There are times when I am working when I lock in on the task at hand and everything else melts away. Hours can easily speed by and I barely notice. I get lost in my work and find myself in the much whispered about, often elusive “flow state.”

At other times, I am constantly looking at the clock, checking Instagram, getting up from my desk, and playing with the dog. Getting through the day’s work can feel like pulling teeth.

I started to take a look at what makes one project more easy for me to get lost in than another and I think I uncovered the connection: solving many tiny, small “problems” one after another.

When I take on a project like editing a film, coding a website, or revising a screenplay, they are full of hundreds of micro-tasks — decisions to be made, issues to troubleshoot, ideas to test. These are exactly the kinds of projects that I find myself immersed in. The stream of small, manageable challenges they present keep me engaged, and being able to solve each problem as it pops up is both rewarding and motivating. 

Of course, some projects are full of big, difficult tasks that need more time and brain power to work through. Writing a screenplay, for example, can take a lot of big-picture thinking and deep problem-solving. And that’s ok. 

But when the opportunity is right, with this theory in mind perhaps I can break some of these unwieldy projects into more bite-sized, cyclical tasks and find myself in a flow state a bit more often.

Here are 3 great film links to get lost in this week!
Josh