As I get older, I often find myself thinking about different concepts more deeply. Maybe it is seated in a sense of definite mortality, but it is also a process of finding joy in understanding the world around me, myself and my place in it.
I find myself in a wonderful position where I consider my career to my past time. I love design and designing. It sustains my lifestyle financially but sits at the same level as my love for my other pursuits of sailing, football, mountain biking and coaching.
Time management to fit it all in is usually the greatest challenge.
As I pondered my naval on the common string between all these passions, I found one element that each held at its core – The constant search for the ‘Flow State’
I have always known about flow and chased it.
Flow, often called being “in the zone,” is a mental state where time seems to disappear, self-consciousness fades, and one’s focus intensifies. For industrial designers, flow enables unbroken creativity and problem-solving, while for athletes and coaches, it sharpens focus, heightens skills, and increases connection with the task at hand and team mates around us. Although these activities seem unrelated, they all share a foundational need for the flow state, and achieving it in one can strengthen its accessibility in the others.
What is Flow?
The flow state was first conceptualized by psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, who described it as “being fully immersed in a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and enjoyment in the process of the activity.” Reaching flow requires balancing one’s skill level with the challenge presented. When challenges are too high, anxiety can set in; when they are too low, boredom creeps in. For each activity—be it mountain biking or designing products—the goal is to find that middle ground where both your skill level and the difficulty of the task are high enough to keep you fully engaged.
The Industrial Designer’s Journey to Flow
Being an industrial designer, reaching the flow state means finding that moment when creativity and problem-solving come together seamlessly. Shifting from broad ideation into focused detail work, balancing the conceptual with the practical to ensure a successful product for my clients.
Cultivating flow as a designer:
1. Create a Distraction-Free Zone: Distractions disrupt flow, so set up an environment conducive to concentration. Whether it’s ambient music or silence, the goal is to remove disruptions so your mind can focus entirely on the design.
2. Establish Clear Milestones: Flow emerges more readily when goals are clearly defined. For designers, breaking down the creative process into phases—ideation, sketching, CAD modelling, and so on—helps maintain focus on one step at a time and then move through them eliminating scatter brain.
3. Challenge Yourself Constantly: Flow in design often comes from stretching your skills just beyond your comfort zone. This could mean experimenting with new materials, exploring unfamiliar aesthetics, or tackling technically challenging designs. Learning to learn is a fundamental and always being a humble student.
4. Lose Yourself in the Process: Designers often find that the passage of time fades away when they’re deeply absorbed. Instead of focusing on the end product, immerse yourself fully in the creative journey, exploring ideas and refining details without regard for the clock.
Mountain Biking and Flow
Mountain biking, is one of the places I first really discovered and chased flow.
With its physical and mental demands, bringing together body, machine in natural surrounds. It is truly a visceral experience. Riders experience flow on by immersing themselves in technical trails where every twist and turn, and root and rock, pinch and drop requires quick adjustments, balance, and courage.
Flow allows you be present in the moment, clearing the mind from life’s worries or distractions. It is also, in my subconscious, where I have found solutions to me greatest design problems.
Cultivating flow on the bike:
1. Know the Trail but stay Adaptive: Being familiar with the trail provides confidence, but adaptability is essential. Trails change due to weather or natural shifts, so staying present and ready to improvise keeps your mind alert and engaged. Rely on your reactions rather than your thoughts.
2. Emphasize Technique, Not Just Speed: Rather than prioritising speed, I try to focus on body position over the bike, pushing the limit of traction, and smooth movements. Engaging with the terrain in this way keeps you connected to the bike, allowing more fluid response to obstacles.
3. Prepare Mind and Body: Entering a state of flow requires both mental and physical readiness. The first 10 minutes always is rough as the body warms up, especially on cold winter mornings. Focusing the mind and body helps prepare and bridge the gap between thinking and reacting. Music (again) can help with this to drain out the resistant screams of tired muscles and joints.
4. Stay in the Moment: Flow occurs when you focus on each move as it comes. Instead of thinking too far ahead, trust your reflexes and allow your reactions to guide you as the trail unfolds. Focus what is immediately ahead.
Sailing and Flow
Sailing demands a balance of skill, intuition, and a sensitivity to natural forces - wind, water, and current. Combining machinery, systems, technique and team work. finding flow on the water is often about feeling in harmony with these elements.
