Ultra States: Who's Choosing Your State?
We say we want people’s best thinking. Then we fill their diaries, reward quick replies and squeeze out the gaps in which they might actually think. By the end of the day, everyone has been busy, plenty of information has changed hands, and the work that needed proper attention is still sitting there. I wonder how often we mistake availability for contribution.
Ultra States - A performance framework
My conversation with Deri Llewellyn-Davies brought that question into focus. His Ultra States framework explores our ability to deliberately access different states for focus, creativity, performance, connection and recovery. But the challenge underneath it interests me most: how much choice are we exercising over the way we show up? Some of that choice gets taken away by other people’s demands. Some we surrender ourselves, through habits that feel perfectly normal.
When keeping up becomes the job
Checking the phone before getting out of bed. Answering a message while someone is talking. Filling the few minutes between meetings with emails because we might as well get something done.
I can see how easily those things become evidence of being conscientious. We’re responsive. We’re involved. We’re keeping things moving. But towards what? There’s a difference between choosing to respond because something matters and responding because something has arrived. When every arrival gets a vote on our attention, the loudest or latest demand can end up organising the day.
Deri puts it bluntly:
“You either choose your state or someone else will choose the state for you.”
I don’t hear that as a claim that we can control every feeling or circumstance. I hear a challenge to notice when we’ve stopped making a choice at all.
We might intend to listen carefully in a conversation, for example, while still mentally arguing with someone from the previous meeting. We’re in the room. Our attention is elsewhere. The person opposite us gets the distracted version of us, however good our intentions were.
That has consequences for trust, decisions and performance. Being available isn’t always the same as being useful.
Agency needs somewhere to live
During the conversation, I describe back-to-back digital meetings as a treadmill with the stop button out of reach. Deri challenges me. We have choices, he argues, and we can start taking them back. I think he’s right to push that. It would be convenient to blame the diary, the technology or the organisation for everything, without examining our own part in it. Which meetings do we accept without questioning? What do we reach for whenever there’s a quiet moment? How often do we confuse an immediate response with a necessary one?
We can reclaim something. A period of focused work. A phone-free conversation. A few minutes to reset before moving into a different task. But there’s a leadership question here too. How much room do people actually have to exercise that choice? If we tell people to protect their focus, then expect instant replies, which instruction wins? If we encourage breaks, then book meetings straight through them, what have we really made possible?
People pay attention to what happens when they try. Someone who gets challenged for being unavailable during focused work learns more from that response than from any presentation about wellbeing.
What we say matters. What we do matters more. That includes what we reward, what we interrupt and what we make difficult.
We prepare the agenda. Do we prepare ourselves?
One of the most useful questions in Deri’s approach is deceptively simple: what state does the next situation need? We readily prepare the information for a meeting. We might rehearse an important presentation or think through a difficult message. Yet we can give surprisingly little attention to our readiness for the interaction itself.
Does this person need my full attention? Does this discussion need curiosity? Does this task need uninterrupted concentration? Am I arriving with any of that available? Deri’s Everest story gives this a dramatic setting. When the mountain moved beneath him, he drew on years of breathing and meditation practice. He didn’t calmly browse a list of possible responses. He defaulted to what he’d trained in.
Our ordinary working days give us opportunities to practise too. Pausing before replying. Putting the phone away. Leaving enough space between two demanding conversations to consider what the second person needs. These can sound almost embarrassingly obvious. Yet a useful habit doesn’t become less useful because it lacks novelty. The question is whether we do it when the pressure arrives.
Recovery is a working assumption
We often talk about recovery as something to fit around the work. I think we need to examine what that says about our expectations of performance. An intense day uses something. So does a difficult conversation, a sustained piece of thinking or a demanding presentation. The next task still requires attention and judgement. We can’t assume those remain equally available simply because the calendar says it’s time.
Deri draws on his endurance experience to challenge the habit of pushing again and again without deliberate recovery. That raises a practical question for leaders: are we planning work around what people can sustain, or around how much we can fit into the available hours?
There will be busy periods. There will be urgent demands. But if exceptional effort becomes the normal operating model, we should be curious about what it’s costing us.
We should also ask what deserves that effort. Purpose helps here. When we know what matters, we have a basis for deciding which demands merit our energy and which have simply become habitual.
For me, that’s the invitation in this conversation. Look at one part of the day where you’ve stopped choosing. Reclaim something manageable. Then, if you lead others, examine whether your expectations help them do the same.
We want people to take ownership. Are we giving them ownership of their attention too?
Listen to the full conversation on the Sticky From The Inside podcast.
Download the full transcript of Earthquakes, Hijacked Minds and the Boardroom here:
Andy Goram is the Founder of Bizjuicer, an employee engagement and workplace culture consultancy that's on a mission to help people have more fulfilling work lives. He's also the host of the Sticky From The Inside Podcast, which talks to experts on these topics from around the world.
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