Welcome to Flow

Attaining flow is an experience of self-actualization. Attaining group flow is critical to innovation and excellence. How can we elicit this state? Diamandis and Kotler investigate the triggers of flow by defining prerequisites to the state in a few different categories: environmental, phychological, social, and creative. Before learning the how, though, let’s take a look at the why.

Characteristics of Flow

Flow is Productivity. Entrance to flow happens when concentration is deep in work. A focus on “the process” will push an actor to enter into the flow state. This state heightens awareness and attention to detail while simultaneously removing stress of other issues which heightens awareness and attention to detail etc. This self-reinforcing loop pushes an actor more into flow.

Flow is Exhilarating. The state transfers focus from personal worries to focus on the product, alleviating personal stress. The actor finds themself in an oddly pleasurable state as they unlock more personal potential by multiplying their own skills against each other. They commit a level of exertion which, outside of Flow, might be painful or discomforting. In Flow state this discomfort is reimagined as the flexing of human capabilities, that pain/discomfort exists in the mind, and that this exertion is a price for productivity. Group flow also enhances this as more and more powerful skills interplay and multiply with each other. Flow, attained once, can be addicting.

note: a larger group doesn’t always mean more productivity. There is a cap on optimal group size for group flow which is dependent on speed and variety of communication methods.

Flow is Revealing. A group of individuals which work together in Flow come out of it with a level of trust. They have worked with each other at a deep level and have seen each other react when faced with potential. How individuals react when exposed to the opportunity to “try their best” reveals an extraordinary amount of information about their person. Thus, after a session in flow with your peers, you will trust who you know will “go hard” or who will “back off” when the going gets tough. Flow shows you for who you are.

Flow is often Restricted to those with resources. As we’ll see in the next section about Maslow, Flow has numerous prerequisites. To state this concisely, entrance to Flow state requires that one have resources in order to build an environment in which they are able to perform at potential.

Entering Flow

Flow is limited in access, as this state requires a place relatively near the top of Maslow’s Heirarchy of Needs. In fact, many report achieving “self-actualization”, the highest tier on that heirarchy, after an experience in Flow.

Maslow’s Heirarchy and Flow

This section is written under the assumption that the reader has been exposed to Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. Background can be found here.

Minimum prerequisites to flow are the bottom two rungs: physiological and safety needs. You won’t surrender to flow if you’re two days without water or looking over your shoulder for a tiger about to pounce.

The next two, love/belonging and self-esteem, are factors to the power of flow as well as its by-products. A group with a better sense of love/belonging and self-esteem can be expected to have better production than a different group with less. The exhilaration and productivity of flow boost self-esteem; the camaraderie of group flow boosts love/belonging.

The tip of the pyramid, self-actualization is “the desire to be the best that one can be” and is often achieved within Flow. The state of Flow is one of the many paths along the journey of self-actualization. Only when pushed to their limit does one find what they’re truly capable of.

These prerequisites set the stage for ability to enter the Flow state. We can further encourage/induce entrance with some handy triggers.

Environmental Triggers

High Consequences is a trigger which could be best compared to a “sink or swim” situation. Awareness of consequences can range from the fear of criticism from one’s peers (the artist’s experience), to the fear of physical harm or injury (the athlete). This desire for risk is critical to innovation and improvement, though. “If you’re not incentivizing risk, you’re denying access to flow”.

Rich Environment: this is a mixture of novelty, complexity, and unpredictability. These three elements catch and hold attention. Exposure to novel ideas exponentiates ideas currently in the human mind. Assistive in heightened problem-solving, complexity drives actors out of their comfort zone while unpredictability minimizes complacency.

Finally, Deep Embodiment brings an actor into the physical. This can be defined as having a total physical awareness and heightened senses in multiple sensory streams. A stronger sense of interaction and involvement in the task can be attained as easily as having hands-on involvement; there’s a greater chance of entering flow if you’re building a model steam engine with an instruction book versus merely reading a book about a locomotive.

Psychological Triggers

Clear Goals necessitates communication. “When the goals are clear, the mind doesn’t have to wonder about what to do or what to do next. Concentration tightens, motivation is heightened, and extraneous information is filtered out”. An important aspect is the shift of focus from “goals” and onto “clear”. Sharing a clear vision is difficult, but the more clear the roadmap, the the better that we can focus attention to produce/innovate.

Immediate Feedback relates to innovation and motivation. Maintaining a tight feedback loop ensures that the actors are steered toward the clear goals which they have set. “If we know how to improve performance in real time, the mind doesn’t go off in search of clues for betterment”.

