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Some of the biggest music stories in 2024 revealed inalienable truths. Kendrick beat Drake, once and for all; on the heels of her Eras Tour, the highest-grossing tour in history, Taylor Swift is the biggest Pop star in the world; and people like their Pop music served country-fried, as evidenced by Shaboozeys massive A Bar Song and Post Malones Nashville-forward album F-1 Trillion. But that’s the tip of the iceberg of what streaming and record sales data can reveal about where the industry is headed. Luckily, Luminatethe analytics firm whose data powers the Billboard chartsis the keeper of the keys on everything from streaming numbers and live music attendance to ascendant genres and the listening patterns of emerging markets. The media-data company had a lot of numbers to work within 2024, global streams reached nearly 5 trillion. Here are five key takeaways from Luminates year-end music report that forecast where music is going in 2025. 1. The pop girlies are just getting started When it came to hot genres, by mid 2024, the year was looking a lot like 2023with Latin music seeing the strongest listener growth in the U.S. But a lot can change in six months. Led by solo female performers, pop music triumphed. With Taylor Swift (12.8 billion streams) and Billie Eilish (4.5 billion streams) leading the pack, women solo acts occupied seven pop’s 10 most-streamed artists in the U.S. There were 47 female pop artists in the genres top 100 artistsincluding Olivia Rodrigo and Chappell Roanyet they drove nearly two out of every three songs streamed. Pop may have experienced the steepest rise, but as far as genre popularity goes, R&B and hip-hop still hold court. Just about one in every four audio streams last year was R&B/hip-hop, said Jaime Marconette, Luminates VP of music insights and industry relations, on a recent webinar. Still, the battle for genre primacy rages on, with country seeing significant upticks in 2024 thanks to international markets. Since last year, Marconette continued, R&B and hip-hops overall piece of the streaming pie is actually down 2.3 percentage points. 2. Gen Z will shell out for a concert If streaming allows artists to build a fanbase, then that fandom manifests at live performances. This past year, Gen Z unseated millennials for the first time as the biggest live music spenders, with the younger cohort specifically driven by music festivals more than any other demographic. In the second quartertypically when festival tickets go on sale ahead of the summer seasonGen Z spent an average of $38 per month on live events, which is 23% higher than the average listener. Although millennials have been dethroned, they continue to spend more on individual concerts than the festival-prone Gen Zers. Despite Gen Zs predilection towards festivals, Luminates data indicates that across all music listeners, the increasing price of live events is the largest barrier to entry, with 68% of live music goers citing ticket cost as something keeping them from attending concertsthe highest percentage in the history of Luminates audience reporting. According to the U.S. News & World Report, music festivals in 2024 cost between $200 and $600 on average, not counting additional expenses for travel, food, and lodging. Meanwhile, Pollster reports that last years 100 top music tours averaged $122.84. 3. TV, short-form, and video games fuel music discovery What people watch has long influenced what they listen to, but Luminates Streaming Viewership model is able to track the minutes watched of the years most popular music documentaries and offer insight into how viewership leads directly to streams. The eponymous Beach Boys documentary, for example, resulted in the legacy act seeing two bumps in streaming: one when the documentary was announced and another at the time of its release. People watch the documentary and then they go listen to the music, Marconette said. TV is particularly influential for millennials, who are 30% more likely than the average listener to discover music through streamers exclusive TV shows. Among other forms of content like short-form video, livestreams, and gaming, the endless permutations of genre and platform are ripe for different types of music discovery. In the U.S., fans of J-Pop are 73% more likely than average to discover music on platforms like Instagram Reels and TikTok, whereas Afropop fans are 188% more likely to make their own discoveries on Twitch than the average listener. Video games, meanwhile, lead fans to more hip-hop and rap, with those genre’s listeners 87% more likely to find music through games than the average listener. 4. International listeners are boosting streamers’ bottom lines In 2024, the global music industry hit 4.8 trillion streamsa single-year record and a year-on-year increase of 14%. Perhaps more remarkably, that jump represents a 75% increase in on-demand audio streams since 2022. But streaming isn’t just a volume gamestrong results and, streamers say, higher royalties, are driven by ad-free, subscription-based streaming. International markets are showing growth, but the markets that stream the most aren’t necessarily adopting premium plans proportional to their listening. Brazil, for example ranks No. 4 in total streaming, but 34th in premium growth. Latin America has led overall international premium growth since 2021, but in 2024 Asia, followed by Eastern Europe led international premium growth. At the top of the pack was Turkey, which saw a 17.8% jump in premium streams, followed by Croatia (16.1%, Romania, Malaysia, South Korea, and Slovakia). 