Leadership Lessons: Cultivating Flow States and Boosting Remote Work Productivity
I sat down with Steven Puri , a leader whose career has spanned high-stakes film production at Fox, DreamWorks, and Sony, and now, as founder of The Sukha Company, focuses on helping remote workers harness focus, productivity, and wellness. His journey, from blockbuster movie sets to building tools inspired by yoga, offers powerful lessons for leaders navigating hybrid and remote work, and could even help neurodivergent people as well. Here is what I learned from my interview.
Leading Creative Teams: Unlocking Greatness: Steven believes something every leader should take to heart: "everyone has greatness inside them." The challenge isn’t whether it’s there, it’s whether you can help unlock it. For creative teams, this starts with hiring. You can’t force brilliance from people who don’t buy into your vision and mission. Leaders must carry two responsibilities: clearly articulating the mission and defining the values. The team needs to understand what you’re building and how you expect them to treat each other, customers, and even competitors.
Get the right people on board, and your job shifts to helping them bring their “great thing” to life. Great leaders draw out the best in people, aligning individual talent with the team’s purpose. When that happens, the whole team moves forward in strength.
Stress, Burnout, and the Balance of Pressure: Stress isn’t always the enemy. Just like athletes and Soldiers push themselves in training, a certain amount of pressure helps us grow. Eustress is essential in achieving anything great! Think of anyone in your career field, sports, films, etc., and you will find people who are always climbing the hill and pushing themselves and others to healthy levels of stress and competition.
The problem is when that stress becomes chronic. That’s when burnout creeps in.
Steven shared some tested strategies to manage pressure without losing productivity:
The real lesson here? Leadership means modeling healthy practices, not glorifying burnout. I know I’ve worked with some leaders who model burnout more than sustained excellence!
When Film Meets Tech: A Career Full Circle: Steven’s story is a reminder that the skills you build early in life have a way of resurfacing. Raised by IBM engineers, coding was just what he did. Some people grow up playing catch with their dads or baking in the kitchen with their moms; however, Steven coded, it was simply what they did. Combine that with him going to film school, and he landed at the perfect intersection when Hollywood shifted from analog to digital.
From True Lies to Braveheart to Independence Day, Stephen built a reputation for producing groundbreaking effects. But what’s fascinating is how that creative journey led him back to his engineering roots. He builds systems that help people perform at their best. His career proves that the paths we take, even when they twist and turn, often bring us back to the skills and passions that shaped us from the start.
The Sukha Company: Lessons from Setbacks and Flow States: Not everything came easy. Two failed startups taught Stephen some hard but valuable lessons. Instead of hiding from failure, he wrote down what he learned while the sting was still fresh.
The first word on his list? Listen.
Those failures ultimately fueled the creation of The Sukha Company. Its purpose: help remote workers eliminate distractions, find their flow, and sustain productivity without burning out.
The name itself, “Sukha,” comes from Sanskrit, meaning ease, alignment, being in your lane. It perfectly captures the mission: to help people work with a sense of control, clarity, and fulfillment.
The Science of Flow and Deep Work: Psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi called it “flow,” that state where your energy and focus align so seamlessly that time slips away. Leaders who can create conditions for flow to happen give their teams a serious advantage.
Distractions are the enemy. We are constantly fighting for time and attention.
It can take nearly 25 minutes to fully recover from one interruption. That’s why Steven’s app uses live feedback and focus tracking, reminding users when they’re locked in or when they’ve drifted.
For leaders, the principle is simple: protect time for deep work. Give your people space to focus without constant interruptions, and watch productivity (and satisfaction) soar.
Practical Tools for Leaders and Teams: Steven recommends starting with 3s:
The truth is, productivity isn’t about grinding harder, it’s about aligning focus with purpose. As leaders, we cannot control what people do or how their minds work, but we can control the environment for everyone to perform at their peak potential.
Final Thoughts: Leadership isn’t about pushing people harder, it’s about unlocking what’s already inside them, managing stress with wisdom, and creating the right conditions for focus and eventually flow.
Steven Puri’s journey, from Oscar-winning film sets to building The Sukha Company, reminds us that resilience, intentionality, and values-driven leadership matter more than ever, especially in a world where remote work and distractions are all around.
What about you? How do you help your team find focus and flow in their workday?
Curious to know more about Tim Stating The Obvious? Contact me through the contact form below to delve deeper into the world of leadership excellence!