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Achieve a State of Flow to Increase Productivity with Omer Aziz · Authentic Living

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Welcome to authentic living with Roxanne, a place where we have as conversations about
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things that really matter in our lives.
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And now here's your host, Roxanne Derhodge.
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Everyone, it's, Roxanne Derhodge for authentic living with Roxanne.
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Thanks for, tuning again.
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Today, I have a special guest, and I, met.
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It's gonna probably be about, 6 months ago where we were privileged to speak on the same
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stage, at a disrupt, Niagara events.
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So, Mara, thanks for so much for coming in today to chat with us.
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Oh, my pleasure.
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So I'll tell you a little bit about him, and we're gonna jump right in.
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And, he's a a performance, peak performance coach.
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And so we're gonna talk a lot about his expertise.
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He has a background in engineering, which is quite fascinating along with education in human
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resources, from both UFT And, University of Michigan with, thirties, years experience in,
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is it the biotech sector Omar?
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More like telecommunications and high-tech.
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Yeah.
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So, so thanks for coming in.
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And we're gonna jump right into, that whole concept of What is flow?
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You hear that?
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I often my my son's a golfer and, you know, he he plays a as a pretty competitive level, and
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you'll hear that being talked a lot with, athletes.
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But Yeah.
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I'm interested in kind of your perspective about in reference to to individual flow and
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how that the kind of work that you do, with individuals and organizations to get to flow,
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but maybe starting with a definition would probably help us.
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Sure.
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So at the very highest level, Flow is that state you're in when you feel your best and
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when you perform your best.
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Okay.
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So it's a state of optimal experience with spikes of peak performance
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Okay.
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So is this biological?
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Is it is it kinda, you know, am I, you know, I I often think I've I've one child, but, you
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know, growing up in a family of 6.
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Yeah.
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I sort of got that I think, you know, each one of us had individual personalities.
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So does does does flow have anything to do with personality, or is it it's a different kind of
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concept?
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Well, flow is so flow is a very subjective experience.
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Okay.
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And, what puts you into flow will be based on many kinda individual factors that are unique
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to you, including your personality.
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And what'll put me into flow is a completely different set of factors.
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So the description of flow and the experience of flow can be described with, you know,
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universally.
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There's very common characteristics, but it's a very subjective in the moment experience.
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So even you with your other family members, you would all have very different experiences of
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flow.
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Okay.
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So when when we're thinking of flow then, let's say, someone's coming, whether it's an
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organization or, a CEO or or a manager that's coming to you.
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What are some of the elements that you walk through with them to understand flow?
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And and I know you've done you've created some actual, products or, things that you actually
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use with people.
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Yeah.
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So tell me a little bit about that because I've never gone through anything.
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I've done you know, the, occupational fits kind of psychological assessments in the past where,
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you know, one of the things that they thought I should be was a chemist, and I thought, you
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know, I thought, well, I don't think my personality is like that, but it was one of
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those things that came up, but also, also executive management was the one of the other
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ones.
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Yeah.
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So what are some of the the things or products that you've developed to help people, assess
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their flow?
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Well, so I I guess it goes back to work that was done by the Gallup Organization.
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It was a project in the mid nineties called the Goodlife project where Gallup looked at,
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something like 80,000 managers around the world to try to understand what differentiates a
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strong manager from an average manager.
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And so Gallup developed a survey called strengths finder, which basically gives you
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your top 5 talents a list of 34 and Gallup has a very clear definition of talents.
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And so I typically I typically work with companies who are using that survey tool
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strengths finder And now they're they've kind of tried all the ideas they can think of, and
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they need a little bit more help from from an expert to go a little deeper I start with
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strengths finder.
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Okay.
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And and then basically, the the fundamental point that I make is the business case is is
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pretty clear now.
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It's been replicated over and over again in different studies.
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The your your performance, the payoff of your performance significantly higher if you're
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practicing your strengths while in the state of flow, significantly higher.
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So I kinda start there
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And productivity, I would obviously, that trend I'm sure the research that you're just
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referring to is a is it a quantifiable kind of percent that they find that when people are in
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flow versus when they're they're out of flow in reference to the bottom line, in reference to,
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like, you know, numbers.
