why is it that we can scroll social media play video games for hours without trying but struggle to focus even minutes on our most important priorities science shows there's an easy way to solve this so that you can consistently allocate your time to what you know is most important and make doing hard work feel like scrolling Tik Tok now I'm R darus co-founder and CEO of the flow research Collective along with my partner Steven Cotler we taught thousands of professionals how to access flow States at will why is it that video Gamers can easily spend 16-hour days solving What in reality are incredibly complex problems in the 2019 fortnite World Cup bugga then 16 years old triumphed over 40 million competitors worldwide winning millions of dollars professional Gamers can experience stress levels akin to professional athletes with heart ratees spiking to 160 or 180 beats per minute making up to 400 movements per minute on the keyboard and mouse the cognitive demands are intense how can rock climbers spend day after day pushing their bodies to their limits in pure Bliss take the case of Alex honold for 4 hours he climbed 3,000 ft up sheer Granite without ropes or safety gear just his hands and feet on the bare rock face one of the greatest athletic Feats of any kind how can some preachers pastors public speakers and seminar facilitators give hours and hours of intense presentation with no sense of grind some speakers are even known to burn up to 11,000 calories per day the equivalent of running three marathons consider Martin Luther King Jr during the Civil Rights Movement he frequently spoke for hours all under the high pressure context of social change in front of restless crowds it's easy to assume that all of these people are genetic mutants what's actually happening here is a phenomenon known as effortless exertion effortless exertion is a core characteristic of a psychological State called flow a concept introduced by psychologist Mii jihi describes a state of complete immersion and focus in an activity when in flow individuals experience a sense of fluidity between their body and mind often leading to high levels of productivity and creativity part of the reason why effortless exertion occurs is due to a phenomenon called transient hypofrontality the temporary deactivation of the prefrontal cortex prefrontal cortex is integral in constructing our sense of self it helps us track the passage of time plan for the future reflect on the past and integrate both to form a narrative of Self in the present with the prefrontal cortex less active there's a temporary diminishment in the sense of self this reduction in self focus contributes to the feeling of effortlessness in a way the is no self to be aware of the effort being exerted leading to an altered perception of time where hours can pass by and would feel like minutes making challenging tasks feel easier and more enjoyable this is how rock climbers speakers writers and programmers can do incredibly complex and demanding work for hours on end without any signs of slowing down but here's the thing what effortless exertion is one of the things that makes flow formidable for productivity and performance effortless exertion can also happen in wildly unproductive activities like scrolling social media playing video games or binging a crime series on Netflix though being immersed in work and social media scrolling are dramatically different activities especially in the results they can produce the uniting feature between Flow State and things like social media scrolling is effortless exertion the same mechanisms that can drive Peak Performance can just as easily evaporate your time this means effortless exertion is both a superpower and a liability it depends on what activity you find this effortless exertion within and here's something critical to keep in mind about effortless exertion even though the exertion feels effortless it's actually fatiguing that means there's a double downside you don't notice the exertion and yet it fatigues you so you end up evaporating time while depleting your physiology it's similar to how you can increase your calorie load effortlessly without feeling full by drinking soda or how you can effortlessly ACR credit card debt with small purchases and this results in time slippage time slippage occurs when we waste our time on unproductive stuff that feels effortless but actually fatigues us leaving us with less to give to our goals and no no neurochemical resources left to get into flow so how do you minimize time slippage the degree to which effortless exertion saps your time through liabilities while maximizing effortless exertion on the things that are productive well one year on a flight back from Ireland to the US I was looking at my journal from the previous year what I saw emphasized again and again was how important and high leverage it would have been to have recruited a CMO that year I knew that the company depended on Landing a qualified CMO before our Rivals did for every hour I wasn't in investing in finding this person top-notch candidates would get scooped up and competitors gain that Advantage I knew all of it and yet when I looked at my calendar from the past year I saw something shocking I spent two hours a week at the most on activities related to finding interviewing and vetting a CMO the gap between what I flagged as being hugely important and how I actually spent my time was appalling this time slippage feels like a shocking punch to the gut to find out the reality of how you spend your time and what you deem is important on route to achieving big goals we often think we don't have enough time but really due to time slippage we're just grossly underestimating how inaccurate our perception of time is and how we allocate it you know how when you send someone a venmo or you get money in your bank account it's logged and calculated automatically well unlike money by default time doesn't get logged it's not calculated unless you calculate it this makes it more difficult to allocate as a result by default we're so bad at allocating time that if it were money we would be doing the equivalent of go into future threatening death time slippage isn't something you can fix entirely rather you must continuously assess the gap between your intentions and time allocation to prevent time slippage and the way to do this is to become a temporal architect a temporal architect is someone with near complete awareness of how they spend their time like a meticulous accountant who knows