The motivation factor also emerges when there’s more feedback: it’s inspiring to see the effects of the work in progress and, more often than not, see the vision take shape in reality.

The Challenge/Skills Ratio is exactly what it sounds like. Working too far below one’s skill level damages motivation through inefficiency. Working too far above is damages motivation through frustration. The idea is to find the sweet spot.

“Flow appears near the emotional midpoint between boredom and anxiety, in what scientists call the flow channel - the spot where the task is hard enough to make us stretch; not hard hard enough to make us snap”.

Social Triggers

Group Flow is exponentially more productive than individual Flow. Some of these social components may sound familiar as they are the social version of some earlier triggers.

Serious Concentration works for the group as Deep Embodiment does for the individual. Yield of

Shared, Clear Goals has a to do with the quality of the shared vision. As objectives evolve through the project, so should group members be updated so that the vision is shared through time.

Good Communication goes hand in hand with clear goals but no an operational standpoint. This is the requirement that team members bring critical information, such as numbers and figures, or critical skills to the operation.

Equal Participation. As the value of one’s effort changes with their experiences this should not mean “equal” in terms of number of hours spent on the project, but should be interpreted as equal responsibility. For example, a senior architect might spend fewer hours than the draftsmen, but the hours he spends are equal in contribution value.

Element of Risk is self-explanatory given the idea discussed earlier.

Familiarity is a measure of the group’s level of comfort in working with the others in the group. Team-building exercises are a tool in developing this trigger.

Blending Egos does not exactly seek to lessen egos or balance out the “big heads” in the room. This rather takes their momentum and focuses them both on a creative direction, the purpose of the project.

Ego momentum, usually divisive to the group, is now a positive force. If the egos are externally competitive they will now attempt to “one-up” each other by project contributions. If the egos are internally competitive they will now work together to create something with shared expertise.

Sense of Control is the sense of ownership in a combination of autonomy (being free to do what you want) and mastery (being good at what you do). Team members often elect themselves into a place of responsibility as the project evolves.

Close Listening is focus on the here and now. Listening extends past the ears and means attentiveness of the moment with all senses and perceptions.

Always say “yes, and…”.Acknowledging the fact that the ideas come from other verified team members, an additive mental position is more beneficial than one which seeks to be contradictory. Contribution to the conversation is often necessary.

For example, an improv comedy. If a sketch is opened with “Hey, there’s a blue elephant in the bathroom”, the scene goes nowhere if the reply is “No, there’s not.” Denial kills the flow, whereas a “yes, and…” answer guides the idea along. “Yeah, sorry, I had no idea where to put him. Did he leave the toilet seat up again?”

Triggers

Together, these environmental, psychological, and social triggers can be molded or improved to fit the environment and propel ideas forward.

A good team who understands flow will make it a side project amongst themselves to enhance flow when they work together. This will accelerate the productivity.

Implementation

The purpose of this section will be to prescribe a formula for implementing the triggers in order to best utilize flow state.. Each situation is unique, but this section will describe actionable steps to follow through the process.

The most difficult part of enacting this Flow state is the concept that it’s nearly impossible to enter if you’re actively trying to enter it. (How can you find something if you’re not even looking?). Further, it is even more difficult to implement practically. Focus on implementation is often the very thing which blocks access. A concept of “letting go” and focusing on nothing but the task at hand is often the best way to help flow along.

1. Manufacture your environment.

Flow is also the product of the environment in which users find themselves. By manufacturing a rich environment with high consequences where the user can immerse themselves deeply in focus on the task at hand, a cunning director can boost productivity of actors.

2. Share knowledge of flow.

As my own comprehension of the triggers grew with this study, I got better at spotting moments to slip into flow and accessed the state more and more. I was not prepared for the increase in my own entrance to Flow which increased in accordance with my understanding of the state.

I theorize that as an actor’s knowledge base of Flow increases, so their likelihood of access increases. Accordingly, this increase of access is further boosted by the actor’s response to an understanding of the triggers and prerequisites. The actor who recognizes these and crafts their own environment to best suit entrance into Flow will have significantly higher chances of accessing Flow than the actor who recognizes and makes no change in their habits. Thus, the user who modifies their environment has a leg up on the user who makes no change to their environment, but both have a leg up on the user who has not been exposed to a report like this one which informs a user that the flow state exists. (As you have been now. Welcome to flow!)

Conclusion

My line of thinking states that even exposure to the knowledge of this higher state of productivity increases productivity. Finding others who are aware of and practiced in working in flow is the an element of productivity. Not only are these people valuable due to having this ability, they become exponentially more valuable as they practice it more by working in group flow with others like them.