let's cover how the Navy Seals unlock extreme focus and performance within the most chaotic environments on Earth this tool the micro Mission rule is going to show you how to sustain deep profound Focus even amidst endless distractions sprawling to-do lists and a chaotic work environment the average knowledge worker is stuck in a game of whack-a-do scence shows there's a way to train your brain to thrive despite the chaos now I'm ran Daris co-founder and CEO of the flow research Collective and along with my partner Steven Cotler we T thousands of professionals how to access Flow
State at will imagine you're a Navy SEAL on a mission in a war zone you breach a door and rush into a burning building Flames licking the walls gunshots ring out and bullets whistle past your head and someone screams over the noise change of plans the target move locations you can hardly hear the order over the crackling blaze a bullet hits your teammate and he goes down it's pure chaos the uncertainty is so thick you don't even know if you'll survive the next minute is someone going to jump out in front of you is the
building going to collapse are you going to step on a grenade you're operating on Instinct alone constantly adapting reacting and moving forward despite the uncertainty the Mayhem will Special Forces operators engage in the most chaotic environments imaginable change happens on the order of seconds however they're trained to find certainty even if it's only for an incremental 5minute window within that environment for the seals certainty is critical because it's a matter of life or death though less dire certainty is also critical for modern professionals too without some amount of certainty however small we can't get into
Flow State that optimal State of Consciousness that you've been in many times where you feel and perform at your very best and this is because flow can only arise when we concentrate completely on a clear goal a target for our attention that we can converge on with certainty both complete concentration and clear goals are FL triggers and without certainty neither of these triggers get pulled and here's the key as the Navy Seals can attest minimum viable certainty is enough to keep you on your game performing at your highest level now I was once having a
conversation with the executive team at one of the biggest tech companies in the world and on a neurological level their days were surprisingly similar to the Navy Seals and I'm sure you can relate to this yourself you've got seven urgent emails all demanding your attention three people you need to call back as soon as possible a couple of huge projects that your boss spe progress on with an update in a few hours 13 text messages lighting up your phone it's all so urgent and non-stop like playing whack-a-mole you bounce from one task to the other
task but you can't touch and sustain focus on anything for long enough to complete it before something else that feels equally pressing pops up now I asked these guys this executive team I said as of now how often are you getting into flow into that state of deep immersed Focus they looked at me like I had just told some sort of joke scoffing they said we don't have enough time to get the flow our task priorities shift too much all day constantly the targets are moving so I asked how clear is your priority set over
the span of a week they explained that their certainty about what to work on changed literally dozens of times in any given week okay I said it's clear that you don't have certainty across a week what about across a day they laughed and said no there's too much change way too fast to be certain about what to work on for a full day this uncertainty was blocking them from flow and crippling their performance what about half a day I said some of them started to nod an hour more of them nodded what about 30 minutes
could you sustain certainty on one thing even amidst the chaos for 30 minutes at that point everyone in the executive team nodded and the lesson was clear regardless of the level of uncertainty you have in your environment you can always carve out and create pockets of certainty what we call certainty Windows you don't need external uncertainty to go away for you to be internally certain all day long despite your surroundings being endlessly uncertain like the Navy Seals you can manufacture a full day of felt perceived certainty by using certainty windows and it comes down to
how your brain is wired the task positive network tpn is a neural network in the brain that activates when you engage in go directed activities requiring cognitive focus and short-term memory the tpn pulls you out of the cognitive landscape in which what you should work on is up for constant debate it cuts away all the options hones in on a single decision and commits to an action a certainty window when a seal enters a chaotic environment or a tech executive navigates a swarm of emails the tpn AIDS in zeroing in on the immediate crucial task
filtering out all the non-essential stimuli when plans shift suddenly whether on the battlefield or in the boardroom the tpn helps the brain quickly recalibrate and adapt to the new set of priorities and tasks enabling you to maintain control amidst uncertainty so knowing the pth power the task positive Network how do you train up your ability to navigate uncertainty well there's three ways to do this the first is to execute micro missions within certainty Windows now in a conversation with X Navy SEAL rich deini and Dr Andrew hubman Stanford neuroscientist hubman told me a funny story
about what it was like to go through the airport with Rich he said Rich treats every step of the process as a micro Mission as he moves through security he's 100% focused on that task alone no more conversation he Narrows his attention so fully with the task positive Network that it's almost like he's in his own world the moment we hit the line he began executing the operation with military Precision shoes off laptop out liquids bagged everything is organized for Rapid deployment throughout security clearing security Rich checked his watch checkpoint cleared he looks around reorienting
his attention and assessing what's next with the security clearing mission accomplished the next mission arises acquire food once the food is acquired the micro mission is to eat the food then board the plane on and on this goes one micro Mission at a time within a window a pocket of uncertainty now a certainty window is a defined period where you commit to a task despite surrounding uncertainty where you say regardless of whether I feel or think that there's something else that's more important in this moment I'm going to commit to this task being the priority
for this window no matter what and then the micro mission is the specific activity you choose to focus on within that window for example you might say for the next 30 minutes which is the certainty window I'm going to write the introduction for my presentation which would be the micro Mission the micro Mission gives you direction for how to allocate your attention within your certainty window within your certainty window you want to obliviously hyperfocus on the micro Mission tuning out distractions your internal sense that something else in the environment that you're not quite sure of
may be of more importance for you to focus on but between certainty Windows you Brea briefly lift your head to reassess priorities and realign check your messages to-do list calendar and pick your next certainty window your next micro Mission if you've got a presentation you need to create nail the intro slide a book to write nail the first paragraph data analysis organize the spreadsheet first for ease of use accomplishing these micro missions triggers dopamine release which enhances focus and motivation each completed Mission within a certainty window reinforces this positive feedback loop the neurochemical momentum will
