[00:00] Aluba: It allows you to overcome obstacles and challenges that could otherwise just cause you to get frustrated.
[00:07] Katie: Welcome back to the Focus B show. This is Katie Suddar here aka the focus b. And on this show, I interview high performers and leaders around the world to discover their secrets on peak performance, productivity, mindful wellness, and leadership. So if you want to take your performance and your leadership to the next level, then you're in the right place. Listen up and connect with the magic.
[00:43] Katie: Today's guest is Aluba Phoenix. Aluba is a Global Sales Trainer and leadership Coach with over 20 years of experience in the technology sector and a background in sports psychology. He's now working at Google and focusing on sales leadership development. He's also certified with the International Coach Federation and the Flow Research Collective.
[01:06] Aluba: My pleasure, Katie. Lovely to have the opportunity to sit down with you and thank you for the invitation.
[01:11] Katie: We have so much in common when it comes to leadership and performance. I feel that it won't be difficult to fill in 30 minutes on these topics. I'd like to begin with Flow because I saw that you went to the Flow Institute and that's a big part of also what you do. What do you feel are some of the main hacks that can help people to be more regularly and more often in Flow during the day?
[01:37] Aluba: Yeah, great question. I guess before I talk about hacks, it's probably worthwhile level setting around what we're talking about when it comes to Flow. So a lot of people will have heard the term but may not be fully aware of what we're actually talking about. So I work a lot with Salespeople, and Sales is a high performance game and in order to deliver high performance, it's important that you're in a high performance state. So this is where Flow really comes to the fore in the work that I do, because Flow is all about achieving a state of optimal performance where you feel and you function at your best. And if you look at a lot of the research around the impact that being in Flow has, what you will notice is it dramatically reduces the amount of time it takes to learn, right? So you seriously increase your capacity to learn, which I would say is probably one of the most important skills these days. It also hugely jacks up your creative problem solving. When I say hugely, university of Sydney have done a study on this 430% boost in problem solving capability, and when it comes to productivity, you're talking about a 500% boost according to McKinsey's research. So as I said, high performance game that a lot of these sales executives I work with are playing and productivity is a big focus for them. So getting into Flow changes the game in many ways and it's really about scaling your biology and thinking through that process. How do you take your game to a very, very different level. So, as I said, that's kind of what we're talking about. And it is all about biology, it's about scaling your biology. So when it comes to hacks, there's many things to consider. But I would say the most important hack of all. And if you talk to any athlete, they'll tell you this as well. They call it the most potent high performance drug there is in the planet, is good quality and quantity of sleep. Yeah, and it's something that's very overlooked by many people. But your active rest and recovery is fundamental to sustainable high performance over the long term. And this is what I'm looking for as an outcome with the people I'm working with. It's not just performance in the short term, it's sustainable high performance over the long term where people can feel and function at their best. And so active restroom recovery, then talk to an athlete, they'll tell you what they do off the pitch is equally, if not more important than what happens on the pitch. A lot of corporate executives haven't fully grasped this yet, but it is the cornerstone and the basis from which high performance is built. And sleep is the number one hack of all when it comes to your active rest and recovery.
[04:17] Katie: Absolutely, and I feel like you said that it's often overlooked and this idea of high performance is often imagined or visualized as something that's highly intense, nonstop, instead of it being periods of sort of intense and in flow. So it's intense but differently, and then periods of rest to recuperate. So what do you feel aside from this lack of rest or maybe this lack of sleep? What do you feel hinders people or prevents people from having this sustainable performance over time?