5. Global music drives cultural exchangewith some limitations Growth in international streaming has given Luminate a trove of data that can help quantify the ways in which globalized music drives cultural exchange. This year, the debuted its Export Power Score, which ranks countries’ ability to export music globally based on factors that include artist streaming rank, a country’s market share, and the total number of countries listening to international artists. “You can use these metrics to really start evaluating the cultural impact that happens through music from a country, but you can also analyze some different trade relationships,” Marconette said. For several countries,language is a determining factor, with their top importers of content often sharing the same language. But in English-speaking markets, English-language artists are losing streaming share to non-English acts. In the U.S., artists from Mexico and Chile are making gains, while Indian artists showed streaming increases in the U.K. and Australia. Additionally, country made gains in English-speaking international markets in 2024, and Latin music found popularity in Portugal. In one area of cultural exchange, all roads lead back to one American artist in particular. Swedish songwriters Max Martin and Shellback were two of 2024’s most-streamed songwriters, but not because they were behind a breakout artist from last year like Chappell Roan’s songwriting collaborator Dan Nigro (No. 4). But both contributed heavily to 1989, which Taylor Swift re-released at the end of 2023, helping make them some of last year’s hottest songwriterswith Swift leading the pack.
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How can we all, as leaders, have a multiplier effect? How can we manage our impact on others so that we are multipliers who enable, encourage, and excite them to continuously raise the performance bar? What I mean by this is ensuring that everyone understands that to work here, you have two jobs: the job you were hired to do to continuously look for faster, better, cheaper ways of doing things. Lovely notion, but in many organizations, the weight of day-to-day activities stops them from doing this. They dont realize that its a false economy to see an irritatingly slow process and wait for someone else to do something about it because they just dont have the time. They dont see the dividend that would be paid next week if they stopped and fixed the problem today. You might be thinking that this is just la-la land. Theres no way we can get everyone to do this. But think of it this way: The opposite of continuously driving the performance bar upward is not stasis, its drifting backward. Your competitors will snack on your market share until theyve gorged themselves and left you starving. So how can this high-performance culture be realized? By creating a multiplier effect: meaning that employees not only do their job brilliantly well, but they enable everyone they come into contact with to do their job brilliantly well too. Not just their teammates. Not just their peers. Everyone. The other people in the meeting theyre in. The person from another department who needs some information. The junior employee whos learning how to do their job. The team whose project is going to heavily impact their department. Everyone. This diagram shows the alternatives to being a multiplier. None of them are performing. None of them are adequate. None of them are acceptable. [Illustration: Andrew Saffron] Bottom-left quadrant: Dead Loss These people hurt performance. They dont do their job properly and they get in the way of others doing their job properly. Bottom-right quadrant: Cheerleaders These people might seem great at first (particularly if theyve just replaced someone horrible), but it wont take long before their people realize that because their task skills arent up to scratch, they cant set direction, cant challenge them, cant answer their questions. So, their impact might initially be positive, but it will drift through neutral and end up being negative. Top-left quadrant: Brilliant Jerk This is the tricky one. You could argue that because of their great technical skills, theyre actually adding something to the organization. Yes, they might add something at first. But I believein fact, I knowthat this is a short-term thing. It doesnt take long for the impact of these peoples poor behavior to start impacting other peoples ability to do their jobs. Top-right quadrant: Multipliers Once again, people operating in this quadrant are having a multiplier effect because they do their job brilliantly well AND they enable everyone they work with to do their job brilliantly well. So, how do you ensure that you are a multiplier? There are three key behaviors: Empowerment Its a much overused and abused term, but I define empowerment as “devolving decision-making authority to the place of greatest information. That is, letting the people who know most about something get on with it. What, without checking their work? Yes. What, without weighing in with my huge intellect and exceptional experience? Yes. A lack of empowerment is a productivity issue (decisions getting escalated into a bottleneck), its a quality issue (decisions being made by those with less knowledge than the person who escalated), and its a customer service issue (as a result of suboptimal productivity and quality). And if youre thinking I cant possibly let that person make the decision. They wont do as good a job of it as I would, thats your faulteither because you havent given them the skills to be able to do it well, or youve tried to give them the skills, they havent learned, and youve done nothing about it. Helpfulness I truly believe that helpfulness is a key distinguishing feature of high-performing organizations. Everyone is enabled and encouraged to think about how they can be of greatest service to others in the organization. Some think of helpfulness as a bit anemic, a bit cutesy. Theyre wrong. Imagine if everyone in your organization were doing their best to help everyone else in the organization get the best result. Focus Empowerment and helpfulness are useless unless youre very clear about what needs to get done when it needs to get done, the resources required to deliver, and that people are held to account for delivery. Sounds like Management 101? Perhaps. But how often in your organization do people find themselves facing conflicting priorities, too many priorities, or changing priorities? A relentless drive to ensure that youre clear about focus areas and that everyone else is 100% clear on them takes a lot of pressure out of the system. Being a multiplier requires a big slab of self-awareness and the humility to know what you need to change. Start with yourself and then insist on this as a requisite to work on your team. Illustration from Better Culture, Faster by Andrew Saffron, published by Practical Inspiration Publishing.
