Amazing Brains – 010 – Jeremy Jensen
In this episode, Micah sits down with Jeremy Jensen, speaker, entrepreneur and mountain sports athlete. In the show, they talk about the science of flow, lifestyle design, and action/adventure sports. Jeremy is the creator behind the Adventurepreneur Playbook Podcast, the Flow Performance Lab, and Outwild, a community resource for those looking to develop an adventure lifestyle.
Show Notes
Flow
- When Jeremy talks about flow, he tends to get into flow
- Feel your best, perform your best
- The model of flow triggers is helpful
- “The experience of flow is different for everyone, and the activities that get people into flow is different for everyone, but the biological triggers for flow are the same” – Jeremy
- The grey zone is where we are feeling overwhelmed and busy and not getting anything done
Routine
- The precursors to flow are things like focus and having a good well being, such as sleep, exercise and nutrition, breathing and breathwork, etc
- Having these all dialed in can help a person get into flow state easily
- Micah and Jeremy both agree that flow is open source, it can work with walking your dog or taking out a slack-line to learn to master, it can work for everyone in any activity
Process of Flow
- Struggle phase is the first phase
- Things like unpredictability and risk, all require a bit of struggle
- If you want to go for a run, you have to get off the couch, get your shoes on, get out the door, etc
- The second stage is the release, the brain is priming itself to start pumping itself to pump a cocktail of chemicals that allow for flow to happen
- Then, you hit the flow state itself
- The last stage is coming out of flow, the recovery phase
- You can’t be in a flow state forever, you have to come out and recover
- The adjustments you can make are minimizing the struggle, and speeding up the recovery phase
Tasks
- “Anything that takes less than 2 minutes to start, just do it” – Jeremy on the 2 minute rule
- You’ll build the momentum to want to keep doing it, or you’ll finish the task
- When you move from task to task you have something called ‘task residue’
- If you think of a new task while in one, don’t switch tasks, just write it down and get rid of the cognitive load
Final thoughts
- Optimization can look like ‘I need to be performing optimally at every moment’, but Jeremy says follow the things that make you feel most alive because that’s what life is all about
- Focus on the things that count
Links
About Jeremy Jensen
Jeremy Jensen is an entrepreneur, speaker, and mountain sports athlete – passionate about helping people lead authentic and intentional lives, rich with experiences that make them feel alive! His interests lie at the intersection of flow science, lifestyle design, and action/adventure sports. He is the creator of the Adventurepreneur Podcast, where he shares the stories of problem solvers, change makers, athletes, and outside the box thinkers – who have built their passion for adventure, travel, and the outdoors into businesses, projects, or fulfilling lifestyles. Jeremy is also the co-founder of Outwild, a community and event series that brings together outdoor and adventure-minded individuals to share ideas, optimize their lifestyles, create businesses, build meaningful connections, and play hard outside. His main priorities are to always be growing, helping other people, building and maintaining meaningful relationships, experiencing new things, and chasing flow states. Jeremy holds an MBA and MA in Social Entrepreneurship from the American University, a BA in Spanish from the University of Utah, and is a certified flow lecturer/coach – studying under the world’s foremost authority and thought leader on flow and optimal performance – Steven Kotler.