00:12:27,521 So which one are you? Or you're somewhere in between, but what could be a flow trigger for you? 165 00:12:28,043 --> 00:12:33,309 Now this is what I want you to remember from my talk because that's what I found for myself. 166 00:12:33,804 --> 00:12:38,729 The most powerful way to create more flow in your lives is optimizing your habits. 167 00:12:38,999 --> 00:12:45,147 We are creatures of habits. The older we get, the more habits we acquire, bad ones and good ones. 168 00:12:45,660 --> 00:12:50,665 We are a combination of habits. There's only a little part of our brain that's actively 169 00:12:50,665 --> 00:12:53,785 managing what we are. We're sitting on a large elephant, our subconscious, 170 00:12:53,785 --> 00:12:57,025 which is pretty much controlling our whole lives and this is built the whole 171 00:12:57,174 --> 00:13:01,873 the elephant is built of habits. So we can do we can create habits. We can, 172 00:13:02,665 --> 00:13:06,905 create good habits and we can get rid of bad habits. So I have a couple for you 173 00:13:06,905 --> 00:13:09,831 right here this is the five minute journal it's gratitude hacking. That's. 174 00:13:10,975 --> 00:13:15,625 Getting your brain in a positive mode. Let's say you have a bad day you write 175 00:13:15,625 --> 00:13:19,105 down three things that you're thankful for you will feel better because when I 176 00:13:19,105 --> 00:13:26,185 ask you what are you thankful for you will start thinking about something positive in your life. So you will find things that are positive in your life, 177 00:13:26,621 --> 00:13:30,465 making you feel better. Then we've heard a lot of hacks. So if you want to find 178 00:13:30,465 --> 00:13:36,185 out methods, just go to Ben Greenfield's blog, to Temu's podcast, to my website, and 179 00:13:36,185 --> 00:13:38,985 you will find a bunch of things that work for you and you might find things 180 00:13:39,269 --> 00:13:42,305 that don't work for you. So it's up to you to choose the habits you want to 181 00:13:42,305 --> 00:13:48,785 have in your life. You can have the bulletproof coffee in the morning to give you more energy and cut out the sugar. You can have a cold shower in 182 00:13:48,785 --> 00:13:53,945 in order to create hormones that raise your testosterone, if you're good. 183 00:13:52,628 --> 00:13:56,103 So there's a bunch of stuff you can do and I want to leave you with my favorite method, 184 00:13:56,706 --> 00:14:01,678 that I've discovered for myself which is really thinking about the one task you want to perform 185 00:14:01,792 --> 00:14:08,558 the next day the moment you go to sleep. Make your subconscious work overnight. It's a waste of time. 186 00:14:09,273 --> 00:14:13,676 If you don't. Think about something important before you go to sleep. You will wake up and 187 00:14:13,793 --> 00:14:19,358 your subconscious will have done work. It's a fantastic hack. So now this is how I came up 188 00:14:19,358 --> 00:14:23,398 up with that name flow great because in our community we talk about upgrading up 189 00:14:23,398 --> 00:14:27,918 we always want to optimize but where we want to optimize to as an athlete I want 190 00:14:27,918 --> 00:14:32,112 to win a championship as an Ironman I want to break my own record but as a, 191 00:14:32,733 --> 00:14:40,727 person in life where do I want to get because it's create desires I make a contract with myself to be unhappy until a certain point in the future and then I, 192 00:14:41,218 --> 00:14:44,598 make a new contract with myself and I'll be unhappy until I reach the next goal, 193 00:14:45,300 --> 00:14:47,398 So for me, it didn't make sense anymore. 194 00:14:47,398 --> 00:14:50,898 We needed to stop the upgrading and start the flow grading. 195 00:14:51,503 --> 00:14:57,098 Have more flow moments in our lives. Because what happens, how we can use them when you have them every day. 196 00:14:57,553 --> 00:14:59,098 You can learn a language a lot quicker. 197 00:14:59,380 --> 00:15:02,398 You can get your work done in time. You can spend more time with family and friends. 198 00:15:03,134 --> 00:15:05,698 You can be a more productive, more happy, more satisfied person. 199 00:15:06,303 --> 00:15:07,598 For me, it starts with flow. 200 00:15:08,283 --> 00:15:12,698 So flow grade is your treasure trove, I call it, for effective biohacks. 