Your Work Should Put You In The Zone

You’ve heard people say “find something you love and you’ll never work a day in your life.” This advice is, of course, completely untrue. It’s exaggerated. It’s misunderstood.

If you find something you love, you should be working hard at it. You should always be working hard at something. And, even if you love what you’re doing, it still involves sacrifice and the unpleasant discipline of labor.

Finding something you love is not about waking up every day and feeling 8 hours of nonstop pleasure. It’s about waking up every day and challenging yourself in all the right ways. It’s about finding something that challenges you in the ways that you like, instead of the ways that you hate.

Waking up every day and punching numbers into spreadsheets is challenging because it sucks and it feels completely pointless. It’s challenging because it takes everything you have not to rage quit. Because it feels like a total waste of your time. Because it feels like a waste of your skills and talents and strengths. Which it probably is.

It’s not testing you in a way that’s meaningful to you. All it’s testing is your discipline to stay in your chair and keep working.

Discipline to keep working is great. You need that. But you also need much more than that.

With the corporatization of the modern world, we have been inundated with jobs that feel extremely hollow. We’ve always had jobs that are difficult, like mining and farming and complex accounting. But in the modern economy many (or even most) of our jobs involve a variety of basic tasks that feel completely devoid of meaning. Tasks like entering numbers into ten different systems, sending meaningless emails, and trying to sell things to people who don’t want them.

We aren’t producing anything, we aren’t helping anyone with anything… we aren’t changing anything about the world. Whether we are aware of it or not, this makes us hate our jobs.

And the worst part is, it leaves us feeling deeply unfulfilled. Because we aren’t even suffering all this nonsense for something we care about.

What most people are missing is the right kind of challenge. What most people are missing is a job that puts them in the flow state.

According to Wikipedia, the flow state is

the mental state in which a person performing some activity is fully immersed in a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and enjoyment in the process of the activity. In essence, flow is characterized by the complete absorption in what one does, and a resulting transformation in one's sense of time. Flow is the melting together of action and consciousness; the state of finding a balance between a skill and how challenging that task is. It requires a high level of concentration; however, it should be effortless.

I like to think of it as the Goldilocks point of challenge: it’s not too easy, and it’s not too hard. It’s the point at which you are constantly challenged, but never bored and never overwhelmed. It’s just right.

The flow state is also known as being “in the zone.”

When someone is in the zone, they are completely absorbed by what they are doing, and they don’t hate it.

They like it. It’s meaningful to them. It’s testing them in ways in which they want to be tested.

You can reach a state of concentration and focus doing just about anything. But it’s often hard to stay there for more than a few minutes without becoming distracted, because you really don’t want to be concentrated and focused on it. You just have to be. Your paycheck depends on it.

Most people don’t like their jobs because there is nothing about their jobs that puts them in the zone. There is no section of their job that is rewardingly challenging, or meaningfully difficult. It’s just difficult for no good reason. Challenging for no reward other than money.

I quit my job 3 years ago to start trading. And, all things considered, it went extremely well.

I failed miserably at trading, lost $40,000, and had to start my life over completely at 32 years old.

But I had finally admitted to myself that I needed something better than some meaningless office job. I had finally decided that taking a risk was what I needed. A risk on doing something meaningfully challenging, rather than the safety of a gig that meant nothing to me. I had finally decided: I refuse to grow old working jobs I hate. I’m not doing it.

I’d rather go broke nine more times than go back to working flavorless corporate desk jobs. They drain my soul and my energy and give me nothing in return.

If I’m going to trade my energy away, I’m damn well going to get something more for it than money.

My trading led me through a lot of pain. It led me to question myself as a man more than once. But it also led me to an outstanding individual who then hired me and became my boss. I now have a job that challenges me properly. It lets me be creative, and write, and engage with the market, and do hard things that I want to be doing. It puts me in my zone in a lot of ways.

The reason you want flow in your job is because you spend half of your waking hours at work. If you don’t achieve flow there, you’ve only got a few hours left to work with every day. You won’t find enough “zone” in those 3 free hours you have every evening. You’ll have to get it at work.