exactly where every penny is spent because they know how they spend their time they have complete control over where their time is allocated most of all the temporal architect sets the future in motion by allocating their time time usage in advance this allows you to become the puppet master of your future self by becoming a temporal architect you can leverage effortless exertion and flow for productive tasks and masterfully avoid the unproductive Dark Side of effortless exertion how do you become a temporal architect well the solution is deceptively simple time tracking we'll cover the specifics on how to track your time effectively in a moment but first is it really possible that something as simple as time tracking can give you more flow accelerate you towards your goals and increase performance well let's look at the science time tracking boosts flow in a few key ways first one of flow's key triggers is clear goals clear goals refers to an action to take not an outcome to achieve and when you track your time you're almost always logging actions not outcomes as a temporal architect the very Act of logging what you are about to allocate your time to explicitly sets a clear goal a target for your attention which will plunge you into flow day it only takes 30 seconds and it often shortens the struggle phase of the flow cycle we enter the struggle phase at the very beginning of a task and due to the surge of squirmy neurochemistry like cortisol it tends to be hard to persist and stay focused we resist it and our attention gets pulled elsewhere however if we stay locked into the task we'll soon release and pop into Flow by setting a clear goal instead of having to slog for at least 15 minutes before going deep with a task the struggle Fades fast and you drop into flow fueled by effortless exertion applied to productive activities time tracking also fights against the feeling that you aren't making progress or getting work done it removes black or white thinking around work rather than think I haven't been able to work on the book I'm writing all day and it's already 6 p.m. so why bother it allows you to think in terms of small incremental wins and it heightens the value of any amount of time you put in I got 30 minutes in on the book I'm writing today yesterday and the day before that it adds up and is worthwhile it's similar to tracking money you might think oh it's only $50 why bother but when you save invest it and track it you see how it grows by some percentage through interest compounding year after year which makes even the incremental small movements or wins more worthwhile now here's the thing the average knowledge worker doesn't track their time and those who do track it do it in a way that's not optimal or they rely on software like rescue time and screen time to do it for them which as you'll see based on the science actually defeats the purpose of tracking your time in the first place so now how do you actually track your time well let's break down the specifics of how to become a temporal architect the first thing we got to do is to predeter the allocation of our time out into the future at this stage you preset chunks of your day and week in a one-off fashion such that you don't have to repeatedly think about when and how to do what the idea here is to turn your calendar into a liberating constraint rigidity in one area for flexibility in another that matters more it's a way to Outsource your time to the smartest version of yourself and become your own puppet master here's how to set it up do this when you are in a prime stake your mind is sharp and you have plenty of time perhaps on a Sunday when you have some unhurried quiet hours first zoom out architect what day and ideal allocation of your time would be shape your schedule around how you'd like the day to unfold then set up recurring events for these high priority activities then lock them into your calendar protect that time from meetings and distractions include buffers to mitigate rushing which can block flow the more recurrent events you lock in the more you'll boost your sense of control over your time this is a key part of becoming a temporal architect to Step One Define your categories set up recurring events in your calendar unlike most approaches to time tracking as a Al architect you track your time 24/7 including sleep start by listing activities you do regularly such as sleep workouts meals and recurring meetings or calls anything that you do daily or weekly on a recurring basis then in your digital calendar like Google Calendar apple or Outlook create blocks for these activities for example if you sleep from 11:00 p.m. to 6:00 a.m. block this time daily do the same for all recurring events including all of the repeated productive activities you want to experience effortless exertion within this this step ensures that routine activities are pre-t trck so require less time to track everything else step two is to create a calendar for every category of time most calendar apps come with basic categories like work and home for Peak Performance and flow you'll need more aligning with the research on Peak Performance and positive psychology done by the likes of mihi chick semii Martin saligman and Steven Cutler you'll want to create calendars for each of these key areas the first category is work and professional tasks you want to divide this into three simple subcategories 1,000 which is the highest value thing you can be doing denoting $1,000 activity 100 which is a $100 an hour task and 10 which is a $10 an hour task the next category is active recovery or capacity expansion active recovery involves some activity designed to reduce alast static load activate the parasympathetic nervous system and replenish the expensive neurochemistry used up in flow States this includes things like exercise SAA hiking or a cold shower and the way you want to think about it is that we're aiming for as many $11,000 an hour tracked tasks and then really high quality recovery track time so that we can do more of that $11,000 an hour time more effectively the next category to add is learning and skill development one of flow's triggers is the challenge skills balance the more skill you have the more challenges you can take on and get into flow within the next category is relationships positive social connection rewires your brain and contributes significantly to Peak Performance you may also want to create a calendar for Junk time unproductive activities like aimless phone scrolling after you've