Allow your brain to do the hard work for you

Your brain is way smarter than you.

It can predict all sorts of complex motions. You can complete familiar tasks with your eyes closed. You can get something done without even noticing. If you learn to juggle you don’t even have to look at your hands. It just happens.

When you develop a skill, you stop having to think about the technique. It lets you just do the thing without consciously thinking about about the details of what is happening. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi called this “flow” or “the flow state”. Most people who are in this state, by definition, aren’t really thinking about what the state itself is or should be called.

If you find a productive task where time passes without you noticing, you are probably doing the right things. You are letting your brain do the hard work for you.