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Steven Kotler is one of the world’s foremost experts on high performance. He is a New York Times bestselling author, a multi award-winning journalist and Executive Director of the Flow Research Collective.…
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High performance is- truly- a checklist. It's waking up, understanding how many things you can do that day to the best of your ability, getting those things done, allowing yourself time to exercise, eat, rest, engage in active recovery, get some social support, have some mindfulness and gratitude time.
— Steven KotlerAuthor & Researcher on Flow State & Human Peak Performance
Our brain is local and linear, and we live in a global and exponential world. If you want to keep pace, you have to perform and think at speed and scale – and we're not built for it. Flow is literally our leverage for keeping pace in a global, exponential world.
— Steven KotlerAuthor & Researcher on Flow State & Human Peak Performance
When you close your eyes and imagine the person you're going to be in 10 years, this area of your brain is totally deactivated – it's treating the person you are going to become as a stranger. This is why people have such a hard time getting prostate exams, staying on a diet, quitting smoking, because the person who is going to benefit the most from these things is literally not you.
— Steven KotlerAuthor & Researcher on Flow State & Human Peak Performance
Anyone worth following in peak performance will tell you that 90% of human performance is mental. The understanding of that mental aspect of the game is brand-new – perhaps 10-20 years old. The work being done around the neuroscience of performance is creating an unprecedented rate of change; it's honestly off the charts.
— Steven KotlerAuthor & Researcher on Flow State & Human Peak Performance
Firms like McKinsey are self-reporting that their people are 5x more productive in-flow than out of flow… 500% more productive. That means you can work Monday in-flow and take the rest of the week off – and you'd still get as much done as your peers. Work two days a week? You're now 1000% more productive than the competition.
— Steven KotlerAuthor & Researcher on Flow State & Human Peak Performance
If you're not doing this stuff already, just know that other companies are, and if you're not engaging in these activities, you can't keep up, you can't compete.
— Steven KotlerAuthor & Researcher on Flow State & Human Peak Performance
Abraham Maslow pointed out in the 1950s that flow is essentially what redeems the suffering of life. It's the psychological reward for mastery and without it, hard work can lead to burnout.
— Steven KotlerAuthor & Researcher on Flow State & Human Peak Performance
Firms like McKinsey are self-reporting that their people are 5x more productive in-flow than out of flow… 500% more productive. That means you can work Monday in-flow and take the rest of the week off – and you'd still get as much done as your peers.
— Steven KotlerAuthor & Researcher on Flow State & Human Peak Performance
Anyone worth following in peak performance will tell you that 90% of human performance is mental. The understanding of that mental aspect of the game is brand-new – perhaps 10-20 years old.
— Steven KotlerAuthor & Researcher on Flow State & Human Peak Performance
If you're not an action sport athlete, and you spend all your time chasing action sport athletes around mountains and across oceans, you're going to break things… I broke 82 bones and realized that if I didn't take my obsession beyond action sports that I would kill myself.
— Steven KotlerAuthor & Researcher on Flow State & Human Peak Performance
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