created these categories or modified them to suit your goals and values assign a unique color to each category this visual CU will help you quickly identify as you glance your whole calendar across a week how you're spending your time just like that by creating these calendars and setting your recurring time allocations of front you reduce the risk of time slippage you plan important things blocked in in advance like a workout instead of waiting until you feel like doing them or instead of finding yourself midweek feeling like you don't have time for a workout you're plugging holes that would result in wasted time and Miss tasks for example if I didn't put my Sunday planning on the calendar I might end up skipping it because I feel too busy in the moment you're also allocating where you want time to go in the first place plus even if you don't track the rest of your time in a given week with these pre-allocated chunks you still at least have a good amount of your time accounted for in advance the next part of becoming a temporal architect is simple on top of all the recurring events we've just set up we want to track every hour of our time 24/7 indefinitely here's the key what you were doing here is actually time logging more than time tracking this retroactive time logging is what made time tracking finally doable for me it doesn't all have to be live because if it's all live it creates this sense of having to press Play constantly on your whole life rather we want to pre-allocate our time to a certain extent and then retroactively fill things in throughout the day after we do them I was never able to properly track my time because I would often forget to start a timer before a task or meeting or activity so only a few things got tracked plus i' never track all of the things things that I didn't think to track such as sleep chill time and time spent with friends instead get retroactive at the end of the day pull up your calendar because you've already pre-allocated much of your time due to the first step you should have plenty of events already blocked out in your calendar then delete any past events of the day that you didn't do or didn't attend next drag the length of the calendar Down based on how long it actually took to do each event or thing that you did throughout the day IDE down to about a 15-minute increment the key is to ensure that there are zero gaps so you get to the end of the day you look back a lot of the time is already accounted for because you've set the prescheduled events and then you block out what you did throughout that day into the rest of your calendar maybe you had a call with a team member that wasn't on your calendar you put that in and if you need to know how long it was you check your phone and you see that it was 45 minutes you know that you chilled out between meetings for 90 minutes in the middle of the day you block that in and you write chill time for example so that the whole day ends up backfilled retroactively next we want to assign each event that we have just backfilled a category based on the C categories we just set up in the previous step learning or skill development active recovery and then for professional tasks 1,000 100 or 10 and again 1,00 110 are all going to have different colors so you're very quickly going to be able to see how productive your day was CU you want it filled up obviously with, an hour activities now since every calendar has a different color as the week goes by You' be able to see over time how each day was allocated at a glance and if you're really serious about preventing time slippage you can use toggle for even more visibility toggle we're not associated with in any way just to be clear it's just the app I personally use toggle is available on desktop and mobile it's a nice tool for this if you are tracking your time retroactively you can sync toggle with your calendar so that all of the events are pulled in automatically then at the end of the day you want to pull up the calendar view and toggle on the right side you can see all the events of your calendar for the week and on the other side you can see all of the events you logged as actually occurring all you need to do is copy any events that actually occurred across into the toggle calendar and then assign them into a project. toggle which will give give you beautiful visualization over time of where your time has gone you want to have different calendars for what you're working on as projects in Togo for example if you're a marketer you might have projects like social media campaign market research and client meetings in toggo we want to create a new project for each of these tasks this allows you to track time spent on individual work components at the end of the week we want to use toggle's visualization tools to see epic daily weekly and monthly charts a record of how you are actually spending time across everything if you'd like to watch a screen share and how to run this process I've recorded a video of me running it at the end of an average workday I walk you through every step so you can follow along and do it yourself just click the link in the description to watch this walk through for free as you do this you'll start to notice patterns that fall into four broad categories a Time first off there's execution time this is where you're directly doing the work you're trying to advance your goals often handling necessary but not high leverage tasks then we've got joke time this is pure waste time spent doing unenjoyable and unproductive things Doom scrolling or fixing a broken pipe in your house or being stuck in a line that we've got off time this is quality time that is not intended to be productive just fulfilling and enjoyable spending time with family Hobbies then we have flow time this is time focused on your highest priorities while tapping into the enhanced creativity and productivity of flow it leads to exponential growth there are four archetypes for how modern professionals allocate these categories of time which one do you fall into this is what the Hustler looks like they spend about 50% of their time in execution time where they are incrementally productive they spend about 0% of their time in flow time which is where exponential productivity these major leaps are made about 40% of time is allocated to junk time which is fully unproductive unfulfilling and drives time slippage however for the Hustler about 10% is off time which is either unproductive but fulfilling or productive active recovery then there's the