I saw an interview with Jay-Z where he referred to something he does with his music. He practices each song 18 times so that he can commit the lyrics to memory. And of course that might sound suspiciously like work. It is work. But it’s not entering numbers in a spreadsheet. He’s practicing something that is challenging him and testing all the right skills, all of the time.

When a trader is watching the market attentively, he’s in the zone. He’s absorbing information second by second, watching for actionable signals. When a dancer is performing her routine, she’s in the zone. She’s using balance and timing to make her body move smoothly and beautifully from one motion to the next. And when Jay-Z is performing (or practicing) one of his songs, he’s in his zone. He’s sharpening his rhythm, enunciation, and tone with precision. He gets paid quite handsomely, but he also enjoys the state it puts him in.

People look at rappers or writers or other artistic jobs and think “how easy. That person has it easy. Anyone can do that.” Well yes, and no.

Does everyone have the ability to be a rapper or a commercially successful artist or a writer? No.

But does everyone have something they could be doing that would produce meaningful productivity and fascinated engagement? Yes. Definitely. Everyone has something like that. And there exists a job for it somewhere. And if there isn’t, make one. Take a risk and make one.

And most people have multiple different skill sets and multiple ways they like to be challenged. Maybe your top 4 skills are visual art, dancing, decorating, and sales. I’m sure that you could find a job that gives you meaningful focus and happiness in one of those four areas. Or maybe more than one. It doesn’t have to be perfect, it just has to be meaningful enough to you that it’s a fuck yes. There’s no perfect job. But there are jobs that will be good for you and many more that won’t.

And, once your job is no longer a fuck yes, you take a risk and look for something new. Sometimes you have to wander around for a while, discouraged and directionless. And that’s okay. The key is that you’re looking. You’re not staying somewhere that makes you feel dead inside. Somewhere that doesn’t challenge you in any of the right ways.

And here’s a bonus tip: pay attention to the people in your life and look for what meaningfully engages them. Look for where those you love enter the flow state. The state of fascinated exploration and willingness to confront challenge. And encourage them like hell to pursue those interests. Even if those interests don’t pay well, and even if you don’t really care for those interests yourself.

If you want to be a good influence on somebody, encourage them to engage with what means the most to them; to become an expert in something that satisfies them. Encourage them to find their zone and spend time there. Because it will make them feel productive and creative and useful. Those are great feelings. Those are essential feelings.

Chasing money is for people who don’t understand life. And to those who do understand life, money will probably come anyway.

One way that many people achieve the flow state is with video games. Video games are artificial flow-generation machines. They test your reflexes and skills and problem solving abilities in a fast-paced or structured way. They put you in an environment where you are being tested in ways that are interesting and fun.

And for that reason, video games are wonderful. Any reasonable person could spend a few hours a week playing games and nobody could say anything bad about it.

But video games are also a trap. They are offering you a cheap way to achieve flow. With no risk, no meaning, no sacrifice, no engagement with real-world outcomes or consequences. You’re not changing anything, you’re not producing anything, and you’re not helping anyone with anything. You’re using your flow only for yourself, and giving the world nothing out of it.

This is why grown men sit around playing video games dozens of hours a week. Because it’s tempting in a very deep way — even a deeply emotional or spiritual way. It gives them something they’re not getting somewhere else.

And this is also why it’s such a shame. Because it’s a cheap way to feel useful and productive and valuable, even when you’re not. It’s free candy where hunted meat would be better.

At one end of the spectrum you’re never in the zone — and at the other end you’re there all the time but nothing comes of it. As with anything in life, you must try to be somewhere in the middle.

I spend a little bit of time every day in the flow state. Doing research, writing, programming something, or engaged in meaningful conversation. Yes, conversation can put you there too. Which is why it’s incredibly important to have people around you that you find interesting.

And of course I’m lucky to have the job I have, and I’m lucky to have readers for my writing. I’m grateful. But I also took the risks necessary to get here. And I think you should too. Find a few things that would be worth spending your work day on, and go after them. Even if getting there is scary and risky.

And find some hobbies that push the right buttons too. Everyone needs a good hobby or two. They will make you a better person. Because they will yank out the best of you, and that will make you feel good about yourself.

Drink some water and get paid quite handsomely for it,

JDR

“When your work speaks for itself, don't interrupt.” - Henry J. Kaiser