As one of the most successful bird species, European Starlings swarm into a synchronised group called a murmuration before descending to roost at sunset. Ranging from a few hundred to a few million birds, the Starlings form a mesmerising mass that mutates with a continual hum or murmur at sunset.
Despite the seemingly chaotic nature of the movements, Starlings avoid collisions by maintaining a safe distance from their nearest neighbors, appearing like one united mass. Each bird responds to the movements of several others around it, allowing the group to change direction and shape fluidly and without a designated leader. The Starlings swarm like this to confuse predators and provide mutual warmth through proximity. It also illustrates some of the key components of flow.
What is Flow?
Flow is the cognitive state of mind where you're so involved in an activity that nothing else seems to matter. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, the godfather of flow psychology, describes eight characteristics of flow:
1. Complete concentration on the task
You are fully focussed on the activity at hand and able to filter out or ignore distractions. You might not be able to hear others talking to you, forget an appointment, or leave the oven on because you're so fixated on the thing you're working on. For example, you'll sometimes hear professional athletes talk about not being able to hear the screaming crowds because they're so laser-focussed on the game.
2. Clarity of goals and immediate feedback
Just as the swarming Starlings work together towards a common goal of protection and warmth, adapting to immediate feedback from their nearest neighbours to stay in sync, clear goals and short feedback loops are essential for finding flow.
Goals can be short-term survival strategies like the Starlings, or aligned to a larger purpose or theme such as a scientist dedicating her life to finding a cure for Alzheimer's. Short-term goals make immediate feedback easier, like the small movements of the Starlings neighbours. Large goals and themes aligned to a purpose can enable one to structure their life to be consistent with that purpose but may have longer feedback loops to gauge whether you're making progress.
While this can look vastly different in different contexts, the goals need to be explicit and intrinsically motivating, with clear feedback mechanisms to let you know you're on track.
3. Time dilation
Perhaps one of the most intoxicating elements of flow, time dilation is the sensation that time is either speeding up or slowing down. For the former, you might find that you can engage in a certain activity that you enjoy for hours without realising, forgetting feelings of hunger or fatigue until you exit the flow state.
In situations where every millisecond counts, the sensation of time slowing down enables you to analyse and interpret large amounts of data to make an effective decision in a split-second. This could be to avoid a collision on the race track or make a crucial move in a high-stakes chess match.
Time dilation will look different for everyone depending on the tasks they engage in, but will happen more often for the tasks that are more engaging and enjoyable. For me, time dilation occurs most often when writing or mountain biking, both of which irritate my wife immensely as I consistently spend far longer than anticipated after losing track of time.
4. The experience is intrinsically rewarding
In Daniel Pink's book Drive, he tears down the idea that knowledge workers are extrinsically motivated, i.e. when pushed by carrots or sticks. While carrots and sticks may have worked in the industrial era, we now recognise the need for a sense of mastery, autonomy, and purpose to perform our best.
To consistently find flow, the activity needs to trigger those intrinsic motivators within us to find enjoyment in the process itself, not just the results.
5. Effortlessness and ease
A key element of being in a state of flow is the feeling that the activity is effortless. When we experience flow, we're so deeply immersed in the activity that our actions seem to happen almost automatically without conscious effort.
This is largely due to what's happening neurologically, where it has been found that your prefrontal cortex temporarily quietens to enable greater creativity and faster decision-making.
The prefrontal cortex is an area of the brain responsible for higher cognitive functions such as regulating our thoughts, actions, and emotions, and is responsible for our conscious state of mind. When it's less active, it can reduce our sense of self and inner critic, enabling the brain to work more freely and creatively.
6. Challenge and skills balance
In between anxiety and boredom is the optimal balance between challenge and skill. Csikszentmihalyi stated that this balance is somewhere around 5%, i.e. the task is challenging enough to engage your full attention, but not enough to trigger anxiety and avoidance.
While not every activity will fit within this balance, it's possible to break tasks down into small enough chunks that are challenging yet manageable. Putting in the effort to break tasks down to this level can make them enjoyable and energising, encouraging personal growth.
7. Actions and awareness are merged
Following the flow characteristic of effortlessness, the merging of actions and awareness creates alignment between what we think and do. There is no mental separation between the self and the activity, just full presence and engagement in the moment.
8. A feeling of control over the task
Lastly, when we're in flow we have a sense of control of the task, a calm confidence that we have the ability and motivation to get it done. Below are different mental states as they relate to situations involving activities and tasks.
Flow - Complete focus on the activity and a sense of enjoyment. Generally results in the activity being completed with high quality.
Control - Similar to flow, but the skill level is higher than the challenge and therefore doesn't result in the level of focus and growth that flow cultivates.
Relaxed - Calm and content, but lacking excitement or engagement.
Bored - Lack of interest in the activity and depressed feelings.
Apathy - Feelings of sadness and lethargy towards the activity.
Worried - Focussed on the activity, but the challenge feels too big, and a solution
seems unreachable.
