More Details on Dimension/Conditions of Flow
i) clear shared goal (without this, work can becomes a burden
"...clear organisational goals informed by universal value and company culture are more likely to allow employees to identify themselves with, and align their personal striving accordingly. Similarly, providing a meaningful rationale why specific tasks needed to be performed can empower employees who want to do their best..."
Beata Souders, 2019
"...people want to work for a cause not for a living..."
Cal Newport as quoted by Beata Souders, 2019
Clarity of goals is linked with feedback (see below)
"...when it comes to occupational stress, goals and feedback reinforce competence, while the presence of choice in how to perform a task and fuelled by a sense of autonomy, and both in combination create intrinsic motivation..."
Jeffrey Dahlke as quoted by Beata Souders, 2019)
ii) immediate feedback (receiving continual feedback like what what happens when playing video games; this helps to maintain focus, rather than annual performance reviews; evaluate performance, not the person;
"...recognition and coaching are equally effective in motivating and supporting employee engagement and can be done via peer-to-peer programs for those who are not eligible for company-sponsored initiatives..."
Beata Souders, 2019)
iii) balance of challenge and skills (to trigger Flow experience need high challenges match with adequate personal skills
"...experience apathy when challenges and skills are low, and stress and anxiety when demands are too high..."
Beata Souders, 2019
(source: Beata Souders, 2019)
In the arousal area is where you learn most; in control, you feel comfortable but not challenged and to get into the Flow from the control area, you need to increase the challenge; in other areas, combination of skills and/or challenges is not suitable for developing Flow; in boredom you feel very safe; in apathy you are very negative.
Every one of these areas has its pluses and minuses, eg when bored, you can start to daydream, which is good for creativity. When the brain is relaxed, we have more access to available information stored in the brain that has not been combined before in a unique, original way that has a useful application.
Furthermore,
"...to avoid anxiety, we may choose to deny reality which leads to burnout or reduced challenges to a point that prevents flow. Coasting into the control state is also not the answer as having a sense of control is not enough to produce flow so one must increase challenges to reach a level of alert and focused arousal..."
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi as quoted by Beata Souders, 2019
"...when our skills match the challenges we are under, we perform our best, when our skills exceed our challenges we are bored, and when the challenge is too high we are stressed and our body releases large amounts of cortisol..."
T. Tozman et al as quoted by Beata Souders, 2019
"...flow fosters personal evolution because the challenging activity stretches a person's ability..."
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi as quoted by Beata Souders, 2019
Flow is a complex psychic event that mobilises and challenges whatever technical, cognitive or performance skills we have; the balance between challenge and skill is integral to Flow; when in Flow you are challenge to the top of your skills set and very adaptable.
During Flow you feel good)
iv) merging of actions and awareness (your consciousness becomes one with what you are doing; this only happens if the task is challenging enough for mobilising, personal skills, promoting disciplined concentration (complete focus with your intentions, thoughts, feelings and senses all focused on the same goal) and engagement
"...repetitive and low skill activities are very rarely associated with flow..."
Beata Souders, 2019
"...the experience of harmony can be achieved by establishing control over attention..."
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi as quoted by Beata Souders, 2019)
v) concentration and focused attention (attention needs to be disciplined, ie
"...selective attention as the ability to maintain a beam of focus on one thing despite distractions..."
Daniel Goleman as quoted by Beata Souders, 2019
It means moving away from bottom-up reactivity in judgements.
This can be called willpower and involves
"...- disengaging from the object of desire and focusing on something else;
- restricting distractions;
- maintaining focus on the future goal..."
Daniel Goleman as quoted by Beata Souders, 2019
It is linked with emotional intelligence (for more detail, see elsewhere in the Knowledge Base).
"...attention regulate the emotions if we keep focus long enough and practice selective attention to calm the amygdala..."
Daniel Goleman as quoted by Beata Souders, 2019)
vi) perceived control of the situation (it involves
"...switching to maintaining selective attention and open awareness that requires cognitive control and a well-developed, executive function. The executive function provides willpower that combats the emotionally charged thoughts that are connected to our brain's reward system where the more intense the urge, the harder it is to resist..."
Daniel Goleman as quoted by Beata Souders, 2019
NB Your inner stability depends on a sense of ownership, independence and mastery; need to be able to say 'no' to things.
"...the joy we get from living, depend directly on how our mind filters and interprets everyday experiences. Events themselves are neutral but we attach positive or negative values to them..."
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi as quoted by Beata Souders, 2019)
vii) loss of self-consciousness (you waste much mental energy on status management including worrying about your performance and how you are perceived; this takes away your cognitive resources from the task we are doing
"...we worry about rules, expectations, competition. We spent a lot of time in a sense of uncertainty about one another. We need to become independent of our social environment and do away with our need for an external validation and tendency for social comparison..."
Beata Souders, 2019)
viii) altered the sense of time (a strong indicator of the Flow is a distorted perception of time, eg time slows down or unaware of how time 'flies'
"...A unified flowing from one moment to the next, in which you feel in control of our actions, and in which there is little distinction between self and environment......or between past, present, and future..."
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi as quoted by Beata Souders, 2019
NB A study found
"...A network of brain cells that operate as a form of neural clock and explains how our subjective experience of time is tied to the ongoing flow of experience..."
P. Ratner as quoted by Beata Souders, 2019
Sometimes Flow has been described as 'shallow" or 'deep'; with 'shallow' treating Flow like breathing, ie doing what comes naturally; while 'deep' refers to total immersion, ie unaware of what's going on around you.)
ix) intrinsic motivation and autonomous initiative (intrinsic motivation is more powerful than extrinsic; intrinsic is linked with satisfying our psychological need for autonomy and competence; this in turn creates more positive mental states which reinforce a positive feedback loop
"...Positive incentives stemming from learning, goal orientation, an experience of competence, interest and involvement leads to subjects engaging in activities purely for the enjoyment of it..."
F. Rheinberg et al as quoted by Beata Souders, 2019
In other words flow is an inside job.
x) autotelic personality (predisposition to experiencing Flow; the Flow experience is seen as a motivation phenomenon that is intrinsically based, ie satisfaction is derived from the activities of themselves; an autotelic personality has the following characteristics:
- you like solving complex problems
- you make a game out of chores
- you are curious about the world
- you are not worried about how people view you
- you find it easy to choose where your attention goes
(main source: Beata Souders, 2019)
Flow is like an addiction