Why would you want to get in the Flow?

If you’re striving to achieve more of the things that matter to you, this Insight on getting into the ‘Flow’ will help.

This is a 5 to 10-minute read, depending on your speed.

Flow can help you exceed normal limits of work

Research from Yerkes and Dodson (from 1908!) showed (for knowledge workers – which most of us are) that:

1. If we do too little work, we fail to become effective at the little we do!
2. As we increase our work levels, our performance quality also rises, but typically, only up to a point.
3. If we push ourselves beyond that point, our output quality will often fall off.
4. If we push harder still, perhaps in an attempt to make up for that fall-off, we risk a collapse in our performance*

* That’s called burnout, by the way.

It’s a place I’ve been to, and I do not recommend it!

It’s also worth noting that peak activity levels vary between people, activities and environments – including the supportive nature of your manager if you have one.

Who works effectively for a terrible boss?

People tend to leave bosses, not businesses. 

Now, that’s all good theory in many employed situations – but what on earth is going on with highly skilled and creative people outside or traditional work environments?

How do they manage to work for very long periods, sometimes into the early hours, apparently without ill effect?

Well, this is the fascinating ‘flow’ phenomenon which we’ll explore here.

Flow (often) starts with a purpose

In the book, Drive, Dan Pink suggests that the most attractive work offers us elements of Autonomy, Mastery and Purpose.

To remember those elements, just take the first letter of each to get AMP.

It’s an electrifying acronym 😉

Finding (or creating) work with a purpose is really about understanding what you deliver.

And let’s remember that most organizations do deliver benefits to their clients/customers – even banks and other Financial Service firms.

That said, they don’t all deliver real benefits at a fair price.

And if you can’t honestly say that yours does, you might want to make plans to change your job (or change your customer propositions if you run your own business) when the time is right.

Work that has no purpose is unlikely to survive very long – and that’s especially true in these challenging times.

Yes, I know a new job may be difficult to find.

So, you might need to explore projects outside of your work (or study to make yourself more marketable) until the market improves.

Just taking the first few (tentative) steps towards doing more purposeful work can be hugely energizing.

I also know that many of us work too many hours already.

However, with purposeful activity almost any workload is possible for a time – and can even be enjoyable!

Am I serious – ‘almost any workload’

Yes, I’m serious.

This is precisely what ‘Flow’ is all about.

You’ve probably heard of being ‘in the zone’ or ‘in the flow’ because the idea has been around for decades, but what is it?

Flow is the mental state we get into when we’re completely immersed in, absorbed and energized by some kind of activity.

Look at this image from, ‘Finding Flow, the psychology of engagement with everyday life’

Here we see ‘Flow’ compared to other mental states according to our abilities and the level of challenge we face on a demanding activity.

If you think about learning any demanding activity (to play a musical instrument, paint a picture, code a program, write a book or blog) it’s easy to imagine being in any one of these states.

Further observations

1. Flow is a useful mental state to get into, but you can’t expect to get into it overnight; you need to develop some abilities first.
2. Give yourself time but not too much time in the Flow. The high challenge levels result in absorption and a lost sense of time. So, you need to be aware – perhaps set alarms – to take breaks to eat and exercise occasionally too.
3. Flow can be viewed as a productive form of hyperfocus. Less positive forms include spending all day on a video game to the detriment of your essential work – so watch out for those!

Who developed this ‘flow’ idea?

As with many Psychological concepts, I suspect we’ve known about Flow as an experience (esp. in Eastern thought systems like Buddhism- but described in other terms) for thousands of years.

However, the acknowledged main academic work on ‘flow’ was started in the 1960s by an American-Hungarian Psychologist called Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi – not an easy name to pronounce, so I’ll refer to him as Mihaly here. 

Mihaly researched this area because he was fascinated by artists, other creators, designers and developers, who become so immersed in their work that they sometimes disregarded the need for food, water, or even sleep!

The word ‘flow’ came from interviews Mihaly conducted with these artists in 1975, in which they compared their experience of intense work to that of being carried along by fast-flowing water.

And this makes perfect sense, even if you’ve never done anything like this.

It’s obvious that you can’t ‘step off the boat’ at these times. You can only press on and deal with the challenge that’s staring you right in your face!

The difference with ‘flow’ as a mental state is that we’re not just carried along by something like a water current.

We also create the current that carries us.

Mihaly published his ideas in a best-selling book, ‘Flow, the psychology of optimal experience’ in 1992.

And this chart, from that book, illustrates the idea of a flow channel as being the best area to aim for – as we build our skills.

This is the Goldilocks zone if you like.

If you find yourself bored by your challenges as your skills increase (from A1 to A2 in the diagram), you need to increase the level of challenges you take on (to A4)

Alternatively, if you take on too big a challenge for your abilities, and find yourself getting anxious, you need to focus on improving your skills. (A3 to A4)

Like most brilliant ideas – it’s deceptively simple!

What Flow is not

‘Flow’ has nothing to do with ‘going with the flow’, a phrase used to describe an easy-going attitude.

‘Going with the flow’ is not so much a state of mind as a ‘carefree’ attitude in which we’re extremely unlikely to create much of value.

That said, there’s no harm in being ‘laid back’ and ‘going with the flow’ sometimes – and then switching to a more productive ‘flow’ mental state to get stuff done, at other times.

We’re human after all!

We need to rest sometimes – and we may have many roles to play in life.

Ten ways to tell you’re in ‘Flow’

Mihaly identified ten factors typically associated with ‘Flow’.

You don’t need all ten to be in it; you’re just more likely to be in it if several of these factors apply.

The ten factors are:

1. A clear goal, aligned with our skills and abilities.

2. Concentration and focus on a limited subject field, requiring us to delve deeper into it.

3. A loss of self-consciousness: actions and awareness merge to become simply fast-flowing actions.

4. A distorted sense of time and a sense of surprise at how long we spent on the task.

5. Unambiguous feedback: success and failure in our activity are immediately apparent prompting us to correct our work while we do it.

(Incidentally, if writing is your ‘flow’ activity, try using a grammar checking tool, like Grammarly, to get this clear feedback as you write)

6. A balance between ability level and challenge: the activity is in the Goldilocks zone.

7. A sense of personal control over the activity.

8. A sense of intrinsic reward from the activity

9. A lost awareness of hunger, or fatigue.

10. A sense of being absorbed into the activity as our awareness focus narrows.

How to get into the Flow

Mihaly’s first book is wonderful if you’re interested in the years of research behind these observations – but it’s not an easy read!

My suggestion, if you’ve not yet experienced being in the ‘flow’, is to simply start working vigorously on something that you care about – using the skills that you have.

You might just find yourself in the ‘Flow’ before you know it!

And if there’s something you want to do that you’re not yet skilled at, start learning those skills soon, and get help from a coach if you need it. 

It would be a pity to miss out on the experience of ‘Flow’ and an even greater shame to achieve a lot less than you’re capable of.

Most of us can achieve more than we think.

That’s why this idea is my logo.

Do you need help?

If you’re looking for a coach (someone to bounce your ideas off, learn from, challenge you to achieve more of what matters to you) choose the right person.

The skills, knowledge and experience of coaches vary enormously, and their fee levels are not necessarily correlated with the value they add!

Here are some ideas on what a good coach looks like and if you believe I could help you, let’s chat about that.

Hope that’s been useful.

Good luck on the next stage of your journey.

And thanks for dropping in

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