[04:46] Aluba: Yeah, well, there are lots of things. I mean, there are what are often referred to as triggers for the flow state. Think of those as preconditions for the state. There are also blockers for the state, things that will get in the way. Right? So one of the most important triggers is focused attention. And one of the big blockers is distraction. Because flow is all about deep states of concentration. So there are many ways to work on your ability to concentrate anyone with a meditation or a mindfulness practice. That's essentially what you're doing. You're training the muscle of attention so that you can then focus that attention in an intentional way. Equally, when it comes to distractions, we live in a world that's filled with distractions everywhere. And of course our technology is a prime example of distractions, constantly pulling us out of the moment. Think about how many people are addicted to their phone. It's a powerful tool when you use it in that way. It's also a huge source of distraction for many people and actually very much an addictive pattern with a lot of the executives I work with as well. Destroys your concentration, destroys your focus. Thinking about how you manage distractions and becoming aware of our ability to be distracted and the things that distract us is hugely important. This goes back to a couple of the key characteristics of great leaders, right? Self awareness and then an ability to adapt on the back of that. So a lot of what I work out with people is to help them think about how they can recalibrate their relationship to technology. So it can be a powerful tool, but not that source of distraction, which means think about the settings on your phone. How do you make it less addictive? Do you sleep at it beside your bed? Bad idea. Do you have shutdown rituals at the end of the day where you're just not looking at any technology for at least an hour or 2 hours before bed? So all of these practices and you can start to implement that can really recalibrate your relationship to sources of distraction, technology being one of them. But of course, there are many, many others as well. And a lot of it is about increasing people's self awareness and then helping them and encouraging them to take greater responsibility for the choices that they make.
[07:04] Katie: Absolutely. And you touched upon one of the main criterias and triggers for flow, which is focus, which I love. That's why my whole company is called the Focus B and I've trained my own focus. And yes, it makes a huge difference and it does enable us to be more in flow. But what are some of the other triggers that can sustain performance over time or that can help us to be in flow more often?
[07:28] Aluba: Yeah. Okay. Well, another one that comes up a lot is the idea of the challenge to skills ratio. So what that means is that there's a Goldilock zone where flow tends to show up. And that happens when the challenge that you're faced with is about 4% above your current capabilities. So if you have a challenge that's too far below your capabilities, you'll get bored. If it's too far above your capabilities, you might go into overwhelm, and you could end up in a stress state. And a stress state is not the same as a flow state. This is very important to understand. Right? But when you've got a challenge about 4% above your current capabilities, it allows you to stretch yourself without breaking, and that tends to take you into the zone of focus, concentration, and flow. So it's very important to think about how do you set challenges, hope you're a leader. How do you set challenges for people that recognize where they're at and give them that kind of 4% challenge to skills ratio? And also, if you find yourself in a situation where you are in overwhelm, how can you chunk down the task? So you start to look at smaller, incremental steps that start to move towards that 4% and each day looking to push that 4% more, right? And then you get that compounded effect over the long term. But the challenge to skills ratio is crucial. So, for example, when I'm doing group coaching sessions with people, if I have an exercise I'm giving them, I'll often look at kind of three versions of that exercise. There might be a really easy version, there might be a medium version, there might be a harder version, and have people then choose one that best fits the challenge to skills ratio that can help them get into flow. That's a key kind of trigger or key precondition for the state. The other thing that's very important as well are the goals. People have having clarity and clear goals because this helps drive focus on concentration. And I always say to people, the best way to think about this is to begin with your MTP, which means your massively transformational purpose, your why. Steve Jobs used to say the dent you want to put in the universe, right, why are you here? So come to an understanding of that for yourself and then you can start to relate your high heart performance goals to that. So what are they for the next three years? What are they for the year, for the half, for the quarter, for the month, for the week, right down to your daily to do list and have a clear line of sight between your daily to do list right back up to your massively transformational purpose and a way to calibrate around that on a regular basis. So that's referred to as a clear goal stack. Now, a lot of people talk about the importance of goal setting, but very few people will go through the exercise to really create that clear goal stack. But one of the reasons why it's so important, it allows you then to become laser focused on what are the exponential levers of your performance, right? So you can say yes to that and start saying no to the stuff that is not exponential. There's only a certain amount of time in the day if you want to get into flow consistently. It's important that you play full out when you're working, but you also have a discipline around your active rest and recovery, right? So when you're playing full out, make sure you're working on the exponential levers of your business or your performance or whatever it happens to be, rather than incremental stuff. And a clear goal stack is hugely, hugely important to help bring that focus and attention and then, as I said, allow you to drive into the flow as well.