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So, and again, I think the the reason I'm so interested in this field now is I've been
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pursuing these line of inquiry for about 25 years, but more and more numbers are starting
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to come out now in McKinsey.
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No.
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And anyone's welcome to email me if they wanna material, McKinsey, wrote an article where they
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were actually, working with this idea of flow with business executives.
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And they asked 5000 executives over the course of a decade, in your view, when you're you and
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your team are in flow, how much more productive are you?
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Mhmm.
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And the most frequent answer is 500%.
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So when when you when you're in a and and this kind of step function in performance has been
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replicated over and over again.
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We're not talking about doing 10% better or 20% better.
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We're talking about doing up to 500% better.
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Now, again, keeping in mind that's not that's not a permanent increase because flow happens
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in short period periods of time.
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Mhmm.
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But when your team at a company is bursting with flow, that's the type of improvement.
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You know, 250, 300, 400, 500%.
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And you can think of, I mean, books have been written about high performing team who have
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produced something really incredible.
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And if you if you look at the the tangible results of that product, they're they're
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substantially higher.
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Well, you know, when I think of data and when I in my kind of health and wellness consulting,
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for years.
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What what was one thing that, we found with mental well-being is that, oftentimes people
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are working, there's a lot more presenteism where people are physically there.
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Yeah.
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Yeah.
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And they talk a lot about almost, you know, productivity wanes by 6 50 5% or something like
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that where people show up and you think they're there.
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So they're not gonna show in your stats or anything.
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Right?
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They're not gonna show on the data for short term disability or potentially even EAP claims
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or things like that because those people, they they they sit somewhere and, they're showing
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up, they're attending meetings, or those types of things, but their productivity is actually,
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altered.
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So I would think that flow would be a really kind of, a great solution for that because if
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people are in flow, one would assume that, you know, they'd be able to kind of recognize when
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they're dipping out of, being present and then in turn less productive.
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Absolutely.
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And I think probably the metric that keeps both of us up at night is the Gallup survey that's
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done year over year measuring people's engagement.
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Mhmm.
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And that number hasn't changed much, over the last 20 years.
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And the number of people who are actively engaged at companies is in the order of 15 to
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20% to your point.
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And I think any of us, if any of us think back to when we were doing something, even if it's
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outside of work.
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But if you can think about a time where you were so absorbed, you lost complete track of
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time, your sense of worry fell away, you know yourself how you're performing as compared to
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when you're kinda struggling with that present presenteeism.
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It's a fundamental difference.
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Right.
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Because I often say I'm kind of, you know, for time.
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Let's just use one variable, which is time.
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Yep.
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Yeah.
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I'm not a super, super early person, and I'm not a super super late person.
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So I often say I'm kinda optimally the time period for me is kinda like 11 to 1.
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That seems to be when I'm ultimately seem to get a lot done.
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Yeah.
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And past that, I'm kinda, you know, I'm doing things, but I I know I'm not, like you said,
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you know, at at optimal product and prior to that, I'd get stuff done, but, again, not not
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as much.
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But in that, that gap seems to be just from kinda noticing what's good for me.
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Well, and then you'll notice sometimes, so those that's kind of your creative window.
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And, sometimes it'll be 11 o'clock, and you'll start doing something.
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And the next time you look at look at the clock, it's 1 o'clock.
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And you didn't even notice the 2 hours disappear.
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Right?
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That's that's probably the that's the most universally quoted character because I lost
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complete track of time.
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And we all, I mean, you know, when I think about that or even when I'm writing or
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creating, that's that's the time that I want to be in.
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But Yeah.
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You know, it's fleeting, Lamar.
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At at
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sometimes, I'm like, oh, Yesterday, I felt so good, and everything came out.
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And then today, I'm like, oh, I just have to redo that ten times, and it's still not good.
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Yeah.
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So let's talk about some of the things that people can actually do.
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Right?
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You talk a little bit about the strength finders.
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So I guess that would be something people, if they really really wanted to dig down deeper,
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they would have to do something like that.
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Yeah.
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But what are some things that the average person could do, to to get more in flow?
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I think the, in in my view, Roxanne, the fundamental building block of flow is this idea
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of, an emotional high.
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And an emotional high is Any activity that you do, whether it takes a couple of minutes or a
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couple of hours, but anything you do that kinda gives you that jolt of feeling good, that
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intrinsic satisfaction, that emotional.
