By Louisa Deasey

Regularly getting into the creative flow is one of the most powerful things you can do for your work, your wellbeing, and your sense of purpose. Yet for many people, flow seems elusive – something that happens “by accident,” or only during rare bouts of inspiration. But the truth is: the flow state is always available.
You simply need to know how to create the right conditions and practices to access it.

In this post, I’m sharing my personal journey with creative flow, the tools that have helped me cultivate it daily, and practical steps you can take to bring more focus, presence, and productive flow into your life so you can create the work that lights you up.

Why Creative Flow Matters More Than Ever

We are living through a time of unprecedented technological acceleration. Between media, software, AI, and constant online stimulation, the competition for our attention is literally billions of times more intense than it was a decade ago.

Your focus and attention is your most valuable resource.

Cultivating routines and rituals that help you enter a flow state is essential if you want to:

  • Do your best creative work

  • Access your intuition

  • Reduce overwhelm

  • Build emotional resilience

  • Feel connected to your purpose

  • Experience more peak states of joy and presence

Flow is the antidote to distraction.

My Personal Journey 

Until the age of 46, I lived with undiagnosed aneurodiversity. Despite this, I wrote two books, created more than a dozen step-by-step courses, and built an entire business.

How?
By observing myself and the tools, environments and habits that helped, rather than hindered me.

Not through willpower.
Not through pushing.
But through self-awareness, which led me to find the tools and environment that work for me.

I share these tools with you because creative flow is one of the best things about being alive and a creative being! And whether you’re neurodiverse OR neurotypical, there are proven techniques that do help.

But first, what Exactly Is Flow State?

I define the flow state as that blissful point of…

  • Deep Presence

  • Absorption

  • Non-thinking

  • Non-worry

  • Deep engagement

It’s the opposite of multitasking, future-tripping, or replaying the past. It takes you out of your ‘head’ and anxiety and  it puts you in the alpha or beta wave state.

Athletes, artists, musicians, writers—all access flow. But so can anyone who focuses deeply on something meaningful, whether it’s cooking, designing, solving a problem, or building something with your hands.

Psychologist Dr. Benjamin Hardy calls flow a peak experience. Cal Newport describes it quite a bit in his book:  Deep Work.

I believe flow is a heightened state of consciousness where you express your truest self and you feel really peaceful and productive while doing so! For me, I can write for hours in that state.

The Techniques I Use to Enter Flow State

Here are the practices that make the biggest difference in my own creative life.

1. Prioritise Sleep (Non-Negotiable)

Sleep resets your mind, body, and nervous system. Without enough of it, you simply can’t do deep, focused creative work. Creative work uses a lot of mental and emotional energy, and sleep needs to be a priority.

Even James Clear (author of Atomic Habits) won’t force himself to rise early if it means getting less than 8–9 hours of sleep. Which means, if he’s up late, he sleeps late. I love this! Non-negotiable.

Signs you need better sleep:

  • Emotional reactivity

  • Foggy thinking

  • Feeling “pulled” by other people’s needs

  • Unstable focus

Athletes build sleep into their training. Creatives need to do the same.

A rested mind is a creative mind. 

2. Walk in Nature to Clear Your Energetic Field

Nature dissolves mental noise.

When you walk past shops, crowds, conversations, signs, advertising—you absorb messages that aren’t yours. In the forest or by the water, you reconnect with:

  • Your intuition

  • Your higher perspective

  • Your natural rhythm

  • Your creative instincts

Nature pulls you out of the 3D world of distraction and back into spacious, grounded clarity and perspective. Studies have shown we think more creatively when we are surrounded by nature, too, so be sure to add some greenery to your office. It’s something about the curved lines and way nature flows and grows, that makes us less anxious!

3. Use Music or Frequencies (Without Lyrics)

For deep focus, I use binaural beats, classical piano playlists or concentration frequencies—often the “ADHD Focus” tracks on YouTube Premium.

Why no lyrics?