[11:06] Katie: I think it's so important what you just said, and I feel that the lack of alignment between people's daily tasks and the overarching goal or vision, yes, it makes such a huge difference. It's what I try and think of in my own mind now is reflecting upon this yesterday, what's my pareto here? So I keep thinking like, what's my pareto what's my pareto? So what's the 20% that really makes the difference? But this is what you're talking about. You're talking about the actual work, the actual daily tasks that will contribute to your overall goal or vision for the next few years.
[11:41] Aluba: Exactly. Are you intentional about everything that you're doing now? Look, it's very difficult to be intentional about absolutely everything. You're right, you're only human. But the more intentionality you can bring to what you're doing, particularly as it relates to your performance, that's about self awareness. And then you can adjust and adapt around that. And one of the great calibration points is your North Star. It's that massively transformational purpose because you're invariably going to hit periods of low motivation. What gets you beyond that? It's recalibrating around your why, what's your meaning, what's your purpose? Coming back to that. And of course, this is not a new concept. Think about all the religious traditions that talk about your dharma, right, from you or your true will or your purpose. It's embedded in a lot of our traditions. Part of the reason it's so important is because it allows you to overcome obstacles and challenges that could otherwise just cause you to get frustrated and to not stay with the process. And this thing about how we deal with frustration is also very important when it comes to flow because one of the big blockers for flow is a fixed mindset. So what happens with a fixed mindset? With any task, you reach a point of frustration and then you leave the task or you get frustrated because you're frustrated, et cetera. Right. And you tend to walk away from it. Now, a person with a growth mindset won't do that. A person with a growth mindset will find a way to push through the frustration because if they start to fail or whatever, they'll just see it as a form of feedback. This is very, very important. The front end of the flow cycle is what's called the struggle phase. And what happens in the struggle phase is you're working on a problem and you're working, work and work until you get to a point of failure. And frustration then starts to arise within your system. Now, again, if you have a negative attitude towards frustration, that's going to be a problem for you. But if you're a flow hacker, you won't see that as a problem. You will actually welcome that because, say, all right, front end of the flow cycle here. And if that challenge to skills ratio is right, you can then hold your concentration and you can push through. But if it's not, you might want to go and do a different activity to move yourself from that struggle phase into what's called the release phase. This is the next stage of the flow cycle. And what you will see in the transition between the struggle phase to the release phase is a change in your brainwave patterns. So in the struggle phase, you'll tend to be in beta brainwaves normal waking consciousness. As you go into the release phase, your brain moves into alpha waves. So this is the type of waves associated with light, meditation or daydreaming. So you can intentionally do an activity that's a state change that will take you into alpha. So, for example, if you're a knowledge worker and you've been working on a problem at your desk, get up and go for a walk. Think about where people have some of their best ideas when they're on a walk, when they're in the shower, when their conscious mind is not actively working on the problem, but they kind of have this more of a hypnagogic type of state and they're in the alpha. Or you could do something where you let go of all of the input and have zero input. So one of the great flow hacks that I teach people is wall staring. And by that I mean spending ten or 15 minutes and just going staring at a blank wall with zero input whatsoever. And that will drop your brain into alpha. And then the key very important, you must return to your task at that point. And because when you're an alpha, you can then drop into these deeper states of concentration where you'll see theta waves start to show up, that will take you into flow. Flow happens at the boundary of alpha and theta waves. So things like a release activity or an intentional release activity to then come back to the task and then you work more, as I said, skillfully with that frustration that shows up on the struggle phase.
[15:28] Katie: Yes. And I feel that people, instead of doing that intentional release, whether it's staring at a wall or going for a walk, I also love that one. Or even getting up, having a glass of water at tea, this is where people, instead of doing that, tend to get distracted and do something else. And here you have a lot of input and then it breaks it then they don't get into flow and they sort of end up multitasking and going back and forth.
[15:51] Aluba: Yeah. And this is where your clear goals come in again, right? So I often say to the folks I'm working with, you want to have periods of time in your diary for what I call deep work. And what that will look like is about 90 to 120 minutes of focus, concentration time protected in your diary where you have clear goals for what it is you're looking to achieve. And you are very good at protecting that. Right? So if anyone comes in with requests, you say no, which is again a big skill that a lot of people struggle with. Right. So you're good at saying no because you've brought your focus here, you've got clear goals for what you're actually doing. And as I said, you work skillfully then with what arises in that. So frustration rises. You go do something like a wall star, you come back to the task to get yourself into that flow state. You can only ever hold your concentration for about 90 to 120 minutes. At that point, you're going to have to step away and you're going to have to do something to rejuvenate yourself and then you come back for another block of flow. So these are some of the principles to think about becoming a student of your calendar and really, as I said, thinking about how you intentionally create periods of time for deep focus concentration work. It's hugely, hugely important for flow.