201 00:15:13,036 --> 00:15:18,744 You find different things to make it more productive to hack your sleep stuff that we do in our community and 202 00:15:20,157 --> 00:15:26,358 We also have an ebook that just got translated. It's called Superman Secrets. It's just five easy hacks. It's free, 203 00:15:27,116 --> 00:15:28,502 you can download it on our website and, 204 00:15:29,418 --> 00:15:34,418 finally, I got it in English! This was actually a great flow trigger to get it done before this event 205 00:15:34,741 --> 00:15:39,718 So I want to leave you with this one question because it's really powerful and I think that's the danger of flow now if you're 206 00:15:39,718 --> 00:15:45,798 able to create flow moments. A lot of people waste them. They go into clubs, they party all night long, 207 00:15:46,552 --> 00:15:50,518 and they have this amazing energy and it's good, don't get me wrong, I love to party. 208 00:15:51,224 --> 00:15:55,238 And sometimes to get into that flow on the dance floor, but then at the same time if you're able 209 00:15:55,238 --> 00:16:01,878 to enter into these states you can do so much more. So I ask you that question. Once you're able 210 00:16:02,621 --> 00:16:08,678 to become your own Superman - your superHERO (sorry ladies!) - what are you gonna DO with it? 211 00:16:08,918 --> 00:16:15,178 (Teemu speaking) Thank you very much Max Gotzler for your great talk on how to hack the flow state. 212 00:16:15,818 --> 00:16:19,671 Here are the top 5 scientific facts of the day about how to access the flow state, 213 00:16:20,328 --> 00:16:26,351 based on studies done by Csikszentmihalyi, Nakamura and Kotler, just to name a few. 214 00:16:26,927 --> 00:16:32,788 Number one. Flow state is a state of optimal experience that occurs when there is a balance 215 00:16:32,923 --> 00:16:37,478 between the challenge of the task and the skill of the individual performing the task. 216 00:16:38,126 --> 00:16:43,113 The task should not be too hard to become frustrating, nor should it be too easy to become boring. 217 00:16:43,815 --> 00:16:51,782 Activities like snowboarding, DJing or reading an awesome book can easily provide such an experience, just to give you a few examples. 218 00:16:52,368 --> 00:17:01,055 Number two. Flow is associated with a decrease in prefrontal cortex and an increase in the activity in the striatum, 219 00:17:01,397 --> 00:17:07,239 which is the input module to the basal ganglia, a part of the brain associated with reward processing. 220 00:17:07,797 --> 00:17:12,127 The moment one activates the prefrontal cortex to analyze too much what is happening, 221 00:17:12,758 --> 00:17:14,684 the spell of flow disappears. 222 00:17:15,170 --> 00:17:21,598 This is why, for example, golfers or archers describe that when they just trust their training 223 00:17:22,021 --> 00:17:25,811 and their bodies and don't analyze too much what is happening physically, 224 00:17:25,908 --> 00:17:29,673 they will paradoxically perform better in that physical feat. 225 00:17:30,213 --> 00:17:30,816 Number three. 226 00:17:31,599 --> 00:17:35,948 The experience of flow is associated with the release of neurochemicals such as dopamine, 227 00:17:36,163 --> 00:17:43,284 norephrine and anandamide, which are also involved in reward mechanisms. That is why the flow state 228 00:17:43,428 --> 00:17:49,127 is such a pleasant state to be in and it is comparable to taking a drug. Number four, flow. 229 00:17:50,036 --> 00:17:54,960 Experiences are associated with increased performance in a variety of domains, including sports, 230 00:17:55,428 --> 00:18:00,548 creativity and learning. Some of the world's top people describe the flow state as the primary 231 00:18:00,548 --> 00:18:05,788 source of their success. Number five, flow experiences are more likely to occur in 232 00:18:05,788 --> 00:18:10,228 activities that are intrinsically rewarding as opposed to those that are 233 00:18:10,228 --> 00:18:14,748 motivated by external factors such as money and status. What we can learn from 234 00:18:14,748 --> 00:18:19,668 this is that if you want to be happy and enjoy your life, pick up activities in 235 00:18:19,668 --> 00:18:30,748 which you spend time in a flow state as much as possible. Nothing is as frustrating as getting up in the morning, working on things that you don't like, 236 00:18:31,356 --> 00:18:35,768 being interrupted all the time, getting well paid for it, but feeling super 237 00:18:35,768 --> 00:18:40,148 miserable thinking about it. Thank you very much for listening. To learn more 238 00:18:40,148 --> 00:18:45,388 about us and biohacking, check out biohackercenter.com where you can find best 239 00:18:45,388 --> 00:18:50,441 content, supplements, technologies, courses and events such as the Biohacker Summit, so 240 00:18:51,108 --> 00:18:55,528 that you can take the guesswork out of how to champion healthy habits, prolong 241 00:18:55,528 --> 00:18:57,715 your healthspan and lead a productive life. 242 00:18:58,381 --> 00:19:01,514 Over and out. I'll catch you up in the next episode. 243 00:19:01,520 --> 00:19:13,090 Music.