Words pull the mind outward.
Flow requires you to go inward.

If you’re sensitive or neurodivergent, lyrics or conversations nearby can pull you out of your creative trance instantly. I made a track you can listen to here which is alpha waves at 10hz. They’re doing more and more studies into the healing power of different frequencies, and i love 432 hz as well.

4. Breathing Exercises to Set Your Intention

A simple pattern called the box breath:

  • Breathe in for 4

  • Hold for 4

  • Exhale for 4

This slows the nervous system, brings you into your body, and dissolves mental chatter. Before I start work, I also set a clear intention and use I AM affirmations to re-anchor my intention and come back to the power of the present moment. What ‘am’ I doing and being? That’s where i put my focus.

Your creative problem is rarely the problem—the perception is.

Breathwork re-centres that perception. A simple 8 breaths in and 8 out, visualising each part of your body opening to inspiration is a good one, too! Do it 8 times in a row before you start your creative work.

5. Start to remove ‘Urgent’ Tasks and Focus on Important Tasks (there’s a big difference!)

This principle changed my life.

Dr. Ben Hardy (in 10x Is Easier Than 2x) explains that 10x results come when we eliminate the urgent and only focus on what actually drives the needle. Stop doing the urgent things. Only do what’s important.

Urgency is often a symptom of poor boundaries, overstimulation, or neglected priorities. It’s also a recipe for a chaotic nervous system and feeling disregulated. Not good for flow!

When you remove urgency, you create space for depth.
And depth is where flow lives.

6. Create an Environment That Supports Your Brilliance

Some people can work in cafés. I cannot.

I need:

  • Quiet

  • Soft lamplight

  • No fluorescent lights

  • No chatter

  • No interruptions – an appointment in the afternoon will mean I don’t get anything done in the afternoon. I need to feel there’s space around things, so i try not to book things up on writing days.

  • Put your phone on ‘focus’ mode, and turn it completely off when you go to bed at night.

Know what you uniquely need—and honour it.

Flow comes from honesty with yourself, not from forcing yourself into environments that drain you. What drains you? Make a list.

7. Identify & Eliminate Your Biggest Distractions

This may mean:

  • Turning off your phone (not just silencing it)

  • Ending your day at sunset, as spiritual teacher once suggested

  • Drinking more water and herbal tea

  • Using essential oils like rosemary, bergamot, or pine

  • Reducing Zoom time if it overstimulates your nervous system

The world trains us to be constantly “on.”
Flow asks us to be selectively, intentionally on.

Flow is How You Access Your Highest Creative Power

From this state, I’ve written books, created courses, mapped entire programs, outlined scripts, and experienced the deepest freedom I know.

But I’ve also lived without flow—and I know the cost:

  • Fragmented attention

  • Emotional overwhelm

  • Disconnection from intuition

  • A scattered sense of self

Creating an environment where I can be in flow and create the work that’s meaningful and important to me is how I live my best life, so it’s not just a luxury, it’s spiritual hygeine!

An Exercise for You

Identify one thing you will stop doing or turn off.

Just one.

It might be:

  • Turning off your phone after sunset

  • Removing an urgent task from your weekly routine

  • Eliminating background TV

  • Finding one thing you can duplicate and systemise so you’re not wasting time repeating it every day

  • Walking in nature without your device

  • Sleeping with your phone in another room

  • Limiting meetings (or removing them completely – can it be an email?)

  • Saying no to the “urgent” tasks that aren’t truly urgent – choosing what you want to do and doing that, is real personal power!

Saying no to unimportant things that don’t matter to YOU is what’s important, here. It can be the hardest thing, too, but you’ll feel relieved when you do it!

Final Thoughts

You deserve daily solitude.
You deserve unbroken time with your intuition.
You deserve access to your own creative truth.

The world is loud—louder than it has ever been.
But you are more powerful than the noise.

Come back to your focus.
Because what you focus on, expands, and when you’re focused and in flow, 10x truly IS easier than 2x! And time just melts.

Louisa