Business Insight Zone

Reading Tara Hunt’s terrific new set of slides — “Happiness As Your Business Model” — reminded me yet again of the work of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, the eminent psychologist who has written so eloquently about “Flow.” Flow is that state in which you lose track of time, hunger, distractions, and anything else as you submerge into the task at hand. Athletes and others call it “being in the zone”; when you’re in that zone, nothing matters but what you’re doing.

Research by Csikszentmihalyi and others has shown that it usually takes at least 15 minutes of uninterrupted time-on-task to achieve this state, which can then last for quite a while. Their findings match my experience — probably yours, too — about “settling in” to an activity: at first your brain is just trying to wrap itself around the work, and you’re doing things mechanically. At some point, though, you sink down into it, “lost” in the work. (This is the same phenomenon that Paul Graham describes when he talks about computer programmers needing uninterrupted time to “upload” a program into their heads and keep it there.)

If you’ve spent much time in the Flow state, it shouldn’t surprise you that the research shows that Flow correlates to deeper satisfaction in work and life.

If you’ve spent much time in the “interrupt-driven” modern office, it shouldn’t surprise you that many of us seldom experience Flow in a typical day’s work.

How is this like a cup of coffee?

When you’ve just poured the coffee, it’s too hot to drink. You sip at it, but you’re not able to fully enjoy it. At the tail end of a big cup of coffee, it may have cooled too much to be ideal. But in between . . . ahhh. That’s when coffee is at its best, and that’s what coffee lovers like me are thinking about when they say, “I’d love a cup of coffee right now.”

The difference with achieving Flow is that you can extend that period when the “temperature” and “flavor” of your work are ideal. With practice, you can even stretch out the Flow state for hours and hours.

But not when you subject yourself to the typical stream of endless interruptions in your working day.

How often do you achieve Flow in your work?

What could you do to experience more Flow?

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(Photo by ali edwards.)