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Right.
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That's the fundamental building block.
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And the more data you can collect, the more you can track your emotional highs, I mean, the one
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piece of advice I give everyone is track your emotional highs over a period of 4 or 5 weeks.
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And when you're actually looking at that data, you will start to see patterns.
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I mean, you're already starting to, you know, see that you have a creativity window between
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11:1.
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When I looked at my emotional data, I find having ideation conversations discussing a
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stimulating topic with someone who's also interested in that topic is a is an emotional
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hire for me.
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Okay.
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And so the more emotional highs you collect, the more you'll see patterns that you can both
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replicate and that you can scale.
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Mhmm.
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And so that's the 1 the one healthiest activity you can do is that I I did have an opportunity
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to interview NHL hockey player, Patrick Sharp.
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And basically, he said, the one thing he does when he watches Gamefilm is he focuses on when
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he scored.
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Because it makes him feel as good as he felt when he scored.
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And he sharp he works at sharpening his strengths when he's feeling good from having
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scored.
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So go ahead.
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Interesting.
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So is it is it almost like a it's an activity?
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So in your case, it's it's ideas.
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So somebody that stimulates you in a way that gets your your cognitive functioning, I'm gonna
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say fire it up.
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Yeah.
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And then and then you go you find that that gets you into flow in the in, the hockey
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players, example, his was looking at the real, and is he is he visualizing and implanting that
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in himself?
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Yeah.
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It was basically it so when he scored, he was in his he was it was an emotional high when he
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scored.
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Mhmm.
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And what he found is even when he watches video of having scored, That gives them an emotional
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high.
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The the beauty of emotional highs is they're very contagious.
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Even if you review your own list, it starts to make you feel as good as you felt when it
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happened.
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Okay.
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And so he's putting himself into this state of feeling good, and then he works on his
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strengths.
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See, one of the biggest flow blockers is your inner critic, your your inner chatter kind of
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telling you what you're doing wrong, critics, basically criticizing you.
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That's a flow blocker.
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And so if you can work on your strengths while you're feeling good, that inner critic kinda
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drops away.
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Does that does that clarify?
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Oh, absolutely.
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Absolutely.
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So and I mean, you know, if anybody's you.
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They don't have an inner critic.
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I think they're telling you a little bit of a lack of a white lie.
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It depends on how how loud it gets, or sometimes it wanes.
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Sometimes you're like, oh, I can conquer anything.
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And other times, it's like it's like a bullhorn that's kinda going at you.
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That's almost yelling at you.
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And I think when you when you'll notice when you're in flow that inner critic actually drops
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away that inner critic disappears.
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So with the inner critic.
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Let's talk a little bit about that because Sure.
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You know, we, you know, the, you know, the kind of the word that gets thrown around is that
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60,000 worth, thoughts in a in a day and what percentage of that is how across versus
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negative and what kind of things we kinda, you know, try to to prime ourselves.
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Like, I what I try to do is I try to do a gratitude list of, you know, things I'm
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grateful for the first thing in the morning.
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Not every morning, sometimes I do, a bit of meditation, like a 10 minutes to kind of get
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my, myself going in that way.
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So what are some other things that in flow that people could actually do to to deal with that
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inner critic.
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Are there actual techniques that you find help lower that that voice versus some kind of
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heightening it.
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For sure.
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I think the, basically, the work that I do is I help people find their own, let's call them
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flow entry points.
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So we all have entry points that put us into flow.
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And I can give you some general entry points things like, if you've read the book drive by
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Daniel Pink
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Mhmm.
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He talks about intrinsic motivators like mass free autonomy purpose.
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So clarifying those 3 things for yourself are flow entry points, curiosity, passion, or flow
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entry points, if you if you collect your emotional highs and look at the underlying
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patterns, like, for example, a flow entry point for me, and I suspect probably for you is
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learning I love learning.
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If I watch, I only need 5 or 10 minutes or 15 minutes to listen to a podcast or read a
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chapter of a book or read an article, and that stimulates my thinking.
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You see how to go back to stimulated thinking is something that puts me into flow.
