The Flowstate Framework

If you process information for a living, you are a knowledge worker.

People pay you for your expertise. But do you know how to manage that knowledge effectively? It's no longer just about information. It's increasingly about your perspective on that information.

That's what makes you unique, and that's what your client or employer pays you for.

As a knowledge worker, managing information and tasks is an essential part of your job. You need to be able to quickly find, process, and apply information to effectively carry out your tasks.

But with the amount of information coming at us daily, it can be a huge challenge to structure your work in a focused and goal-oriented way.

Introducing the FlowState framework to regain your focus, create structure, and find a new perspective once and for all.

The problem

According to various studies, you process the equivalent of 174 newspapers worth of information every day. Our brains are not designed for this overwhelming amount, so many people struggle, burn-out or worse.

We miss opportunities because we're too busy with day-to-day affairs and usually have no energy left at the end of the day for the things that really matter like your partner, family, and friends.

Distraction is another problem. Phone calls and emails are one thing, but what about the distractions in your head? How resilient are you against daily stress?

Do you have a place for all your ideas and tasks? Or are you smart enough to remember everything? (Spoiler alert, no matter how high your education level, nobody can remember everything.)

In short, in our daily work, we deal with information overload and distractions. That's why it's essential to find and maintain focus again.

Creating a solid structure for managing our tasks, responsibilities, and knowledge is necessary to share our unique perspective.

The solution? The FlowState framework

The solution to common problems in your work can be found in three categories:

🧠 Focus

Focus means choose. Deciding what you do, but also what you will no longer do. And that's what makes it so difficult, because there's always something more enjoyable, better, or easier to do.

📊 Structure

Once you've made choices and brought focus, you can't do without the right structure. There will be bad days when you're less attentive. Workflows and the right tools act as guardrails to prevent you from going off track on days when things don't go as planned.

💡 Perspective

Information is everywhere. Your perspective on that information is what makes the difference. Your core qualities, character traits, background, and experience are what makes the information value. It's impossible and, more importantly, very unwise to think that you can store all the information in your head and then also make connections.

🧠 Focus

Before we discuss the practical matters surrounding focus, it's important to understand that there are both internal and external distractions.

Internal distractions:

To gain control over the 'voices' in your head that often distract you with various thoughts, many people delve into the world of personal development.

After immersing myself in the world of personal development for many years and listening to Tony Robbins, Brendon Burchard, and other "gurus," I discovered that the solution isn't in a pep talk to yourself.

A technique known nowadays as Voice Dialogue.

Voice Dialogue can be reduced to a simple concept that I can best explain to you based on an analogy of a car.

The car represents your inner self and has various seats. On those seats sit the driver and the passengers, representing your different sub-personalities. Sub-personalities include, for example: the stress-head, the joker, the jerk, the pusher, etc.

The question is:

• Who's behind the wheel? Which voice (sub-personality) has control over your thoughts and actions? Just as the driver of a car steers the vehicle and determines where it goes, so does the voice behind the wheel dictate what you do and how you react to situations.

• Who's in the backseat giving advice? You don't have just one voice; you have hundreds of voices (sub-personalities) involved in making choices. These 'voices' can advise you and influence the decisions you make, just like a passenger in the backseat can interfere with the driver.

Once you understand and accept that no voice is wrong, but perhaps not the best contributor to what you want to do and achieve at that moment, you've taken a big step forward.

External distractions:

If you have control over the conversation with yourself, you are already ahead of 80% of people. However, there is a second form of distraction. And the best way to resist this distraction is to master the art of elimination.

Essentialism:

In the book "Essentialism" Greg McKeown describes a philosophy that focuses on identifying and pursuing what is truly important and essential in our lives.

Instead of trying to do everything at once, essentialism encourages you to prioritize and focus on the things that are most valuable.

The Non-essentialist says 'yes' to almost every request or opportunity. The essentialist says 'yes' only to the top 10 percent of opportunities. They also use broad, implicit criteria like "is this exactly what I'm looking for" or "does this contribute to my highest goal."

Exercise:

Grab a pen and paper and write down a project you want to give at least 60% of your attention to over the next 3 months.

Then note:

• Which 3 results do you want to achieve with that project, and choose the most important result from those 3 results.

• Which 3 activities do you need to undertake to achieve that most important result, and then choose 1 activity.

• What are the 2 subtasks that you perform every day?

Other practical tips for even more focus:

• Turn OFF all notifications! Notifications are the biggest enemy of focus. Turn them off on all your devices.

• Avoid task switching. Each time you switch tasks, your attention lingers a bit on the previous task. This phenomenon is called attention residue, which reduces focus and productivity.

• Know the keyboard shortcuts for the programs you work with daily. The more often you switch between the mouse and keyboard, the more time you lose. A simple Google search for the words 'shortcut' or 'hotkey' in combination with the software will often yield enough results.

In part two of this blog series, I will share my insights, tips, and tools with you for better structure.