You need to treat time as sacred…
In our 24/7 hustle culture this is no mean feat.. Imagine a workday where time seems to vanish, distractions fade, and your team produces their best work effortlessly. This isn’t a fantasy. It is the power of “flow states,” a concept gaining traction among forward-thinking leaders.
Steven and I explore this concept of Flow, steven is a visionary who has navigated the worlds of IBM engineering and Academy Award-winning film production. Their conversation reveals how understanding and cultivating flow can transform productivity, performance, and overall happiness within any organization. Entering a flow state typically requires 15 to 23 minutes of uninterrupted focus and that interruptions reset this process.
To facilitate flow, leaders must treat dedicated work time as sacred, encouraging “time blocking” where team members can focus without distractions like instant messages or impromptu meetings. This intentional protection of time allows for deep work and creative insights
Steven shares his unique perspective, having witnessed high performance in both highly creative and deeply technical fields. This dual experience provides a rare insight into universal patterns that drive sustainable success. His journey from IBM software engineer to visual effects producer for “Independence Day,” a VP at Fox, and now the creator of the SUkha company, a platform designed to help remote workers achieve focus and flow.
We explore why leaders might be hesitant to adopt models that prioritize deep, creative work, often attributing this to a fear of losing control over their teams. This fear often stems from a hiring problem, if leaders effectively articulate a mission and values, they will attract engaged individuals who are intrinsically motivated. Trusting talented employees to pursue the mission without constant surveillance is crucial. We touch upon the increasing importance of “inner game” skills and fostering creativity in an AI-dominated world to ensure both relevance and fulfillment.
Leaders should protect time for deep strategic thinking, as this is often given away to busywork, impeding true leadership, care and innovation. Steven’s company, SUKHA, built on the Sanskrit word for happiness through self-fulfillment, provides tools to foster these conditions for remote knowledge workers. By offering distraction blockers, curated soundscapes, and smart assistants, SUKHA helps individuals consistently enter flow states.
The result? 94-96% month-over-month retention, showing people truly value the ability to achieve deep work and finish their tasks efficiently.
What’s the one thing you will commit to protecting in your week to foster deep thought and move your strategic objectives forward?
The main insights you’ll get from this episode are :
- There are patterns that are common among high performers that must work in a hybrid world that can oscillate between periods of remote working followed by intense in-person periods.
- LLMs are great for automating established patterns but leaders must also know how to manage and create the right conditions for people to thrive in this setup – Sukha helps people create flow states for healthy productivity.
- Productivity can be defined more broadly as extracting people’s greatness and creativity, i.e. creating a flow state which provides an uplift as opposed to energy depletion.
- The trick to translating an understanding of flow into real-world situations is to treat time as sacred, e.g. by using time-blocking and -boxing, working according to chronotype, and changing working methods.
- Small insights can lead to huge competitive advantages, but they are difficult to measure and make tangible; leaders are also fearful of being unsure what their people are doing and losing ‘control’.
- This can be traced back to hiring the ‘wrong’ people: if leaders articulate the company’s mission and values correctly, they will naturally attract the type of person that wants to work in the organisation.
- Systems in organisations have antibodies to a culture of creativity and are structured around demonstrating results as a means to get things done, whereas Sukha – meaning happiness through self-fulfilment in Sanskrit – aims for flow.
- The Sukha platform offers the right aural environment, a smart assistant for optimisation, and blocks distractions to enable people to enter flow and build self-belief in defiance of the all-pervasive ‘steal your life’ model.
- Every leader (everyone) should aim to protect what we give away free for others to monetise: time for deep thought – before giving in to temptation or distraction, we can think of one thing every day that we can do to move our life forward.
Find out more about Steven and his work here :
