Deep Flow and You
Photo by engin akyurt on Unsplash
How Work Becomes A Path To Joy (Really!)
On an episode of the JOMO(cast), guest Damian Bradfield, Chief Creative Officer at WeTransfer and author of The Trust Manifesto, shared his various responses to the encroaching difficulty of maintaining well-being in digital consumption, from finding shopping alternatives to Amazon, to throwing his son’s phone out the window (in a fit of pique), to doing no online work including email until 11 AM.
Damian’s “no email until 11” principle is part of a growing movement around the awareness that email absolutely sucks the productivity out of our day. Before social media, before smartphones, email was the original asynchronous intrusion: at any moment in our day, something could pop up in our inbox, and unlike a phone call in those more analog days, it would stay there until we dealt with it.
Today, a significant corner of the tech well-being rebellion deals specifically with email: how not to get buried in it, how to get through your inbox efficiently, how to decide whether or not to write (or read) an email at all. One big activity embraced by the intersection of productivity and well-being culture is Damian’s aforementioned policy: a ban on even opening email first thing in the day, and blocking out a specific chunk of time dedicated to working in its absence. The argument behind this is simple: dealing with your inbox and crafting responses creates drag, and what we want is flow.
So, what is flow? It’s a psychological state, named by positive psychologist Mihály Csíkszentmihályi, that humans experience when we become absorbed by a task. This task can be anything, from a repetitive manual operation like knitting to writing a novel or doing accounting. A few things must be present for the experience to be accurately described as flow:
Intense focus and concentration on the activity,
Reduced awareness of self, surroundings, and time during the activity,
A sense of control and agency over the results of the activity, and
A feeling that the activity itself is rewarding or pleasurable.
Artists and athletes frequently talk about their experience of flow as being essential to productive work or training and being a major part of their love of what they do. Employers are desperate to harness flow and supercharge their teams’ productivity. Entrepreneurs, freelancers, and anyone whose earning power are tied directly to their output want to find ways to maintain their focus through lengthy task lists and assignments.
From where I stand, flow is valuable and worth seeking because it’s a pathway to joy. It’s possible to experience great joy purely in a process: working at a task that will never be completely finished, like cleaning, or working towards a goal beyond our personal efforts or even our lifetimes, like a more compassionate and just society. Since we define joy as the combination of success and well-being, flow is a beautiful model to articulate the intersection of those two forces in the moment: we’re achieving something and it feels great.
We all want this stuff. How do we get it?
Since flow is a concept of positive psychology, let’s apply principles of positive psychology to begin answering that question: looking at examples of success to understand the conditions that made that good outcome happen. Thinking of the conditions of flow listed above, when was the last time you experienced flow? What were you doing? Where were you? What was the outcome?
I’m willing to bet that no matter what your answers are, some common conditions were true:
You Weren’t Distracted
Part of understanding that flow is about losing yourself in one thing is also understanding that anything whatsoever that takes you out of that thing kills flow. When we achieve focus and something distracts us (like answering a new email that hits our inbox), we take about 25 minutes on average to regain focus, regardless of how long or short the distraction was (or what it was).
Intrusions can be things we like (a friend, a show on another screen or device, a pleasant smell or tune in the background) or things we don’t (another email, a crying or screaming child, an interrupting visitor), but they are all bad for flow. This includes one of the most powerful myths of the 21st century, the myth of multitasking.
I bet you’ve gotten pretty good at multitasking, haven’t you? Learned how to get multiple things done at once so your day is shorter and things are finished faster? Wrong. Multitasking is a lie. You are less efficient, less productive, and less physically and mentally healthy. Period. It is never better to multitask, even (especially) when you want to complete multiple goals quickly.
I mention how terrible multitasking is while talking about distractions because multitasking is just a way of quickly distracting yourself over and over. As you switch back and forth, you carry out miniature versions of those 25 minutes of regaining focus again and again, meaning you’re never doing any of the tasks at your best- meaning that, in the end, they will take more time than if they were done individually with great focus.
You And the Activity Were a Good Fit
This diagram, which comes from Csíkszentmihályi’s study of flow, illustrates how we relate to various kinds of tasks that are set before us. Get a difficult assignment when you know your skills aren’t up to the task? You may find it so stressful that you procrastinate it away or find any possible way to avoid it. Something super-easy when you’re above it? Boring.
It turns out that when we’re able to do something reasonably well, we’re much more likely to find it a positive experience- and the sweetest spot happens when we’re challenging ourselves with something new or difficult that lies within a domain we know we’re good at.
For employers, managers, and leaders, this means making the effort to scrutinize workflow so that task assignments end up in the hands of team members who will benefit from it, just as the task will benefit from their flow. For solopreneurs and freelancers, this means exercising judgement in the projects and opportunities you take: while at a certain point in your career it may seem crazy to ever turn down work you’ve got time for if that work will bloat your schedule with drag and procrastination, it’s costing you money- and time better spent on work that will make you soar.
You Cared
Rational-emotive behavioral therapy (REBT) is the foundation of cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT), the most broadly successful psychotherapeutic model there is. Its central premise is that an activating event, A, is filtered through a belief system, B, leading to a consequential action, C. The theory holds that where most of us go wrong is assuming A leads to C- something happens, and I respond to that something- when in fact, the consequence is almost entirely determined by what happens in B.
The point here is that the ability to create one of the necessary ingredients of flow lies within our own control- crafting a belief in the purpose or value of the activity. The beginning of every important, sustained activity should include some statement (whether internal or voiced) of purpose, and there are many, many ways to find purpose in the things we do, even those that are dull, difficult, or unpleasant:
I am earning money to support my family or my life.
I am getting better at a skill so I can tackle greater challenges.
People are depending on me to do my very best.
My actions will shape the future of my family, community, or society.
I’m making someone’s day or life better by performing well.
The end product of my labor will be something valuable to people, possibly including me.
If you absolutely cannot find one of these values in your action (after an honest, real reflection), it’s possible that the task isn’t worth doing- or is better done by someone who can draw meaning from it.
We are collectively waking up to the fact that work is deserving of dignity and value- and if it isn’t, it shouldn’t exist. An important principle of JOMO is to go where joy can be found- and create it where we can. Experiencing flow realizes our abilities, grants us the joy of accomplishment, and enhances our professional value no matter what our work is.
To Experience the Joy of Flow:
Eliminate ALL distractions, good and bad. Be strict- treat this time as sacred.
Do the right work for your level of ability so that you are challenged and growing.
Articulate to yourself the purpose and value of what you are doing before you begin.
This is how work becomes a pathway to joy. Really!
When was the last time you experienced flow? What were you doing?
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Originally posted on my new dedicated blog on Medium.com