Anxious - Feeling stressed and alert, and likely to freeze or shut down.
Aroused - Curious and attentive to the activity with focus building.
Focussing in Chaos
Speed is nothing without direction. Some are going nowhere fast...
Research suggests that knowledge workers are interrupted every 6-12 minutes, creating an attention residue as we attempt to switch tasks while still mentally holding onto the original task that was disrupted. This inhibits our ability to focus attention on anything long enough to get into a flow state, and even the latent possibility of being disrupted can put us on alert and prevent sustained focus. Few things are more frustrating than knowing exactly what you need to do but not being able to muster the motivation and capacity to do it.
The modern work environment appears to actively fight our ability to focus and complete meaningful work. We are bombarded with emails, meetings, notifications, and constant interruptions. Then when we go home, if we aren't already working there, we have our phones and TV to keep our minds at least partially occupied, extracting what little mental capacity we have left. Life can feel like everything, everywhere, all at once.
Cal Newport, author of Slow Productivity, proposes a simple solution to this attention deficit crisis:
Do Fewer Things: Focus on reducing your commitments to have the time to work on what matters most.
Work at a Natural Pace: Important goals need time; don’t rush them.
Obsess Over Quality: Prioritise high-quality work over quantity.
Simple, but not easy. Even as I write this I know how difficult these can be in a modern work environment. To get started, I suggest starting small, carving out blocks of focus time in your calendar where you close communication apps and switch off notifications.
Next, work out a sustainable pace that enables you to focus and find flow. Be conscious of the conditions that help you focus, i.e. certain types of music, ergonomics, lighting, rituals, types of work, etc. These will help you learn more about yourself and how to work with your mind to create great work.
Lastly, resist the pressure to produce more. This is difficult in environments where productivity expectations continuously climb, but saying yes to fewer things is one way to carve out more time for quality. If you can't refuse more work being handed to you, you can try to explain the cost of doing it over the things you're already working on, i.e. Sure, I can pick up x, but it will mean y will need to be put on hold, so the stakeholders for y will need to be informed that x now takes priority.
Productivity is notoriously difficult to measure for knowledge work, so even a busyness-addicted business will value measurable results over productivity proxies. If the increased quality of your work is delivering better results for the company and customers, quantity will become less important.
Finding Flow Consistently
If you have a strong hobby or cause, you'll know how easy it is to spend time and energy on it, getting lost for hours in pursuit of your passion. To find a consistent state of flow in life means creating the ability to transform challenging, dull, or threatening situations into opportunities for learning and growth, finding enjoyment in the process and not just the results. It means having a clear direction and goals as a starting point and aligning your work within those boundaries.
To get started, the Flow Research Collective has continued the work of Csikszentmihalyi and uncovered more about flow cycles and how to consistently find flow in anything you do.
To begin experimenting with what works for you, here are 4 foundations for flow:
Flow blockers: Anything that distracts you with cheap attention-sucking dopamine, i.e. phones and TV. Find what is distracting you most frequently and fight it. For some this could be x hours of productive work in the morning before touching your phone.
Flow proneness: Your flow fitness level, or​ how easily you get into a flow state. Think about specific conditions that have helped you find flow in the past, i.e. what time of day, your physical environment, your frame of mind, your motivation, etc.
Flow triggers: Conditions that instantly drive you into a flow state. As described above, these include characteristics like clear goals, immediate feedback, and the challenge/skills balance.
Flow cycle:
Struggle: The discomfort causing you to want to avoid the task.​ To persist through this you need to stretch your attention span, allowing it to grow over time.
Release: As you persist, the brain increases dopamine which enhances focus and enables you to get into flow.
Flow: The prefrontal cortex quietens, allowing faster decision-making and creativity.
Recovery: Recovering for the next flow cycle. This is important as flow is mentally expensive and requires rest to replenish energy.
Bonus Content: Finding Team Flow
Team flow happens when a group of individuals experiences a shared sense of engagement, focus, and synergy, similar to the individual flow experience. You might have experienced a taste of this during a memorable all-day workshop, solving a complex problem as a team, or group/mob programming.
To find flow as a team or group, here are some common characteristics to cultivate:
Shared goals: Create SMART goals that resonate with all team members.
Active listening: Establish clear communication guidelines or social contracts and actively acknowledge shared ideas or perspectives.
Team performance over individual: Prioritise collective performance over personal recognition or individual achievements.
Equal engagement: Invite input from everyone and rotate roles to ensure everyone has an opportunity to contribute and guide the conversations and decisions.
Constant communication: Cultivate immediate feedback loops through collaborative tools and regular points of connection to create an environment where ideas, decisions, and challenges can be met together.
There you have it, how to cultivate habits for flow in work and life. Although the journey is difficult and the distractions are many, the satisfaction of finding enjoyment in your work and achieving high-quality outcomes is well worth the effort.
If you want help finding flow in your life, you can fill out this form for a free coaching call or connect with me at hello@culture-coach.org.
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