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President Donald Trumps executive order to rename the Gulf of Mexico and Alaskas Denali, the tallest peak in the country, has resulted in lots of discussion. While for some, such renaming might seem less important than the big problems the country faces, there is a formal process in the United States for renaming places, and that process is taken seriously. Usually, so people dont get confused, official, agreed-upon names are used by the government. In the U.S., place names are standardized by the U.S. Board on Geographic Names, which is part of the U.S. Geological Survey, the agency in charge of making maps. In his executive order, Trump asks the Board on Geographic Names to honor the contributions of visionary and patriotic Americans and change its policies and procedures to reflect that. Usually, renaming a place starts locally. The people in the state or county propose a name change and gather support. The process in each state is different. How to change a place name Minnesota recently changed the name of a large lake in Minneapolis to Bde Maka Ska, which the Minneapolis Park Board described as a Dakota name for the lake that has been passed down in oral history for many years. The board voted to change the name and took its request to the county commissioners. When the county agreed, the request was then sent to the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources, which made it official for Minnesota. Then, the state of Minnesota sent the request to the Board on Geographic Names, which made it official for the entire U.S. Its a lot of paperwork for something so seemingly minor, but people get passionate about place names. It took 40 years to rename Denali from the name established in the late 19th century, Mount McKinley. The state of Alaska requested the name change in 1975, but the Board on Geographic Names didnt take action. Members of the Ohio congressional delegation President William McKinley was from Ohio objected over many years to requests to rename the mountain, and the board did not act on those requests. The president appoints the secretary of the Interior Department. The secretary works with the heads of related agencies to appoint the Board on Geographic Names. Current committee policy states, Input from State geographic names authorities, land management agencies, local governments, and Tribal Governments are actively pursued. In 2015, President Barack Obama named a new leader for the Department of the Interior, Sally Jewell. Just as Obama made a trip to Alaska in late August 2015, Jewell declared the name change official under a law that allows the secretary of the Interior to change a name if the board doesnt act on the proposal in a reasonable amount of time. Today were returning Mount McKinley to its native name – Denali, a step to reflect the heritage of Alaska Natives. pic.twitter.com/WyzQImKymX— President Obama (@POTUS44) August 31, 2015 This name change recognizes the sacred status of Denali to many Alaska Natives, Jewell said. The name Denali has been official for use by the State of Alaska since 1975, but even more importantly, the mountain has been known as Denali for generations. With our own sense of reverence for this place, we are officially renaming the mountain Denali in recognition of the traditions of Alaska Natives and the strong support of the people of Alaska. If someone objects to a name change, they could ask the courts to rule on whether the name change was made legally. Going back to Bde Maka Ska, some people objected to changing the name from Lake Calhoun, so they took the state natural resources agency to court. Eventually, the Minnesota Supreme Court ruled that the name change was done correctly. Alaskas two U.S. senators and prominent state figures have strongly objected to Trumps renaming attempt. How not to change a place name Renaming the Gulf of Mexico is a different kind of case, however, from renaming a geographic place within U.S. borders. The gulf is not within the territorial U.S. On the coast, the first 12 miles from shore are considered part of that country, but outside of that is international waters. The Board on Geographic Names could change the name to Gulf of America on official U.S. maps, but there is no international board in charge of place names. Each country decides what to call places. And there is no official way for the U.S. to make other countries change the name. Its possible that the U.S. could formally ask other countries to change the name or even impose sanctions against countries that dont comply. If the names were officially changed in the U.S., the government would use the new names in official documents, signage and maps. As for all the people and companies in the world that make maps, they usually use the official names. But there is nothing that would force them to, if they believed that a certain name is more widely recognized. On Jan. 24, 2025, the U.S. Department f the Interior issued a statement on the name changes: In accordance with President Donald J. Trumps recent executive order, the Department of the Interior is proud to announce the implementation of name restorations that honor the legacy of American greatness, with efforts already underway. “As directed by the President, the Gulf of Mexico will now officially be known as the Gulf of America and North Americas highest peak will once again bear the name Mount McKinley . . . The U.S. Board on Geographic Names, under the purview of the Department of the Interior, is working expeditiously to update the official federal nomenclature in the Geographic Names Information System to reflect these changes, effective immediately for federal use. This story has been updated to reflect the Department of Interiors statement on Jan. 25, 2025. Innisfree McKinnon is an associate professor of geography at the University of Wisconsin-Stout. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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E-Commerce