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So, to your point about gratitude, you know, studies have shown that inner critic speaks at
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a 9 to 1 ratio between negativity and positivity and practicing just physically
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writing out what you're grateful for for 5 or 10 minutes they can actually shift that ratio
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to 6 to 1.
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It actually just by just by writing it down.
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Just by writing down and actually thinking about what you're grateful for teaches your
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teaches your kind of scanning the environment skill to focus more on challenges you find
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appealing versus threats, which is what the inner critic is yelling about.
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Right.
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And, you know, another thing that I kinda fell upon, and I don't know if this makes sense.
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You know, because with me, when I was, you know, kind of, shifting from corporate going
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into my own business, and there's you know, too many things to be done and not enough hours in
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a day.
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And I I remember thinking, you know, where I thought I should be again, you know, that
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thought, that negative kind of And I I remember I had to prepare something for, a speaking
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event or something like that, and they had wanted to know some of the things that I'd done
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in the business.
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Yep.
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And I hadn't really sat down and done that, you know, over a year period.
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And I sat down, and it took me quite a while.
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And I was like, oh my goodness.
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I, you know, the the things that I'd itemized, I hadn't stopped to almost kind of, re you
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know, relish in it Yeah.
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You know, and obviously in that, there was a lot of pivoting and failures and things I had
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to adapt and all those things, but there was a lot, a lot of accomplishments.
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Yeah.
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And that's one thing that I try to do every at the end of every year now is not just in my
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business, but also in my personal life is I try to see what kind of things I've done.
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Yeah.
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Well, and what I would I mean, that having that list of accomplishments, is critical.
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And you you'll hear people saying, if you haven't updated your resume in 90 days, what
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have you what have you've done what have you been doing the last 90 days?
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So I would recommend even on a quarterly basis as opposed to yearly, but but fundamentally,
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and this is this is the more important point in in my view is collecting your emotional highs
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on a daily basis on a daily basis.
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Is what'll give you that raw material.
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Then defining those accomplishments at the end of the year, you just need to draw from this
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long list you've created because you've noticed the emotional highs as they happen.
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And what you'll find is that alone has a bit of a snowball effect.
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The more you notice, the more you start to notice.
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And and when you start to notice patterns, you actually become more effective when that
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pattern shows up again.
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It's a very nice snowball effect.
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So I think of it as almost like a a perform journal then.
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That's the word that's coming to me.
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I I, you know, I journal a lot, but Yeah.
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You're you're seeing you're seeing to be a little bit more specific than in to think about
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the periods of the day, not just time, activities, Do you look at it as from a century
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level too?
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Because my a lot of the work that I do a lot of times with awareness, I, you know, have leaders
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and teams look at, kind of their leadership story, what are their values, you know, what,
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you know, I was when I looked at my leadership story, kinda why do I do what I do talking
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about authenticity, which kinda speaks to my background, my culture and Trinidadian, kinda
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growing up in the Caribbean, kinda being exposed to business in a certain way and all
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those things.
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So it becomes a combination effect.
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So for someone that's wanting to start to to, script this, are the things I often say to
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people look around, what are things that, you know, stimulate you and keep you grounded?
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You know, are there sounds or, you know, music, some times.
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Right?
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Like, you know, when we work out?
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Well, and that's why I try to use that's why I'm using the term emotional high.
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Is I'm trying to be very, very general, right, basically anything, and it can literally be
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anything that you get to define.
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The only requirement is that it made you feel good that it gave you a bit of an emotional
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high.
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Okay.
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Okay.
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And it's as simple as that.
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It it needs to be an activity, though, but but, I mean, thinking thinking is an activity.
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Mhmm.
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But anything that you did, that made you feel good is the raw material.
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If I have enough of that data to to look at, I will help you find the underlying patterns so
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you can trigger flow.
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And when you trigger flow, you boost your performance.
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So it's just very simply so even the things that you described about clarifying your
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leadership, your leadership style, your vision statement, those are all those are all
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outcomes.
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I'm not asking you to clarify those day by day.
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I'm just asking you to clarify the activities that give you an emotional high.
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What'll come out of that is your purpose your vision, your style, what you're suited for, all
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of that'll come out of that data.
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So I'm looking at the last quarter mile and you Okay.
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Back up.
21:11
Back up.
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Back up.
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Yeah.
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Look at what preps you to get out of the gate.