carry you through the uncertainty and so rather than needing the certainty to last you just need to keep narrowing in and committing to a window of self-generated certainty find that certainty window execute within it refind it once you've finished it execute within it and repeat that's the pattern of the Navy Seals creating a certainty window is simple Take 5 minutes assess everything on your plate all the emails all the things you're not fully conscious of the slack messages the tasks you know you have to do and pick what seems seems to be the most important
thing get an estimate for how long you can focus on that thing with certainty and that might be different from how long it takes to complete this thing this is just how long you feel you're actually going to be able to commit to this one thing without doubting its importance or switching task to something else in the environment that you're in again for the executive team that we were working with these tasks that they were focusing on took more than 30 minutes to complete but 30 minutes was the block of time that they could suppress
out all of the doubt and uncertainty within their environment now bear in mind that the more chaotic the work environment is the shorter your certainty window will be but the key is to update your certainty windows with high frequency a 30 minute certainty window that you repeatedly create over a full 8 hour day means that you're always certain like Rich Dy did going through the airport and most knowledge workers are in constant sea of uncertainty which makes them assume there's no point in finding certainty because it'll be erased so quickly but the difference between having
no certainty window versus a 30-minute certainty window is huge with that one at all you either become Paralyzed by the uncertainty and almost get nothing done all day or you frantically react to every notification pulled in 10 directions getting nowhere this derails you and slows you down from achieving your goals but even worse you have to feel just as much stress if not more even though you've made way less progress uncertainty gives you a terrible Roi on the stress that you're going to feel either way now one way to create certainty Windows is to qualify
urgent only a tiny sliver of tasks qualify as actually important despite what it feels like if you have generalized anxiety about every task being equally urgent uncertainty will be a constant companion so it helps to differentiate between Mission critical and merely urgent something Mission critical means long-term harm can befall you your colleagues the business but those instances are very rare more often something is merely urgent pressing but nothing will break if you wait or the break can be easily fixed and it's worth the weight so slowing down to qualify the urgency of a task shrinks
its threatening Nature by asking how urgent is this thing in actuality not in my perception now next what we want to do is sustain our certainty Windows as you delve into your micro missions within each of these certainty Windows you must ban yourself from diverging while you are in that certainty window you have to stick to the window even if within 10 minutes of delving into a certainty window you're convinced that you're working on the wrong thing or you remember that someone sent you a message or an email that you forgot that you had received
but you have to respond to as fast as possible it's cancer intuitive but you must continue with the certainty window even if the priority has in fact changed otherwise you defeat the purpose of the certainty window in the first place the whole point of a certainty window is to sustain the certainty despite the ambient external uncertainty you don't want to trip up the task positive Network once it's activated this is cognitively taxing leaving you with less in the tank for the remaining certain Windows of the day as you train up your ability to stick to
certainty Windows here's a trap to watch out for one of the reasons why it's difficult to commit and sustain a certainty window is due to the nature of how flow Works flow doesn't work like a light switch either on or off it takes place as part of a four-phase cycle beginning with struggle which is neurochemically uncomfortable and because of this discomfort the struggle phase is when you have the highest risk of breaking your certainty window the key is to commit and sustain Focus because if you break the certainty window you reset the flow cycle and
you have to restart the struggle phase again and even worse you risk casting yourself back out into the sea of uncertainty which can swamp the system overwhelm you and sabotage the day and as you train your ability to commit to certainty windows and execute micro missions within them you reach the next step which is to be able to set longer and longer certainty Windows over time by restructuring the fundamental nature of your work the ideal is that your work environment isn't so chaotic Isn't So distracting isn't so messy that you can only have a 30-minute
pocket of certainty and if you're a leader you want to create those conditions for your team good leaders create working environments where long certainty windows for their teams and organizations are possible that's because as you extend your certainty window it means that you never have to reconsider what the priority is you can sustain Focus you can drop into flow and you can hold that flow state for much longer it makes micro missions irrelevant you don't even need to use them because the certainty window itself has the missions determined within it you just know what to
do for hours and hours ideally days and days in some cases a certainty window can even last months and months and you don't have to think about what the priority is rather the priority the most important thing is set well in advance and you can just drop into it with certainty that it is the most important thing and sustain that certainty for a long period of time which is going to cultivate and drive you into flow it's the difference between driving across the country using back roads having to stop every 5 minutes to check the
GPS and decide which turn to take versus taking the highway that takes you straight to your Des destination the more you can lengthen the window the more flow and progress you'll get this is how knowledge skills and expertise Compound on the extreme end this is how legendary investor Warren Buffett has built such a massive net worth He has maintained an epic multi-decade certainty window for over 70 years his sole daily focus is to identify stocks that are undervalued from the perspective of their price to earnings ratio this lifetime certainty window is responsible for his hundred
billion plus Fortune but it doesn't need to be that extreme even a certainty window that lasts a week where you know what your number one priority is and that doesn't change all week is incredibly beneficial maybe you can get to the point where you have a certainty window that lasts a month where you know that the only thing you need to do this month is write three chapters of a book for example so every day you wake up and your certainty window is set for the work day whatever duration that is you're certain that this
is the one thing you have to do and the only thing you have to do so the goal for you is to work the certainty windows up until 30 minutes becomes an hour an hour becomes a day a day becomes a week then a month and that increase in certainty will dramatically increase your susceptibility to dropping into Flow State and accessing the Peak Performance that comes with that now even with this minimum viable certainty at the start of any task there's still a struggle phase this is when your brain protests and stress neurochemicals make it
squirm this is the biggest threat to your certainty window to master pushing through this struggle and persisting with the task so you can get into Flow State click here [Music] w