When Ginni Rometty was CEO of technology corporation IBM, she introduced skills-first hiring, arguing that the filters we typically use, such as education and experience, are not helpful in many jobs. Instead, companies should ask themselves what skills are required to succeed in a given rolesay, computer programming or selling softwareand then find job seekers who either have or want to acquire those skills, even if they dont have a computer science or business degree. By creating on-ramps through internship and apprenticeship opportunities, which are more common in European countries, IBM was able to dramatically broaden its talent pool. A skills-based approach holds the promise of better matches between jobs and employees, Rometty and coauthors suggest. The question, then, is how to best assess an applicants skills during this stage of the hiring process. Do the typical techniques used today, such as interviews and assessment tools, enable us to identify the best talent for the job? Unfortunately, the evidence suggests the answer is likely no. Interviews, for example, are fraught with problems. Numerous biases can lead us astray. To name but a few: In-group bias makes us prefer people who look like we do; stereotypes lead us to prefer candidates who look like the typical employee; halo effects cause us to put too much weight on first impressions; and confirmation bias makes us look for evidence confirming our gut instincts while ignoring contrary information. Sadly, seeing an actual person and receiving additional information such as demeanor and appearance did not counteract interviewer bias. In some ways, being confronted with another human makes things worse. We cannot help but be influenced by what job applicants wear (our favorite color maybe?), how they speak (with a dialect maybe?), and how they look (attractive maybe?). Based on a large data set from entrepreneurial pitch competitions as well as laboratory experiments in the U.S., we know that such irrelevant factors affect evaluators. Investors favored pitches delivered by men, especially attractive men, even when the substance of the pitch was identical to the pitches presented by women. In light of this, we should not be surprised that interviews, particularly unstructured ones, are bad predictors of future performance. It is in these unstructured contexts that unconscious bias flourishes. When people have discretion in their judgments, rules of thumb such as stereotypes are hard to avoid. Here are a few ways to make interviews and other formal assessment tools more effective and fair: Create an Interview Checklist It all starts with a simple list. What is it that you want to evaluate? Determine the skills, knowledge, and competencies a successful candidate should have and design the questions you want to ask accordingly. Each question should elicit information that allows you to better assess something you care aboutand, ideally, focus squarely on the competencies required. We are always astonished to discover that questions like Please tell us about yourself or What are your greatest strengths? are still beloved by many interviewers. What competencies are these questions testing, exactly? It is also important to define the criteria you will use to evaluate responses beforehand so that you know what you are looking for when talking to a candidate. It is easy to be swayed by, say, the first candidates vision but then completely focus on execution when you talk to the second candidate. The list will help you focus and make sure you collect comparable information on all the criteria you care about. To conduct a gold standard structured interview, ask all candidates the same set of questions in the same order. Determine a scoring rubric and the weights you want to give to each question beforehand. You might want to weight all of them equally or you may decide that the responses to your first and your fourth question are essential, so they should get more weight. Improve the Interview Process In addition to designing a set of questions based on what you look for in a candidate and deciding on the scoring of the responses and weighting of the questions, you also need to think about who will be involved in the interview process. Note that while it is helpful for candidates to meet a diverse set of interviewers, diversity on the selection. In interviews, have candidates meet the evaluators one-on-one. While panel interviews are common, we advise against them. On a panel, interviewers are unable to form truly independent judgments as they will be influenced by each other, increasing the likelihood that they fall prey to groupthink, where the groups judgment is worse than the aggregate of the interviewers individual assessments. Much of this influence is subtle and unconscious, such as noticing whether a fellow interviewer is leaning forward or back (indicating interest or disinterest in what the candidate is saying); whether their tone of voice is excited or judgmental; and whether they are nodding along and taking prolific notes as the candidate is speaking, or checking the messages on their phone instead. When interviewing, take