Skeptigator

x posted at FreeThought Fort Wayne

In 1990, Mihalyi Czikszentmihalyi published a book titled, Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience.

The book oddly enough started off as an attempt to answer the question, “What is the meaning of life?” He found that for many the meaning of life was intrinsically linked to the question, “What makes you happy?” Or put another way, the answer to the question of the meaning of life was the same answer given to what makes you happy.

Czikszentmihalyi then set out trying to answer the question of happiness but he didn’t do it by trying to define happiness since this was such a subjective notion. He came at it from a different perspective by asking, “When are people happy?” What creates that feeling of happiness as defined by the individual experiencing it? The subject of the book and the author’s conclusion is what he describes as the experience of Flow.

What is Flow?

From wikipedia, The Source of All Truth,

Flow is the mental state of operation in which the person is fully immersed in what he or she is doing by a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and success in the process of the activity.

That sounds all psychologic-y but we all can relate to the idea of being in the zone. Basketball players often describe feeling like they are “in the zone” or have “hot hands” when everything seems to click. They describe this complete awareness of the basketball court, a fluid almost unconscious movement to the shots, and an intuitive grasp of where to be and what to do at exactly the right moment. Many even describe the feeling of being just a bit outside of themselves, almost as if they were on auto-pilot, but in complete control.

Czikszentmihalyi would describe this experience in terms of Flow. Flow can be described as containing many but not all of the following attributes, again from wikipedia,

• Clear goals (expectations and rules are discernible and goals are attainable and align appropriately with one’s skill set and abilities). Moreover, the challenge level and skill level should both be high.
• Concentrating and focusing, a high degree of concentration on a limited field of attention (a person engaged in the activity will have the opportunity to focus and to delve deeply into it).
• A loss of the feeling of self-consciousness, the merging of action and awareness.
• Distorted sense of time, one’s subjective experience of time is altered.
• Direct and immediate feedback (successes and failures in the course of the activity are apparent, so that behavior can be adjusted as needed).
• Balance between ability level and challenge (the activity is neither too easy nor too difficult).
• A sense of personal control over the situation or activity.
• The activity is intrinsically rewarding, so there is an effortlessness of action.
• People become absorbed in their activity, and focus of awareness is narrowed down to the activity itself, action awareness merging.

I think this is an extemely interesting description of a real psychological phenomenon. I have personally experienced Flow when I am programming. I am focused on the development to the exclusion of everything else, the code feels like it is writing itself and I am only experiencing the mental images of the website or the logic itself being built. I can sense when the code that’s writing itself will cause a problem and immediately and proactively correct the problem or even debug the application visually while the code continues to self-correct.

I could easily describe the phenomenon in mystical/spiritual terms. In fact, many people describe these feelings as being in a state of ecstacy or rapture or You stop “thinking” and just do. The author does draw a distinction between simply the idea of pleasure or enjoyment and what he would call the Optimal Experience. The main distinction is the level of control that you maintain. A pleasurable experience can be very passive like watching a movie, the Optimal Experience is completely within the control of the person experiencing it. I’ve described the perception of Flow in terms of feeling like you are on auto-pilot and therefore have implied some loss of direct control. But I want to make it clear that the sense of autopilot is more of a way to describe that when you choose to active or engage in something during Flow the effort required to achieve it is almost effortless. The author goes to great lengths to demonstrate that this experience of ecstacy or Flow is not a passive activity but something that requires your focus and engage direct involvement and control. Flow would be something different than simple “awareness of Now” or being in the moment as might be described by meditation practices or even drug-induced altered states of consciousness. Both can be pleasurable but would not qualify as an Optimal Experience.

The Interpretation of Flow

Once Czikszentmihalyi has clearly and carefully defined what is and is not Flow, he continues by expounding why he believes Flow is important for human development. When you experience Flow you are actually assimilating new knowledge or refining/mastering a skill in an optimal way. Remember Flow encompasses a number of related activities each with its own requirements of pre-existing knowledge, technical mastery or deeper knowledge.

When our “ego” is expanded or in such mastery of the situation, even if temporarily, our ability to assimilate new knowledge, refine or master a skill has been greatly expanded. Flow is the description of an experience in which the “ego” can facilitate our general improvement. The basketball player is becoming a better ball player more optimally while in Flow. I’ve become a better, more skillful developer more quickly when I experience Flow. The author describes this in terms that you have become “an increasingly extraordinary individual”. The author ran a number of research studies in the belief that the Montessori method of teaching facilitates the experience of Flow although I don’t know if that translates into better academic performance. Of course, to measure that you need a standardized test and that would make baby Montessori cry. I tease, sort of.

What’s the Point

So the author has a framework for describing and even interpreting a psychological phenomenon. How can this be applied. How do you get into a state of Flow? Good question but apparently he’s written another book, Finding Flow, where he expands on the general idea with some practical steps. I haven’t read it but I’ll let you know what it says when I do.

So how did I come across this? I actually heard this concept mentioned as a passing remark on a podcast a couple months ago and I filed that away in my “that’ interesting” part of my brain. A couple of months ago I was googling how to better get organized and avoid procrastination which is a major problem for me. You know procrastination right? It’s the thing you are doing right now instead of working. In the process of researching different techniques I came across this article, Solving Procrastination: an application of Flow. That’s twice in so many months and therefore enough for me to check it out. I can say that using Kevin Chiu’s technique has actually helped me to better prioritize my day.

A Practical Application

As the manager of 5 developers and 4-9 simultaneous projects of varying size, complexity and deadlines, it can get overwhelming very quickly. The “application of Flow” described above basically comes down to this, the items we procrastinate on are

a) either of such low priority or far-in-the-future deadline that they fall to the bottom of our list until we are a day away from the deadline and then its an emergency.

b) Or the problems are so complex or difficult in nature and we don’t even know where to begin so we put them off hoping it’ll figure itself out somehow.

I deal with both scenarios everyday. I guess the only question for Mr. Chiu is , “Are there any other kind?”

I would suggest reading the article, it’s only 2 pages, but the idea boils down to this. To take advantage of Flow so that a) we can get the full benefits of happiness through goal-achievement and success and b) the ability to assimilate new knowledge and a refined set of time-management skills in this case; we must break up the items into more finite and manageable tasks.

By breaking up difficult problems into smaller, more bite-size tasks and then ordering each task into increasing levels of difficulty we’ve created a framework where each increasingly difficult task is completed we get the satisfaction of goal completion, a key to Flow. The next step in our list is more difficult but not that much more difficult that our current and newly acquired skillset and motivation can’t overcome, another key to Flow.

In addition, as your ability to break apart large, complex task gets better you’ll begin to find ways of sprinkling the smaller low priority items into the larger tasks at the appropriate difficulty level without breaking Flow. Breaking Flow is bad. If you are getting the difficult tasks done better but constantly firefighting the little ones; you are not much better off.