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What to get out of the gate.
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And because you do it that raw material, would help you if you couldn't understand that
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thematically then.
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Yeah.
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What you're gonna do is I'm gonna you're gonna start to implement those more often through
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your time to be able to have more of those states.
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That's right.
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So and that was a very good way to put it is flow is not necessarily about folk focusing on
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the finish line.
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Mhmm.
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Right?
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It's it's exactly what you said is that It's that preparation.
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It's the noticing.
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And and as I mentioned, I haven't worked with a person yet who hasn't been surprised by some of
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their own emotional highs.
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They couldn't have predicted them.
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And so it's it's when you experience an emotional high, you were experiencing a small
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version of what could be flow.
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He gave me an example of something like that that you somebody shared with you that, wasn't
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emotional high that they didn't think that it was significant.
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So someone was, swimming swimming laps.
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They typically do 60, 60 laps a morning.
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Mhmm.
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And their routine UC involves taking a bit of a break, being a little out of breath.
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And then one morning, they were swimming, and they just noticed they've gotten into a rhythm,
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They didn't need to take any breaks, and it was a form of embodied meditation.
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They were swimming, but they weren't thinking about anything specific.
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And the meditative experience while they were performing physical activity was very
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satisfying for them.
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And so that state is a state that they can replicate in other activities other than
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swimming now that they got in touch with it.
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Oh, interesting because you you generally think if I can't breathe, that's probably not
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something I'm gonna consider, uh-uh, a flow state, but they got to the point they were in
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flow from something that they they do every day that they hadn't thought about.
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Interesting.
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Interesting.
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So do you suggest people do it for for an extended period of time, like you said, from
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month, you're saying that people should write?
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Well, I I've my view is that you should do it for at least 3 weeks.
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To have a base of data.
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And quite quite frankly, I've been collecting emotional highs.
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I started doing this in 2008, and I've been collecting ever since.
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But at the very least, have to have 3 weeks of data only if you've collected 4 or 5 a day.
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Okay.
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And then when you've got when you've kinda got those 30 or 40 emotional highs to look at, I'll
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I'll be able to point out patterns that you yourself may not even notice.
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Okay.
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What about the opposite?
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Let me let me be, you know, the contrarian here for a second.
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Sure.
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What what about sometimes the things that push us away from focusing on the emotional highs,
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you know, could sometimes there may be an activity, like using example of the swimmer.
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That's probably thinking I gotta get these laps done.
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My god.
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It's the only, say, 40 minutes I have in my day to get it done.
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And something switched in in him or her.
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Sometimes there's things that we actually do that deplete us, but we continue because of
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habituation you know, I always do this, and I I do this after.
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And and and and we get into that.
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I always say depletion versus replenishment.
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It's my concept that I talk talk about.
24:32
Is there any it went in the flow work or the strength finders?
24:35
Is that already kind of parsed out at the beginning when they're doing the assessments?
24:40
Or
24:42
The so strengths finder basically parses out that in terms of it highlights talents that are
24:50
intrinsically satisfying to.
24:52
Okay.
24:53
However, when you look at, depletion or negative states, or you look at flow blockers,
25:01
many times, let's call it let's call the worst example of that bad flow.
25:05
Let's just call it bad flow for sake of argument.
25:07
Yep.
25:09
If you use if you use the wrong talent for a particular task, your talent can actually put
25:17
you into bad flow.
25:19
So for example, I get very stimulated by learning or reading reading a chapter of a
25:23
book.
25:25
A requirement of that is no interruptions.
25:27
Which is a major flow blocker.
25:30
Right.
25:30
If I'm trying to get stimulated from reading a chapter of a book and I'm continually being a
25:36
distracted or interrupted, my experience is gonna be fundamentally different than the flow
25:41
experience.
25:43
So sometimes So I do ask people to track their emotional lows as well as well because more
25:49
often than not, an emotional low is still still involving your talents.
25:54
But it's helping you get in touch with.
25:56
Okay.
25:56
I'm using the wrong talent at this moment.
25:58
I need to now switch talents.
26:00
Okay.
26:00
That makes sense then.
26:01
So it's a fit.
26:02
Right?
26:03
Cause sometimes I'm a reader too.
26:05
And what happens is sometimes I have to not read.