notes for each response received and compare candidates responses horizontally. Submit your scores multiplied by the weight you have assigned to the question to the person leading the recruitment process (often, someone from HR) who can aggregate all final scores received for each candidate. Much like you should not meet with a job candidate in a group, you should not discuss your thoughts with other evaluators before you have submitted your scores. It is just too easy to fall right back into what you have successfully averted by meeting with the candidates individually: groupthink. The territory is particularly treacherous if you hear the most senior persons opinion before you have made up your own mind. A good practice is that even in the final calibration meeting, after everyone has submitted their scores, the most senior person speaks last. You cannot leave the evaluation of your candidates up to your gut instinct. The more discipline we can add to the evaluation processby moving from unstructured to structured interviews and from informal to formal skills-based assessment toolsthe more likely we will be able to identify the best possible job candidate. And what is even better, in most cases the additional rigor also helps us overcome our biased assessments, particularly if we examine the impacts our tests might have on various groups beforehand. From the book MAKE WORK FAIR: Data-Driven Design for Real Results by Iris Bohnet and Siri Chilazi Copyright 2025 by Iris Bohnet and Siri Chilazi. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers.
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Peak performance is a state of consciousness where youre in a rapt moment of attention, totally absorbed and focused on the task at hand. Everything else disappears, and time seems to pass quickly. Often called flow or the zone, its a state where your mental and physical performance goes through the roof. When was the last time you felt like you were in the flow? Like the work you were doing, or the challenge you were facing, aligned perfectly with your abilities for optimal performance? Weve all felt flow state before, but as workers, entrepreneurs, and community members struggling with the stresses and pressures of daily life, its worth the effort to learn to cultivate flow deliberately. The good news is its possible to train yourself to move into it when needed, says Steven Kotler, author of The Art of Impossible: A Peak Performance Primer. Flow is universal, he says. Anyone, anywhere can get into it, provided certain conditions are met. . . . Instead of it being an elusive state, it can become more reliable and repeatable. What is a flow state? Psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, a psychologist and professor of psychology at Claremont Graduate University in Claremont, California, is believed to have first introduced the concept of flow. In his book Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Performance, he describes it as: The state in which people are so involved in an activity that nothing else seems to matter; the experience itself is so enjoyable that people will do it even at great cost, for the sheer sake of doing it. Flow is that sweet spot on the edge of difficulty, where youre challenged a bit beyond your comfort zone but not so much that you struggle to continue. When youre in flow, time passes differently, your ideas are firing, and youre super focused. Theres a misperception that flow can mean being carried away by any experience, but when youre binging Netflix youre not in a flow stateyoure relaxing, or maybe just wasting time. Flow is a state of optimal performance during which our creativity, productivity, and mental health are enhanced. To experience it, we need to find a task that is challenging enough to require our full attention but not so overwhelming that we feel defeated. And that balance is worth finding for many reasons besides just getting stuff done. The benefits of a flow state Surfing is a 1,000-year-old sport, and 20 years ago the biggest wave ever ridden was 25 feet. Today surfers push into waves 100 feet tall. Whats behind the insane progress? Flow, says Kotler who is also the author of The Rise of Superman: Decoding the Science of Ultimate Human Performance. Flow is an optimal state of consciousness, when you feel and perform your best, he says. Its the moment of total absorption. Time speeds up or slows down like a freeze-frame effect. Mental and physical ability go through roof, and the brain takes in more information per second, processing it more deeply. It can be a pleasant experience, but more importantly, its an intensely productive one. A 10-year study conducted by McKinsey found that flow made executives five times more productive. Creating the conditions to get to a flow state can be an impactful way to conquer burnout and increase productivity and creativity. Studies show that people who experience flow report higher levels of happiness. A University of Sydney study found that flow is associated with higher levels of creativity and innovation. Flow has also been shown to reduce anxiety and depression. How do you induce a flow state? Getting into flow happens in a specific way. However, its not a one-size-fits-all process, due to personality. Following someone elses system can be dangerous, says Kotler. What usually happens with personality, personal growth, and self-help categories is that somebody figures out what works for them and then tries to teach others, he says. As a general rule, its a disaster. You need to figure out what works for you. 