[17:03] Katie: Yes, absolutely. I agree with everything you say. I want to come back to what we were saying before between the daily task and that overarching vision because even though that's something I also teach and train and believe in and agree upon, I sometimes really struggle to find my pareto or my daily task that will really contribute to that vision. For instance, I'll just quickly share because maybe the audience can identify if I'm thinking about marketing my business. There's so many different alleys or social media or how often I tend not to want to engage, for instance, on social media because I don't find it deep work enough like writing a blog article or being on a podcast. Yet it is one of the tasks that technically contributes to growing my business on social media. So the reason I'm sharing this is because I'd like to know what ideas you have around being able to identify these daily tasks that really do contribute to that vision. Because there's a ton that could and then there's that 20% that actually make a difference.
[18:04] Aluba: Yeah, great question. I mean, there's two things that come to mind there, right? The first thing to say is that you are not going to be in flow the entire time when you're looking to bring a project to fruition. Okay? It's important to accept that because if your only source of flow is your work, that's an invitation to work addiction and it's also an invitation to actually pull yourself away from maybe some of those more grittier tasks that require you to stick with them. Right? So I always say it's very good to have a hobby, something else that gets you into flow. So if you're craving that, you go do that, then you come back and you work with some of the gritty stuff that you need to do, right? So that's just an important principle to say. First and foremost in terms of identifying what are the exponential levers of your business experience is one way to understand that. Models of excellence is another way to understand it. Right? So who is in your field? Who is achieving outcomes that you were looking to achieve? How are they doing that? What processes are they using? And getting curious about how you might be able to model what they're actually doing right, maybe take two or three people who are achieving an outcome that you'd be interested in achieving. What behavior are they doing? What intuitions do they have associated with that behavior? What's their maps and meanings and models of the world? And by understanding that, how can you then come up with a strategy for yourself that could allow you have a similar outcome? So I think that process of modeling is very important in terms of coming down to what might be some of the exponential levers, look who is already successful. That's the easy way to do it. The hard way is to figure out yourself as you go along, which of course you're going to need a bit of both as you go. But I think it's probably a combination.
[19:56] Katie: And this is one of the things that I love about hosting a podcast is I get lots of models of excellence and I think this is how they're spending their time and this is one of the things they do. And I get ideas and inspiration and I copy. But it's interesting also what you were saying about not wanting to be in flow all day. I think this is something I tend towards and they are entire days, sometimes weeks, it feels where I'm in flow constantly and outside of my work also. But it's true that sometimes some maybe gritty tasks that we actually don't enjoy as much but are also important in business. For instance, in my case it's engagement. I love creating content, but I'm the sort of person I would just create all day, post and disappear. And I find it the reason why I don't necessarily enjoy engagement in social media is it's actually because of the lack of intentionality. So if I want to read something on flow, I want to look up flow and find an article. If it happens to appear on my feed, that's cool, but it's not linked to how you know. This is just something I have to work on and my technique just in the audience who maybe feels sometimes the same. Way is I've found like, three, four, five key people who I pretty much always enjoy their content, like Mel Robbins, and I literally just go straight to her profile, look, write a comment, leave. And that avoids me scrolling and getting too much input. And I think this is also an interesting point. How can people manage to what should people practice and habits they should put in place to have less input? Because I feel this also highly dilutes flow and concentration throughout the day. Embrace boredom, stay at the wall, go for a walk, don't listen to the.
