The Emotional Reality of Obsession: The Flow and Fight Cycle

Think about this for a second: When was the last time you felt completely in the zone — fully focused, energized, and doing the Work that actually matters?

Now consider the other side, the periods when you've felt stuck, staring at a blank page, agonizing over a hard call, or feeling the fog of fatigue settle in.

Welcome to the emotional reality of obsession.

In the last article of the Obsession Series, we talked about how obsession fuels the path to mastery. How it keeps us going when no one else sees what we see. But obsession doesn’t come with perfect clarity or consistent motivation. More often, it pulls us into the extremes. 

Obsessed founders spend most of their time swinging between two very different internal states: flow and fight.

This article is about understanding that swing — and why both states are essential. I’ll also share what it takes to build the emotional range to stay in the game, especially during the long, uncertain stretches where progress feels far away.

Because mastery doesn’t come from balance. It comes from learning to move through the extremes, again and again, without breaking.

Inside the Flow State

You’ve felt it. That sensation when time disappears. When everything clicks, your team executes seamlessly, or the solution just lands.

Psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi called it flow — that state where your skill level and the challenge at hand are perfectly matched. Your inner critic stops second-guessing, and your instincts take over. You’re not just thinking clearly, you’re fully immersed in the Work.

Flow is a period of deep focus or creativity that just feels effortless, like momentum, clarity, and meaning all arriving at once. For founders, it often shows up in early product development. Or mid-sprint, when we’re building a feature that might actually shift the trajectory. Sometimes it hits while wrestling with a complex problem we really want to solve. 

It's addictive for good reason. Flow feels like purpose and performance fused together. And for obsessed founders, it’s our reward for caring deeply. One of the reasons we keep coming back, even when it’s hard.

But here’s the truth most builders eventually learn: Flow isn’t permanent. It’s a state we return to when our effort, conditions, and timing all align. That awareness helps us stop chasing flow and start making space for it.

The Inevitable Fight

Flow doesn't last forever. There are days when nothing seems to move. When every task feels heavy, the stakes feel high, and I'm grinding just to keep things moving. I'm not in flow — I'm in a fight.

This is the part of obsession we rarely talk about. It’s not glamorous. But it’s just as real. And just as important.

Author Steven Pressfield called it resistance, the inner enemy of all creative and entrepreneurial work. It’s the fear, distraction, perfectionism, or procrastination that shows up the moment something actually matters.

If flow is about peak performance, fight is about staying in the process. One fuels momentum, and the other builds durability.

Most of us know the fight well. We feel it in the moments before a major decision, in the days after a failed launch, in the long middle stretch when momentum fades and misalignment sets in. But resistance doesn't mean we're off-track. It usually means we're close to something meaningful or necessary. I probably experience this several times a quarter. Last quarter, it was with our new commercial model launch, and this quarter, it was the grind from a reduction in force. 

A mistake a lot of us make is trying to eliminate the fight state, thinking we can just get rid of it. But it’s a natural part of building, and what we need to do is keep moving anyway.

That movement won’t always be elegant. Sometimes (a lot of times) it will feel stubborn, mechanical, or, as in the case with a RIF, even painful. But every founder I know who’s built something that lasts has learned how to work through the fight, even when they’re not feeling inspired and even when they’re unsure about everything. Because resistance isn’t a distraction from the Work. It is the Work, in its rawest form.

The Rhythm of Obsessed Builders

Virtually every founder is in for an emotional roller coaster ride. It's just part of the game. We learn to navigate both flow and fight because we understand they aren’t separate paths. They're two sides of the same road.

Here’s how the cycle plays out for me:

1. Flow brings clarity and momentum.
2. Fight introduces friction and fear.
3. I push through it, not around it, and that pressure creates growth.
4. On the other side, new flow emerges, but this time with higher stakes and deeper insight.

This rhythm isn’t linear. It’s a loop. With each round, we’re building something more durable, not just in the company but in ourselves.

Obsession is what keeps us in the cycle. It’s why we keep showing up, even under the weight. Because we know not building was never an option.

Mastery isn’t about living in a flow state forever. It’s about being willing to return to the fight, again and again, because we care too much to walk away.

Range > Balance

Emotional balance is a myth. No founder stays calm and steady all the time. We have no choice but to build emotional range — the ability to feel everything, think clearly, and still move forward through extremes.

Range means we (hopefully) can go deep, then come up for air. We can hold conviction and humility at the same time. We can honor emotion without letting it take the wheel.

Here are a few things I've leaned into to make the swings not only survivable, but productive:

• Choose discipline over motivation: Don’t wait to feel ready. Build reliable routines and habits that make starting inevitable, even when we don’t want to.
• Leave breadcrumbs for yourself: End every work session with a short note on what’s next. Tomorrow’s self will thank you, especially when in a fight state.
• Name the fight out loud: When you’re feeling resistance, share it with a coach, an advisor, a peer group, or just yourself in writing. Naming the struggle drains the shame and reframes it as part of the process.
• Protect flow time: Treat deep work blocks as sacred. No meetings, no Slack, no distractions. Just building. It's hard, but essential.

I’ll be honest, obsession doesn’t always feel good. There have been seasons when I couldn’t stop thinking about a system, an idea, or a problem long after everyone else had moved on. When I felt more alive building than celebrating. When the low moments felt too frequent and the high moments too rare.

But eventually I realized the inevitable highs, lows, and in-betweens were all a part of the process. And if I didn’t learn how to live with the emotional swing that comes with obsession, I’d either burn out or fade out.

This is also why we built Ninety the way we did — to give founders and teams practical, humane tools that make the rhythm of building more sustainable. Not to eliminate the fight, but to help you organize it, track it, and stay grounded in the Work that matters most.

Because balance isn’t the answer — range is. And it’s what makes long-term building possible.

Mastery Lives In the Flow and the Fight

You don’t need to feel good every day to be a decent founder. You don’t need to live in a flow state to make real progress. You don’t need perfect clarity to do meaningful Work.

You just need to keep showing up. To feel the fight and keep building.

Because flow is the reward. Fight is the path. And mastery is learning to move between them without losing yourself or your company.

Founders who build with obsession don’t avoid the emotional swings. They learn to navigate them, even embrace them, as part of the process. Not as a flaw to fix, but as a sign they’re doing it right.

In the next part of the series, we’ll explore how obsession manifests across the Stages of Development — and what it takes to harness that intensity in each stage without breaking yourself or your team.

Until then, remember you don’t have to be balanced to create something great. But you do need range. And range is built one cycle at a time.