3 ways to gain flow
Summary
- Three conditions to attain a state of flow:
- Have a clearly defined goal
- Do something meaningful to you
- Do something on the edge of your abilities
Details
- You can only attain flow while monotasking, so the goal must be clearly focussed
- If it si something interesting to you, you will be motivated to focus
- If you are doing something difficult, you cannot slip into boredom or auto pilot. If it is too difficult it will be too intimidating
References
- Brandwashed - Tricks Companies Use to Manipulate Our Minds and Persuade Us to Buy - Martin Lindstrom
Quotes
Mihaly’s studies identified many aspects of flow, but it seemed to me –as I read over them in detail – that if you want to get there, what you need to know boils down to three core components.
The first thing you need to do is to choose a clearly defined goal. I want to paint this canvas; I want to run up this hill; I want to teach my child how to swim. You have to resolve to pursue it, and to set aside your other goals while you do. Flow can only come when you are monotasking – when you choose to set aside everything else and do one thing. Mihaly found that distraction and multitasking kill flow, and nobody will reach flow if they are trying to do two or more things at the same time. Flow requires all of your brainpower, deployed towards one mission.
Secondly, you have to be doing something that is meaningful to you. This is part of a basic truth about attention: we evolved to pay attention to things that are meaningful to us. As Roy Baumeister, the leading expert on willpower I quoted in the introduction, put it to me: ‘A frog will look at a fly it can eat much more than a stone it can’t eat.’ To a frog, a fly is meaningful and a stone is not – so it easily pays attention to a fly, and rarely pays attention to a stone. This, he says, ‘goes back to the design of the brain … It’s designed to pay attention to the stuff that matters to you.’ After all, ‘the frog who sat around all day looking at stones would have starved’. In any situation, it will be easier to pay attention to things that are meaningful to you, and harder to pay attention to things that seem meaningless. When you are trying to make yourself do something that lacks meaning, your attention will often slip and slide off it.
Thirdly, it will help if you are doing something that is at the edge of your abilities, but not beyond them. If the goal you choose is too easy, you’ll go into autopilot – but if it’s too hard, you’ll start to feel anxious and off-kilter and you won’t flow either. Picture a rock climber who has medium-ranking experience and talent. If she clambers up any old brick wall at the back of a garden, she’s not going to get into flow because it’s too easy. If she’s suddenly told to climb the side of Mount Kilimanjaro, she won’t get into flow either because she’ll freak out. When she needs is a hill or mountain that is, ideally, slightly higher and harder than the one she did last time.