Why I’m a Flow State Maximalist
And You Should Be Too
Hi, I’m Michael. And this is Crypto Creatives. The best newsletter about the Crypto Creator Economy. If you’re new here, consider subscribing. 2 free emails a week :)
One question haunted me from the time I was a kid. How do you become happy? Like most people, I assumed being rich was the answer.
Well, then I learned about people who win the lottery. Most of them end up on drugs, broke, or dead.
Why is that?
Being a snarky teen, I had the answer to that one too. “Lottery winners didn’t earn their wealth. They just got lucky.”
The key to being happy is by earning your riches.
I believed this for a long time. And then I heard the story about Notch.
Notch is the creator of Minecraft. He became a billionaire at a young age. Despite the success, he was depressed within a few months and started spending his time partying.
This was a real puzzle. Completely shattering everything I thought I knew about happiness and how to achieve it.
Happiness isn’t based on money at all. If you’ve got enough money to pay your bills and not worry about it, having more won’t make you happier.
The path to happiness is based on neuroscience and psychology. Not in wealth creation.
Happiness is a byproduct of flow state.
What is Flow State?
Flow state is commonly known as being in the zone. When you get so wrapped up in doing something that you lose the sense of time.
Absolute immersion.
Humans are at their happiest in flow state. As Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi put it, “the experience is so enjoyable that people will continue to do it even at great cost, for the sheer sake of doing it.”
Not only are we happy in flow state. But we perform at our best. The greatest inventions, technology, and media are all byproducts of another person's flow state.
So, how do we hit flow state?
Clear goals
Immediate feedback
A challenging task that we’re capable of achieving
This is often what separates dream jobs from bread jobs. Flow state can make or break your work.
Here are some jobs that allow you to hit flow state. Writer, Programmer, Surgeon, Athlete, Artist, etc.
There’s a big difference between the intrinsic satisfaction you get from these jobs compared to others. You can’t hit flow state as a mid-level manager, secretary, or doing anything in the service industry.
These are jobs robots should be doing. But right now, humans are cheaper. After all, these are jobs people wouldn’t be doing if their livelihood didn’t depend on it. How many times have you heard someone say this?
“If I just had enough money, I’d never come back to work again.”
This kind of work, bread jobs, are the biggest source of misery in the developed world. And they have been for a very long time.
The result? Alienation of the worker.
As Marx put it, “in his work, therefore he does not affirm himself but denies himself, does not feel content but unhappy, does not develop freely his physical and mental energy but mortifies his body and his mind.”
Marx got a lot wrong. But the alienation of the common worker still rings true to this day.
Lack of Flow State
It doesn’t matter how much money you have. If you’re not hitting flow state, you will be miserable.
We’re under the impression that if we just “escape work” then we’ll magically be happy. But nothing could be further from the truth.
Hard work, in the form of flow state, is necessary for survival. Without it, we wither away and die.
So, what do we do about it?
The Crypto Creator Economy
Originally, the answer was the creator economy. Where you create work and bring it directly to the people. Videos, articles, podcasts, etc.
But as you should know, the creator economy is a scam. It’s one big lie pushed by big tech to make you think you can be the next PewDiePie.
Big tech will
Take a large percentage of your earnings
Change the algorithm and possibly end your career (this happened to me)
Close your account the second it’s even a little financially beneficial to do so
This is why we need crypto to power the creator economy. And to an extent, it already is.
We’re going through gradual decentralization. Where we adopt Web3 tech slowly. Not for an ideological reason, but because decentralized tech is objectively better.
NFTs are one of the best breakthroughs. This will be a cornerstone of the crypto creator economy. You just can’t beat digital ownership.
Fans support creators by investing in their content directly. Instead of the pathetic donation-based model, fans are encouraged to speculate on the creators they believe in.
And the best part? Fans will share in the success.
They’ll be financially rewarded for identifying and supporting great creators before they get big.
This will allow more creators than ever to consistently hit flow state. And make money along the way. Without spamming sponsorships or ads.
For the first time in history, happiness through flow state will be accessible to anyone with an Internet connection.
Make sure to subscribe to this newsletter if that’s the future you want to see.