archetype of the sloth just 10% of their time is allocated to execution time about 0% is allocated to flow time 60% is junk time and 30% is off time finally there's the workplace Olympian they spent about 25% on execution time getting necessary work done they allocate a full 50% of their time to flow time where they tap into deep creativity for exponential performance and productivity through accessing states of flow on their highest priority highest leverage most impactful work they aim for 0% junk time knowing that time is the stuff of life and that there's no reason to squander it and they spend 25% of their time in off time largely devoted to active recovery which is what fuels their performance by tracking your time you'll quickly understand which archetype you align with and which course corrects you into becoming a workspace Elm now at first it might feel like a huge hassle to do this it's easy to think wouldn't I just be better off getting to work well consider this tracking your time might take 10 minutes of an 8- hour workday that's barely 5% of your day if this small investment makes your day even 5% more productive it's a win however because of time tracking and its relationship to Flow State you'll often work longer than 8 hours spend less than 10 minutes tracking and gain far more than a 5% boost in productivity with flow there's research showing 500% boost in productivity during time spent in FL float so time tracking is always worth it just consider the ratio is it worth spending 4 years in school for a 50-year career as a biologist or if you're going to do a job for 5 years would you spend a month being on board of course you would well you see a similar ratio here on the daily with the time you spend tracking your time versus the time you spend working or living out the rest of your life you might also think can I just use apps like rescue time to track my time for me well the thing is for more flow you can't delegate your time tracking you have to become a temporal architect which requires a mindset shift about how you see and relate to your time you can't know if your life's time is properly allocated without intentionality doing it yourself it's not even the time tracking itself that matters so much as the intentionality the tracking time forces so as you become a temporal architect you're ready for some surprising insights for example specific intimidating projects that you kept putting off turn out not to need anywhere near as much time as you thought once this happens you can spare yourself the stress and energy and apply it to the project instead plus clarity around how long tasks take increase your sense of control over your time which is a characteristic of Flow State when you know certain things just take however long they take you can set boundaries and calmly sink into the task fully focused and ready for Flow State with visibility over how you spend your time it becomes clear that despite feeling time pressure it turns out you have plenty of it it's just misapplied the discovery of how much clock time is being drained on low leverage lowf flow activities is a shock to the system but on the other side of this shock is Liberation when you track your time you also to increase your intentional across all areas of life intentionality and self-distraction have a seesaw relationship the higher the intentionality the less likely you are to procrastinate or squander time on N for example it's rare to do a great workout and then binge eat that day similarly it's rare to track time do a great flow session and then check Instagram 5 minutes later in behavioral psychology this is called momentum which refers to the increased likelihood of continuing in Behavior after it's been initiated if you gain momentum with task a the momentum built spills over into task B enhancing your performance due to the mental and physical activation from the first task they're like a flywheel of increased intentionality earlier efforts compound boosting subsequent progress you take advantage of this intentionality when you track your time not just intraday but week after week when you see that you're allocating a lot of time toward your goals the momentum propels you to continue investing in those goals the flywheel spins faster and when you track your time you also get better at forecasting you can better scope out a project and Advance because you know how long specific actions tend to take this increases your sense of control over your time and in turn your selfefficacy which boosts your flow proness best of all accurate forecasting prevents procrastination you turn what was once intimidating into something bound to a clear and comforting set of minutes or hours required to complete in short you can track your time to reclaim your time not just now but for the future imagine you go to the doctor for a routine checkup and they discover something seriously wrong the prognosis you have one week left to live where would your mind immediately go if you're like most it would go to how will I spend the remaining time that I have left on this Earth in this body with this Human Experience you would suddenly become radically conscious about your time allocation knowing that each remaining moment is indescribably precious of course you don't actually die next week we hope but the reality is you will die someday and all of life is time of that value every day that passes is gone forever so how do you choose to spend that non-renewable resource and how much attention do you actually pay to it it's the stuff that life is made of yet we tend to pay very little attention to how we use it without time tracking you could be unknowingly misallocating your entire life wondering why you aren't as happy as you could be why you're tired all the time or why your goals aren't materializing with time tracking exposes the hard truth of where your Irreplaceable moments of existence are allocated as the Godfather of flow psychologist mihigh jmih High put it time is the ultimate scarce resource we have over the years the content of experience will determine the quality of life therefore one of the most essential decisions any of us can make is about how one's time is allocated or invested now if you want to compound the flow and productivity you get from time tracking you can make sure you're working during the time your physiological resources at their Peak we each have a daily Peak Performance window coded into our biology to find out how to harness yours click the video on screen