Very often, we find children deeply immersed in the screens of digital devices. More often than not, it’s not online education that’s happening. The child is focused on playing a game on the digital device, aloof of his surroundings and least concerned about our presence. What makes the child so disciplined and focused on the game, forgetting everything around him? 

It is because:

 1) it gives the child a sense of control and achievement, a sense of empowerment.

 2) there is a perfect matching of skills and challenge levels.

 3) it gives the child instant feedback (score).

I came across the concept of ‘flow theory’ while preparing for a talk on ‘Happiness’ some years back. It was introduced by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi in his book Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. It’s a classic and recommended reading for anyone interested in understanding happiness.

In Mihaly’s words, flow is “a state in which people are so involved in an activity that nothing else seems to matter; the experience is so enjoyable that people will continue to do it even at great cost, for the sheer sake of doing it” Just what the child experiences while playing the game on the cell phone.

Have you ever experienced a state of flow? We all have experienced this state many times in our life. The times when we were absorbed in studying something very interesting, when we forgot everything about ourselves while hiking in the mountains, when we were deeply involved in playing a musical instrument or creating an art piece, when we lost track of time while reading a mystery novel or while talking to a dear friend after a long time… All these were moments when we lost track of time, effort, and our surroundings. We were immersed in performing the activity just for the sake of it, without any purpose or result in mind. And, these are among the sweetest moments which make our life precious.

According to Mihaly, “The best moments in our lives are not the passive, receptive, relaxing times … The best moments usually occur if a person’s body or mind is stretched to its limits in a voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult and worthwhile”. Some people call this state of mind ‘being in the zone’, experienced more often by creative artists and sportsmen.

Mihaly describes the following eight characteristics of flow state:

  1. Complete concentration on the task;
  2. Clarity of goals and reward in mind and immediate feedback;
  3. Transformation of time (speeding up/slowing down);
  4. The experience is intrinsically rewarding;
  5. Effortlessness and ease;
  6. There is a balance between challenge and skills;
  7. Actions and awareness are merged, losing self-conscious rumination;
  8. There is a feeling of control over the task being accomplished.

Having understood what a flow state is, let us see how we can use this understanding to create conditions for peak performance and happiness in our life. Have a look at the following graph:

The graph is almost self-explanatory. We can see that when a challenge is bigger than one’s level of skills, one becomes anxious and stressed. On the other hand, when the level of skill required exceeds the size of the challenge faced, one becomes bored and distracted. And, whenever there is a matching of the challenge level and skill level, we are flowing in the flow channel.

As the experience of the flow-state is just in the middle of the graph, achieving the sweet balance is essential. Inducing a flow-state is about creating a balance between the level of skill and the size of the challenge at hand.

Of course, once the sweet balance is achieved and experienced, we need to immediately leap out of our comfort zone and stretch ourselves a little more… to ensure that we are not just alive, but, lively.

The key to our peak performance and happiness in the days to come is : stretching ourselves just a little more, every time we get comfortable.

Vishwajeet

Let’s see a more detailed graph for more interesting insights, and, you won’t need my explanation this time 🙂

Now that we know about the flow-state of our mind and how it can be created, let us make our life more enriched by intentionally creating as many flow-state conditions as possible. Cheers for the flow!

Artists are among the luckiest people to experience the flow state very frequently.