In Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi outlines the theory that people are happiest when they are in a state of concentration or complete absorption with an activity at hand. Describing a state in which people are so mentally involved in an activity that nothing else seems important, Flow is that state we enter when even time, and self are typically ignored.
Many gamers understand the feeling playing a challenging game in which your skills are balanced by the difficulty; being engaged to a degree that the whole world around you disappears. Leading many parents to expressed lament that their children can find nothing better to do.
Interestingly, Flow isn’t only experienced by gamers, it is experienced in a wide range of life experiences including;
- Education / Research / Searching
- Sports (ever been in the zone? where your actions are perfectly timed, weighted and effortless?)
- Music (ever listened to song after song and forgot you had something else to do?)
- Browsing the Web (who hasn’t sat down to look at Facebook and emerged a few hours later wondering where the time went?)
- Writing (ever sat down to write an article and disappeared into it only to realise you’ve written the entire thing and half a day has passed? – I’m doing that right now)
- Chatting (a few weeks ago I went to a coffee shop with a friend, it took four hours for each of us to drink one coffee)
And finally the one activity I’d really like to focus on today;
- Work (how do we achieve Flow at work, and why is it important?)
Perhaps none of us will ever have a job that is truly satisfying until we figure out this little problem. Some companies work hard at designing their office and their environment to achieve various harmonic states of being, with the view to creating a productive working environment for their people. However, Flow is just as much about challenge as it is about environment. It’s not unreasonable then to start wondering how to create an environment that is challenging and fits the skills of the individual.
I’m a project manager, an engineer and a developer, and my experience lets me see how the concept of Flow is lacking in many corporate environments. For me, the reason for lack of engagement is typically related to work content; I don’t find it challenging. I find that my busiest days are usually the most challenging; requiring me to make use of the time management, logic, and planning skills that allow me to be a project manager. On the other hand, I disappear down a rabbit hole and reemerge hours later when sitting in front of a computer with an idea for a new iPhone app. I live for challenge, I ache for responsibility, accountability, self driven projects.
Working for an international engineering firm has given me many opportunities to develop the skills I need for work, but the more you develop these skills the easier work becomes. When we relate this problem back to computer games, we see how some games fail and others thrive. The key to a good game is to slowly develop the skills of the player, while progressively increasing the challenge, keeping the balance. Why is it then, that many companies don’t do the same for their employees? Sure, we have ‘career paths’ which are meant to give you a choice in where you go and how you get there, but the problem with larger companies is that their processes often get in the way. If career progression means moving along the line from A-B-C-D, and you are positioned at Level A, with skills at Level C, surely you are going to start looking elsewhere for a new job at level C.
I’ve previously analysed why people were leaving one of my previous companies, and the story is very much like this. Give us challenging work or say goodbye.
If you are a people manager, you should be giving the concept of Flow some serious thought. Maybe if you think hard enough about it, you might also enter a state of Flow as you determine how you can increase the challenges to your team, and maintain their satisfaction with work.
Questions for the readers.
When do you experience Flow?
Has it ever been at work?
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