1. Set a clear vision of the future. Focusing on the next hill wont help a marathon runner much if she doesnt know the course shes supposed to be running. Its the same in business. Avoid vague aspirations and instead set clear and measurable targets. Research indicates writing down goals can dramatically increase your likelihood of achieving them. Write down specific longer-term goals, but also try to think more directionally and set small, achievable milestones along the way. For example, if youre trying to climb a mountain or get 100 customers, think about the first customer, or the first 100 yards uphill, and then the next. This way youre not limited by the end goal (and can keep adding steps beyond it) and each step along the way gives you a sense of accomplishment. Video games are often cited as one of the most quickly accessed sources of flow. Theres even a game Flow that pays homage to Csikszentmihalyi. Achieving a state of flow is part of what makes playing video games so enjoyable. Video games like the classic Super Mario World offer players an experience that almost reaches 100 stages. What makes this manageable is the experience is broken up into 96 parts spread across nine worldsinclusive of bonus worldseach with their own checkpoints. Breaking it down this way makes it more likely youll stay motivated as you achieve and complete those steps. The key here is to carefully plan out your steps by: Identifying your goal Creating a list of key milestones Putting them into a calendar Get started 2. Take care of your body and your brain. Your physical and mental health have to be in a welcome state for peak performance. Kotler says there are specific things you must do to maintain your energy levels on the physical side: perform: Get adequate sleep every night Maintain good hydration and nutrition Have regular social support and interaction On the cognitive side, anxiety hampers performance in a significant way and there are many ways to curb it. Kotler suggests you tue up your nervous system with a daily gratitude practice. He recommends making a list of three things youre grateful for and turn it into a paragraph. This is shown to reduce anxiety, he says. He also recommends having a mindfulness, respiration, or breathwork practice. Eleven to 20 minutes a day of focused breath is enough to consistently lower anxiety and regulate emotions. And the third, he suggests getting 20 to 40 minutes bursts of exercise where you can feel your lungs expand and youre flushing out stress. When youre starting, Kotler suggests doing one of these a day. Of course, you might find other techniques are best for maintaining your own mental focus. Kotler admits none of the tricks are cutting edge or sexy. Theyre simple psychological interventions that evolved millions of years ago, he says. If you want to rely on [a] substance, tool, or technology to get into peak performance, theres a problem. When your boss calls you into the boardroom, you need something reliable and repeatable. Flow follows focus. It only shows up when you have attention on the task at hand. 3. Find your flow triggers. According to an article from Eton College, Flow triggers are components of experiences that drive dopamine and/or norepinephrine through the brain, both of which can facilitate focus. Flow triggers are individual-based, so you have to figure out what works for you. For example, one trigger for some people is having high consequences, such as the CEO of your company calling you into the boardroom. It involves an element of danger, and someone with a high-risk-tolerance might find this trigger pushing them into peak performance. Another flow trigger is deep embodiment, which is when you expand your physical awareness as you learn by doing. Your triggers can change over time as your personality and strengths evolve, adds Kotler, who recommends rotating through triggers to keep flow showing up. 4. Remove distractions. One contributing factor to flow is the singularity of focusyou can achieve this by shutting out interruptions. The type of work you do may have some built-in limitations, but choose instead to focus on the areas you can control. There are Do not disturb settings on practically every device and software you use. Turn them on. Then, set a time boundary around the work youre doing. If youre a writer, set a goal of writing for 30 minutes without interruptions. If youre a designer, create a brief, gather all the necessary materials, and work on the design without stopping. Your productivity will skyrocket when youre not task-switching every five minutes. You cant attain a flow state if youre multitasking. Besides, multitasking is often just doing multiple things sub-optimally. Here are some ways you can remove distractions while you work: Limit your multitasking by shutting down every application you do not need Turn off any notifications that are not absolutely essential Put your cell phone out of sight Clear off your desk space Declutter everything within your field of vision Just like many video games have elegant information displays that do a great job of helping you focus only on the numbers that matter, if you can see it, it should relate directly to what you are doing. 5. Select the soundtrack. The quality of video game music has advanced dramatically since the original bleeps and bloops of arcade games like Donkey Kong and Space Invaders. Many video game soundtracks are stand-alone works of art in their own right, but Fast Company writer, organizational development practitioner, and video game enthusiast Jonathan Harrison especially recommend soundtracks from role-playing games like the Final Fantasy game series. The ideal works are sweeping orchestral pieces that fit the bill for being both pleasing to listen to and are noninvasive. This is the perfect combination for productivity-inducing background music. 