February's 30-day Challenge: Flow

The New Year started off with a bang of productivity, but then my family faced constant sickness for the last 3-weeks. Ugh. The cure? Doubling down by focusing on flow in February.

One of my top 3 intentions of 2024 is to focus on compounding efforts. What do I mean by compounding efforts? You know how Seth Godin has published an article on his blog every day for like 20 years? Or how Beeple has created a new piece of art every day for 15 years? That kind of compounding.

But this January? Damn. It put my willpower to the test. Since January 7th, at least two people in my family have been full-blown sick. That’s 3.5 straight weeks of illness. And the climax was this past weekend where all 4 of us were sick at the same time.

Talk about a momentum killer!

I had attempted to make January a month of boxing and weight training. However, it’s impossible to throw punches when just standing up makes you dizzy. So I pivoted to meditation, and was able to string together 3-weeks of mindfulness. It wasn’t the intended goal, but it did help me stay intentional through an otherwise stressful situation.

Now I have a fresh month ahead of me, and I wanted to pick something that can help me kickstart momentum (and maybe catch back up to where I should be).

A few years ago, I took 12-week workshop (Zero to Dangerous) from the Flow Research Collective. It combined theoretical knowledge with practical application, and the goal of the course was to achieve peak performance by being able to trigger flow states on demand. As someone that used to coach these techniques in Track and Field, I wanted to obtain a similar level of mastery in the chaose of startup life.

The course was great, but I didn’t fully master the material in terms of long-term habit formation. For a while, I got my screentime down to below 1 hour/day and had many blocks of deep work throughout my work day. Lately, not so much. Too much screen time, and a somewhat choppy work schedule.

So this month, I will spend 30 minutes each morning going through the coursework again each morning as a refresher. I will also try to share any key facts or insights on my Twitter account (@rickmanelius) or the occasional article here. This will not only hold me more accountable, but there’s a ton of great information that I think you’ll be able to apply to your personal and professional life.

I’m going to kickoff tomorrow, and I hope you find the things I share along the way to be helpful. Onwards