26:08
And I'm just more curious about this is like, let's say we talk about reading.
26:12
Right?
26:13
I love reading, but sometimes I've I've had such a long week Yeah.
26:18
That I I think I'll listen to this all and I'm like, oh, boy.
26:21
I'm I'm I'm not getting anything out of it.
26:23
So I actually have well, I I I have to disconnect.
26:25
And then I and then I go back to it and I'm loving it again.
26:29
That's a that's a perfect example.
26:30
The exact same activity, but you were in 2 completely different states from the first time
26:35
to the second time.
26:36
Oh, okay.
26:37
Okay.
26:38
And at the end of the day, and and flow, your performance is strongly correlated to your
26:42
state.
26:43
If you look at the work work that you do as well.
26:45
And so medicine and psychology, a 150 years of research in medicine of psychology have shown
26:50
us that your performance is strongly correlated to your state.
26:54
Now we've focused on compromised performance due to illness and injury.
27:00
Mhmm.
27:00
And then sports psychologist started looking at peak performance that idea of being in the
27:05
zone, but, fundamentally, in both cases, your performance is correlated to your state.
27:10
And at the end of the day, even flow you can't you can't be in flow forever.
27:16
It is its own depleting experience over time.
27:19
Right.
27:20
Right.
27:20
And so it's important to understand, you know, the other thing that I recommend for people is
27:26
a is a talent based power hour.
27:29
Okay.
27:29
And a power hour doesn't have to be done at the same time.
27:32
It can be done throughout different 5 or 10 minute windows during the day.
27:37
But do something that puts you into flow, but only for 5 or 10 minutes.
27:42
And that will that will kind of elevate your state and doesn't run the risk of depleting you
27:47
because because you're not overdoing it.
27:49
And, and the nice thing about state is I can elevate my state by stimulating my thinking by
27:56
reading And now that I'm in that state, I'll actually run faster when I go for my run.
28:02
The states the states translate
28:05
Mhmm.
28:06
Mhmm.
28:06
Yeah.
28:07
And that's that's a fascinating thing.
28:08
It's so it's, again, it's going internal, which is what I talk a lot about.
28:14
And really getting connected, understanding, and, pivoting as you need to to maximize on
28:21
that time that you're gonna to focus on what whatever the biggest, you know, boulder is that
28:26
you need to achieve that day.
28:28
Yeah.
28:28
Okay.
28:29
Yeah.
28:29
And from an authenticity perspective, I mean, I'm sure that you can tell when someone you're
28:34
working with is in the state of flow.
28:36
It's a very genuine It's a very genuine state.
28:39
You can tell they're loving what they're doing.
28:41
You can tell they're genuinely interested in helping you love what you're doing.
28:44
Flow is very contagious.
28:46
We pay we pay lots of money to go watch people in the state of flow even if we don't do the
28:53
activity that they do.
28:54
Right?
28:55
Absolutely.
28:55
And, you know, I've seen it with my son.
28:57
So he he, you know, started to he was an athlete who played hockey, but then he switched
29:02
to golf a couple years And, you know, I could see the development.
29:06
He'd had some natural talents just, you know, but then when he made that shift and he started
29:12
to go from you know, oh, I'm okay too.
29:15
I'm getting better to get.
29:16
And then he finally ended up be going up, you know, to a higher level going up to the Ontario
29:22
league.
29:23
And I could see him the one time, right, where and he'd been working and working, and then he
29:28
would go and he would get bad be, you know, plummeted by the other competitors.
29:33
And I keep and I, of course, I know I would see his body just kind of react And then a couple,
29:38
say 6 months later, he went back to the same kind of events, and it didn't matter what
29:44
happened.
29:44
Nothing affected him.
29:46
And I was like, same same kid, same kind of level events, but it's almost like it didn't
29:52
matter.
29:52
He the he was the last shot did not matter.
29:56
And it was just about the next shot.
29:57
Whereas the time before, it was completely he was absorbed by what wasn't going well and, you
30:04
know, all those things.
30:05
So I could I could kind it was actually kind of fascinating to watch.
30:09
Yeah.
30:09
I'm sure it was.
30:10
And I think the 3 the 3 preconditions to flow is the goal.
30:16
The goal is clear.
30:18
You know exactly what you're trying to do.