1. Read the Water and Wind: Sailing flow involves adapting to subtle changes in wind and water. The practice of feeling and adjusting your movements and manoeuvers based on environmental feedback pulls you into a deep, focused state. No two situations are ever the same, but an acute understanding of the interaction between the wind and the water can enable you to maximise boats speed for competitive advantage in racing or comfort in cruising.
2. Focus on Control and Adaptability: Balancing control over the boat while allowing for flexibility builds flow. Let go of rigid plans and work with the rhythm of the sea, adjusting sail trim, weight balance and course as needed.
3. Set Goals, but Remain Flexible: Whether you’re navigating to a destination or in a race, setting a purpose keeps you motivated. Flow is about remaining adaptable, moving with the wind and water as conditions change.
Football and Flow
For footballers, flow emerges in the fast-paced interaction with teammates and opponents. It’s about finding that sweet spot where skills, strategy, and instinct blend.
1. Focus on the Collective Goal: Flow in football often happens within the context of teamwork. Keeping the team’s objective in mind, rather than getting caught up in individual plays, allows connection to the game’s rhythm.
2. Work on Situational Awareness: Being aware of the field’s dynamics. Player positions, ball location, open spaces help anticipation and effective response. When your awareness sharpens, flow becomes more accessible.
3. Stay Adaptable and Intuitive: Flow occurs when you can respond instinctively as a game evolves and unfolds. Whether that means passing, dribbling, or defending, relying on training and instincts to navigate the game’s fast pace without overthinking each move.
Coaching and Flow
For a coach, flow is about being fully present with athletes, intuitively guiding them, and adapting strategies in real-time based on the players’ needs and the game’s demands.
I find parallels between coaching my football team and coaching my design clients.
1. Focus on Development: Setting specific goals for each individuals improvement keeps your attention on coaching rather than outcomes, and it opens opportunities for flow by engaging deeply with each person’s journey. It also helps enhance their pursuit and attainment of flow, both individually and collectively.
2. Adapt to Real-Time Dynamics: Coaching requires quick thinking and flexibility. As you read players’ progress and interpret game flow, you can adapt your coaching style to fit the team’s current needs.
3. Being Fully Present: Like the athletes or designers, coaches reach flow when they’re fully immersed in the game. Avoiding distractions and be mindful of body language, tone, and attention, to remain fully engaged with your charges.
Finding Flow Across my Passions.
Immersing myself in several beloved activities like industrial design, mountain biking, football and coaching, there’s a unique benefit in each of those skills that can help unlock flow in another. It has been really interesting to work through each and see the cross over of how these experiences intersect:
1. Enhanced Focus and Resilience: Sports teach resilience and persistence, skills that can improve focus in design. Facing and overcoming physical challenges can make mental ones, like solving a design problem, seem more manageable.
I was once in 6 hours into an 8 hour mountain bike, in a world of hurt, cramping in both legs, as I struggled up a pinch climb. As I stood hunched over my bike, a tall race whippet of a guy pedalled past me and with an accent that sounded like Arnold Schwarzenegger said “Eet iz hord, zat eez vhy ve dooo eet” (Translation – “It is hard, that is why we do it”) This little pearl of wisdom has guided many an important decision.
2. Iterative Improvement: In both coaching and design, iteration is crucial. Small, continuous adjustments help reach a larger goal. This iterative approach, common to both practices, trains for engagement more deeply in the process.
3. Balancing Physical and Mental Flow: Engaging in both mental (design) and physical (sports) activities provides a balance. When one activity feels exhausting, switching to the other can refresh your mind and keep flow accessible.
Finding flow is a pursuit shared across all my passions; industrial design, mountain biking, sailing, football, and coaching. By understanding how to reach flow in each area, I can create a richer, more interconnected experience of focus, skill, and personal growth across each.
Another common thread that is always present is music, but maybe more down that rabbit hole another time.
équipe design & consulting is a Product Design Consultant in Sydney
with 20 years experience in design and manufacture of Medical grade moulded parts and product, including 5 years at the coal face as Operations Manager at a world class medical grade moulding facility; we are specialist in Design for Manufacture (DFM).
Please reach out if you feel you need assistance with your part design for plastic injection moulding, from Design Coaching and Guidance to Full Service Design Consulting.
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