[21:39] Aluba: Podcast, not needs to have input the entire time. In fact, it's very counterproductive, actually. So periods of time where you just allow the mind to wander. In fact, we talked about deep work. One of the other exercises I often give the executives I work with is what I call an exercise around deep think where you'll put 2 hours in the diary with no particular agenda other than to come up with some answers to maybe two or three key questions. And I often say to them, come up with 30 answers in that two hour period, that's all you have to do. And it's amazing the amount of insights that come from that. But a period to just let the mind kind of wander and stuff like that without inputting stuff the whole time to it can be very helpful. So I think moments of this is why the active rest and recovery is so important as well. Moments of relaxation, moments of winding down, massively, massively important. You are not going to be able to deliver sustainable high performance over the long term if you're constantly, as I said, trying to play out full out the whole time. And also if you've got a very, very high cognitive load, think about the amount of people are holding stuff in their heads and they can't sleep because of that. Right? So activities that will help you lower your cognitive load are also important. Journaling, getting it out on the paper, all of these things can make a big difference. To just lower the cognitive load and no input as well helps. Before bedtime, what are people's rituals before bed? A lot of people watch Netflix or have a glass of wine while they're doing it. Nothing wrong with that. It's not active rest and recovery. And actually it's very counterproductive for your sleep. Alcohol will suppress REM sleep. The blue light coming off the screens will impact your melatonin levels. You're not going to be sleeping correctly, so fine, if you want to do it. You're probably not going to be sleeping like a professional though, right? So a professional athlete will have a very different approach to sleep. They will ritualize how they approach their bedtime. So a protocol where maybe at the end of your working day you stop at a particular time, you do a reflection exercise. This is often left out with a lot of people, the importance of reflection. So you get down how the day went and then maybe what are your key goals for the next day. Lowers the cognitive load. Go for a walk, right? Do something else that relax. I've got an infrared sauna, so I'll often jump into that in the evening time. But there are other things you can do to relax, calming your physiology and calming your psychology because that's what sleep is. It's progressive calming about your physiology and your psychology. So how are you approaching in the bedtime so that when you do hit the pillow, you're able to get sleep quickly and get good quality and quantity of sleep. We mentioned the start, but it is the foundation for all high performance and it's so often overlooked. So often overlooked.
[24:34] Katie: Yes, definitely. I could just listen to your day. I just love all of this and the way you speak about it, and it's so clear and so concise and so to the point. It's fantastic. We're coming to the end of the show already, and I'm wondering, what question haven't I asked you so far that you feel would be relevant here?
[24:54] Aluba: Yeah, I mean, what we haven't covered, which is quite interesting one, is the dark side of flow.
[24:59] Katie: Okay, well, we still have, like, five, six minutes, so we could go into that is great.
[25:04] Aluba: And it is. And there's also a dark side to it as well. The dark side refer knowledge worker is work addiction, where you're chasing the flow state. And just to give you an idea, right, flow is highly, highly addictive. What happens in a flow state is you get a dump of five of the most potent neurochemicals the body can produce. So you've got Norepinephrine, you've got Dopamine, you've got an, Andamine you have Serotonin. Yeah. And so all of these things come into your system, right? So Dopamine and Norepinephrine, they tighten your focus. They increase pattern recognition. They lower the signal to noise ratio. Anandamine increases lateral thinking. So you have lateral thinking, pattern recognition increasing. You've then got Opiates as well in the body as well, painkillers endorphins that come in. And then you've got Serotonin, which helps you keep calm and carry on. Norepinephrine and dopamine well, norepinephrine is a bit like speed. Dopamine is cocaine, essentially, right? Anandamine is like THC, right? Endorphins are and serotonin is like MDNA. This is what the flow state is. It's a highly addictive state. So dark side is work addiction, or the dark side is chasing flow with a particular activity that could be dangerous because we're much more likely to take risks when we're in flow. So if you look at some of the people who are best at getting into flow on the planet, it's action venture sports athletes, those folks chasing waves 100ft and above, right? A lot of them die pretty young as they're chasing the state. So this is why I say it's important to have a hobby as a knowledge worker, right? So you don't focus on just having to get your flow out of your work. You have something else that can get you into flow as well. And also, ideally, multiple things. One of the problems with athletes, if they have a predominant activity for getting to flow and they get injured and they can't do that activity, they're locked out of flow back to depression. So there is a dark side to the state as well. And also knowing when to stop as well and actually have a shutdown period is crucial. You don't want to be burning to the very end of the state. You want to be trying to stop at a peak. Ernest Hemingway, you know the author Ernest Hemingway, he always used to have an expression I love. He says, Stop while you're still excited. Talking. About his writing. Okay. But it replies great to flow as well. Stop while you're at that peak because you're much more likely to want to come back the next day and get back into that excitement and you're not burning yourself out to the fumes. Right. You kind of have a shutdown ritual and a discipline around how you shut down. So I think just that'd be the only other thing to say. There is this dark side to the state as well and it's very important that when you're looking to hack flow that you realize that as well.
