My understanding of getting into a flow state (or “being in the zone”) was completely wrong.

Authors like Steve Kotler and Csíkszentmihályi describe achieving flow as a structural problem. To achieve flow we must match our skills to the challenges in front of us, they write. If the challenges are too easy, we’ll get bored, if too difficult, we’ll quit from frustration.

Start-up founders will speak of passion as the gateway to flow. If you’re passionate, you’ll dance into the office ready to get back to it. If you’re feeling resistance … well, maybe you’re not passionate or earnest enough.

My personal day-to-day experiences are a stark disconnect from the popular descriptions of flow. I reliably find it irritating to sit down and start working. My mind wanders, opening up HackerNews, Reddit, and Youtube tabs to stave off the negative feelings.

What I learned and want to share with you, dear reader, is the wisdom that irritation is a necessary starter to getting down to work. It’s completely normal to “not be into it” regardless of how passionate you are or how well the challenges are structured. The initial resistance is part of the process, not a sign of a defected process or defected you.

Why oh why?

TL;DR Noradrenaline

Noradrenaline is one of the major brain chemicals that builds the initial resistance to getting things done. It’s the “alertness” neurotransmitter (fancy word for “chemical messenger”) that tells different systems in the brain to be at attention when we’re ready to do focused, hard work. The problem: it’s the same messenger that yells across our system when we’re triggering our fight or flight response.

Evolutionarily speaking, fight or flight is effective because we want to escape the feeling of irritation. Racing heart rate, shortness of breath, paranoid alertness–the state of fight or flight is painful. Us humans, as pleasure-seeking monkeys, would like to avoid pain as often as we can.

This very blog post is a month too late. I have it dated as November 11th but it’s December 15th today. One month later and I’m still writing this damn thing. I have excuses, believe me. Job interviews, interview prep, life, etc., but that’s all they are: excuses. What was most important to me was daily writing. But writing is hard and noradrenaline-fueled resistance makes it harder.

Noradrenaline, to repeat, performs double duty for both “getting down to work” and ...

Kyungsu Kim

Kyungsu Kim