30:19
You can see success in your mind's eye.
30:21
The challenge is slightly stretch.
30:24
If it pushes you just a little bit and you have immediate feedback, you know exactly how you're
30:30
doing you're doing it.
30:31
So golgolf is a perfect example of clear goal, stretch challenge, immediate feedback.
30:38
Mhmm.
30:38
And it always has to be, as you may, It always has to be on the the hole you're shooting for.
30:43
Not the one you just shot, not the one you're gonna shoot after the hole you're shooting for
30:48
is what puts you into flow.
30:49
And that's the shift that you saw is he was focusing on the hole he was shooting for.
30:54
Absolutely.
30:55
And and it's funny because his body laggard would I I could be a hole away and I could tell
31:00
when it was earlier what kind of hole he was having.
31:02
And then after that, I couldn't tell.
31:04
I was like, was that a bad hole or was that a good hole?
31:06
Because his his be his, you know, his nonverbals and even his swing.
31:11
I couldn't tell after a while even if it was a really and his dad would say, oh, that was a
31:15
horrible hold.
31:16
I go, oh, I couldn't tell.
31:18
Yeah.
31:18
You know?
31:20
So you have done some re some research, on flow.
31:23
So tell us a little bit what that I'm always, you know, the original thinkers and people that
31:28
are adding to things like this I'm always fascinated about.
31:30
So tell me a little bit about the research that done.
31:33
So, it was fascinating research, did it last year.
31:36
It went over 5 weeks.
31:39
If you were a participant, I would basically send you a set of questions on a Monday, and
31:44
then a set of questions on a Friday.
31:46
So twice a week, and I did that for 5 weeks in a row.
31:48
I had eighty one pieces of data for for each participant.
31:52
I had over 4000 pieces of data in my, in my study.
31:57
And one of the things that I discovered, one of the questions that I asked people are was
32:01
what's your hobby?
32:02
In other words, what do you what do you love to do, whether you're paid for it or not?
32:07
Okay.
32:08
And and the participants had done strengths finder.
32:12
So I knew what their talents were.
32:14
And then I asked them to rate the presence of their talent in their hobby.
32:21
And 90% of the participants said there was a strong presence of at least 3 of their five
32:27
talents.
32:28
Okay.
32:29
From a coaching perspective, this was fascinating because if I know you like karaoke
32:35
Roxanne, If that's all I know about you, I probably can't really translate that knowledge
32:40
into any kind of coaching for how you'd for you to become more effective at work.
32:44
Mhmm.
32:45
But if I know what let's say you have the talent called Wu, which is winning others over,
32:50
creating instant rapport, meeting strangers, making people feel comfortable right away.
32:55
If I know that and you feel woo is strongly present when you're doing karaoke, now that we
33:02
know what woo looks like in you, I can translate that to your work.
33:07
And so it's this idea if you know what your talents look like at play, that can be used as
33:13
a metaphor for applying your talents at work.
33:15
What amazing, information to take back to the workplace, right?
33:20
Because oftentimes we think of play, you know, you know, we look at children and look at them
33:26
and they're so natural and, you know, and when as we get older, what do we do?
33:30
That's the first thing that goes is play.
33:32
Yeah.
33:32
But to to look at from the perspective of a hobby and then to learn about the person
33:36
because I I would think that that's fascinating bringing that back into organizations and into
33:41
teams.
33:42
Well, from a coaching perspective, again, if if, if we've had this conversation, I know your
33:47
hobby, I know your 5 talents.
33:49
I can just basic and we're and we're struggling with a challenge at work.
33:52
I can ask you to just start that start describing, okay.
33:55
You have input.
33:56
What is and you're a drummer.
33:58
What do you how what does input look like when you're drumming?
34:00
And they start describing it.
34:01
They get very animated as they describe it.
34:04
And typically, if it's a drummer and you describing input, he'll say, okay, he's paying
34:10
attention to the percussion.
34:12
He's paying attention to his own playing He's paying attention to everyone else.
34:16
Are they in sync?
34:18
He's paying attention to is the song being produced holistically.
34:21
So he's paying attention to 5 different things
34:23
Right?
34:23
Parallel.
34:24
Right.