[27:55] Katie: Yes, that's definitely not something I would have thought of, even though, I mean, I did read the book on flow and he does mention the addictive side to it. But again, that was probably not my main takeaway from the book. And I like this idea of finishing on the peak. This is not something I've ever thought about. So this is something I'm sort of making a mental note to reflect upon because I think the way I work and maybe other people who have a tendency to work flow is I get into flow, I do the deep work, then I get out of my deep work. This is when I should stop after around an hour and a half, it tends to be for me 90 minutes. And sometimes I manage. I stop, take a break, do something else, come back and do 90 minutes of flow. But sometimes I continue that 90 minutes and it turns into two and a half hours. And that last hour was checking emails, answering things and doing small things and then I think it's like I lose it. I'm super intentional in flow. And so that's exactly it. When I finish and I'm still in flow, this is when instead of it being addictive and making me want to continue working and just doing stuff, that's when you stop, you're still in peak, you stop, you feel good, take a break, come back. Because otherwise yeah, I mean, it's just more performing to do it that way.
[29:05] Aluba: Exactly. Yeah. And look, this is a big issue for many of the executives I work with and because if you look at people's value hierarchies work, for many high performance is right at the top. It's a virtue. Active rest and recovery, self care way down the here. So what's the first thing they could sacrifice when pressure comes on? People start letting go of the self care and they just start working harder. I talk to managers who work 50 to 60 hours a week and I keep telling them that you're in burnout territory, you're actually in burnout territory. And you're probably not going to be as productive either with that amount of time because the research and productivity is very clear. After about 36 hours, your productivity falls off a cliff. So how are you using those 36 hours? Are you getting into flow? Are you focused on the exponential levers of your business and your performance? And do you have the ability to be disciplined when it comes to your active rest and recovery so you can shut down and take that active rest and recovery right up to the top of your values hierarchy? So it's the same element of your professionalism as your work. There's no difference. One goes hand in hand with the other. Right? And again, the athlete analogy is very helpful here because any athlete will tell you, what do you do off the pitch? Equally, if not more important, what do they do on the pitch? This is what corporate athletes need to understand as well. I think more and more people are starting to realize this because burnout is such a systemic issue, but unfortunately, it is still such a systemic issue. Right. So there's still a lot of readjustment, even with the awareness, there's still a lot of readjustment around patterns of behavior, et cetera, needed to go.
[30:37] Katie: Yes. It's so wonderful to hear someone preach the same message I do. I've been on so many podcast interviews where all I say is so important to take breaks for your focus, you need to take breaks. You need to take breaks. And I feel I'm saying it all the time, and it's exactly what you're saying. There's this tendency to imagine work and working harder today is amazing. And rest and recovery, it's whatever. It's when you have time or later and people just don't realize that they're on the same level. So, yes, it's wonderful. I'm going to record this, copy it, paste it, see the same. It's so important. And, I mean, I guess you're probably the same, but we also feel it in our own lives when we start to practice.
[31:16] Aluba: It 100% amazing.
[31:19] Katie: Well, we've already reached the end. I've absolutely loved this episode. I was in flow the whole time. I hope you were, too. Thank you so much for being a guest on the show today.
[31:29] Aluba: My pleasure, Katie. And thank you for the invitation. Really lovely to have the opportunity to connect.
[31:34] Katie: Thank you.
[31:39] Katie: Thank you so much for tuning in today to the Focus Bees show. I would absolutely love to hear your feedback. So let me know in an Apple review or YouTube comment what was most valuable for you, and feel free to share this episode with a friend or a family member. Wishing you a wonderful, magical and focused day ahead. Sam.