6. Enforce time limits. A timer counting down creates a sense of urgency. Many video games have built-in time limits that specific tasks must be completed within. The presence of a time-tracking system also allows for better management of time resources, and can help keep a project on track. The motivation produced is as important as the evasion of procrastination. A study conducted by social network company Draugiem Group determined the ideal time for productivity is 52 minutes of focused intensity, followed by 17 minutes of break time. This cycle allows for focused and purposeful activity with an anticipated break at the end. But you can experiment to see what amount of time works best for triggering your own flow state. Tracking the time should be simple. Apps or programs like Marinara Timer will allow you to set a timer for a specific period of your choosing. So, you can take the guesswork out of when to set your next alarm, and provide a visual reminder of the countdown. 7. Disable autopilot. The atmosphere around you can trigger flow, and Kotler says novelty, unpredictability, and complexity will get you there. In surfing, no two waves are same, he says. In business, the idea is to get out of habits and routines. Automatic pilot is efficient and routines save the brain energy, but it doesnt put you into flow, says Kotler. Instead, shake things up. Vary your route. Even brush your teeth with the wrong hand. Against-the-grain tricks will demand focus, says Kotler. Pixar is a great example of a rich environment, says Kotler. Steve Jobs designed an atrium in the center of its offices, positioning the meeting rooms, cafeteria, mailboxes, and bathrooms around it. Steve Jobs artificially created the environmental conditions that massively upped the amount of novelty, unpredictability, and complexity in the environment because people across departments and disciplines started running into each other and having conversations, says Kotler. As a result, flow, innovation, and creativity went up. 8. Measure resultsbut not while doing the work. Of course, tracking results is important. But its equally important to do this in a way that doesnt interrupt the flow state youve worked so hard to achieve. Set a routine to avoid micromanaging your goals. This could be a dashboard that shows daily or weekly revenue metrics, or establishing regular check-ins with your team to review progress. 9. Reward yourself for success. Another important key to productivity is recognition. Video games are especially good at rewarding and recognizing positive behaviors and results. Part of this lies in the programming. Many modern games allow for in-game trophies or achievements for completing certain tasks, usually giving very specific details as to how to accomplish the feat. Unlike the typical workplace when the conditions are met, the award is immediately received every time. Consistency is much easier in a virtual world, where rewards and achievements can be doled out through an automated process, since this minimizes the likelihood good behavior will fail to be recognized, or poor performance will go unnoticed. This is part of the challenge managers face when overseeing groups in the workplace. When it comes to personal productivity, establish a set of prizes you will award yourself with upon completion of a task or milestone. The best part about managing yourself this way is you know what matters most. For example, maybe you know that youre not motivated by rewarding yourself with an episode of reality TV, but you are motivated by a cup of coffee or a sushi dinner to look forward to. 10. Push past your fears. Unfortunately, flow can be elusive even if youve set the table perfectly. Fires must be put out and sometimes avoiding distractions is impossible. Beyond that, some of the biggest obstacles to getting in flow are often internal: negative self-talk, doubts, and fears. But the truth is, fear is an almost inevitable by-product of pushing your boundaries. With practice and a few fear-busting strategies, youll develop the resilience to overcome these internal blockers and get into the optimal state to do your best, most creative work. The brain cant tell the difference between physical consequences and emotional risk, says Kotler. Taking social risks is the same as physical risks. Speak up at meetings, share creative ideas, approach a stranger or tell the truth when it feels awkward. In Silicon Valley, the idea is to fail fast or fail forward, he says. If youre not giving employees space to fail, youre not giving them space to risk. Move fast and break things. Engage in rapid experimentation. High consequences will drive flow and you get further faster. By cultivating a flow state, you can achieve productive happiness: a state in which you feel energized, motivated, and fulfilled by your work. And as a bonus, youll likely be more successful in the process. Flow shows up when were stretching, pushing our skills to the max, says Kotler. Its an uncomfortable place to be in the moment, but the payoff is a deeper life satisfaction. Greg Smith and Jonathan Harrison also contributed writing, reporting, and/or advice to this article and a previous version.
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E-Commerce
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