34:24
And
34:25
if any one of those things are is slightly out of sync, it's usually the drummer that gets it
34:29
back into sync.
34:31
So just just his description of input.
34:33
That way, did you hear all that information and how I could translate that to work?
34:37
Right?
34:38
Paying attention to 5 different channels at a time, detecting when one's slightly out of
34:43
sync, finding a way to bring it back into sync, almost nonchalantly.
34:48
That's a very powerful strength to have at work.
34:52
Absolutely.
34:53
And I would think that if you have, a team that's in, let's say, or influx or stuck that
35:00
you can equally use that as important based on the roles that they're playing in that team
35:05
reference to a project also.
35:07
For sure.
35:07
Right.
35:08
For sure.
35:09
So here's the guy who happens to like drumming and through that and information, we've now
35:14
figured out figured out how he might be a key key component of getting this team that's in
35:19
flux back into sync.
35:21
Yeah.
35:21
Because he's a he's got he's multifaceted.
35:23
He's got 5 elements
35:25
Yeah.
35:25
Versus kind of the microscopic person that could just see maybe 1 or 2.
35:29
Yeah.
35:30
He has, like, he's he's almost so he can get that aerial shot
35:33
Yeah.
35:33
Because of his talents to be able to bring that to the team.
35:36
And and you see what you just described is is what a drummer does.
35:40
And what you just described is someone at work who can get a team on track.
35:44
It's the same thing.
35:46
And so that research was fascinating to me only from the perspective of before that research,
35:51
if I knew your hobby, I still didn't know how to coach you.
35:56
Now I do.
35:57
Right.
35:58
So this, did you put is there a book that that you put this into or a research paper or a
36:03
white paper somewhere out there?
36:05
There is a there's a a summary of capstone findings.
36:09
Okay.
36:10
And so which I'm glad to send to anyone who's interested my, my email is
36:14
ulmer@peakperformance.engineering.
36:18
Okay.
36:18
And I also have, a tool that'll help collect your own emotional high data, totally free.
36:24
And then have a tool that's an icebreaker that'll help you just get in touch with what
36:28
puts you into flow.
36:29
So if you're interested in the research, if you wanna start collecting emotional highs, please
36:33
send me an email.
36:34
I'm glad to send you any of this information.
36:36
Well, it's all fascinating.
36:37
I've learned some stuff from a different perspective.
36:41
And, recognizing that I have to bit find a little spend a bit more time in understanding
36:47
my flow because I know I know I I know my points.
36:50
Yeah.
36:51
And but sometimes I think I don't accentuate it as much as you're you're suggesting, which
36:56
would be a really, really, such a benefit to be able to do that.
37:00
Now tell everyone, I'm sure people are fascinating learning a lot more about this,
37:05
where they can reach you, and, you know, that they might wanna reach out and, potentially,
37:13
you know, use you in training or or coaching?
37:16
Absolutely.
37:16
So I think the easiest way to get a hold of me is omer@peakperformance.engineering.
37:22
That's my email.
37:23
And if you just want any of the tools, just mention that.
37:26
I'll send them back to you.
37:27
If you wanna connect, have a quick conversation, omer@peakperformance.engineering.
37:32
Hello, Omar.
37:33
Thanks so much.
37:33
So what am I walking away with today?
37:35
I think, recognize that we all have, activities or things, or I'm gonna think about my hobbies
37:42
now.
37:43
Right?
37:43
The things that I do that's fun and what's happening to me, you know, I think I've I've
37:50
not done ever done the strengths finders, but to really, maybe potentially do that and look
37:56
at how my hobbies help me understand what, what strengths I'm bringing, you know, to all all of
38:03
the people, whether it's work or at home, and how how those strengths could be used.
38:08
So for everyone, hope you got to us your sense of thinking about those, emotional high points
38:15
that, Omar has talked about and to focus on time and and learn a bit more about yourself.
38:21
If you're needing any more information on, mental health and wellness, you can reach me at
38:25
Roxanne.
38:28
Thanks for tuning in to authentic living with Roxanne, creating the space for positive,
38:33
healthy change.
38:34
Roxanne is a keynote speaker psychotherapist and coach to work with Roxanne, visit
38:41
rocksandurhaj.com/blueprint.
38:45
We'll see next time.
38:46
An authentic living with Roxanne.