Play to FLOW (now with neuroscience)
When is the last time you experienced flow?
Just to review, flow is “the holistic sensation that people feel when they act with total involvement.” (Csikszentmihalyi and Csikszentmihalyi, 1988: 36). One interpretation of this concept is what one experiences when meditating. However, true flow requires active involvement. The individual is participating in an activity in which they are wholly focused on the activity alone. The activity must be challenging enough to engage, but not too challenging with the risk of bringing out frustration or boredom. The activity must be voluntary and intrinsically motivated. Goals related to the activity are short-term and clear. The individual should receive unambiguous, immediate, and on-going feedback (from themselves and the activity). Possibly most importantly, the individual must ENJOY the activity. Achieving flow at work can be transformational.
What is flow?
Flow is an optimal state of consciousness where we feel our best and perform our best. Peak Experience with Peak Performance. There are eight rules for flow. To achieve flow, the activity must be or have:
skill-balanced
fully actively engaging
a feeling of control
a lack of self-consciousness
clear goals
intrinsically rewarding
a distortion of the sense of time
which will all lead to
a complete merger of actions and awareness.
What’s so great about flow?
Though meditation does not equal flow, they do share one important characteristic: practicing meditation and practicing being in flow can bring about change to larger aspects of your life. Experiencing flow can result in lower self-consciousness and higher positive emotions. Research has shown that the flow state can increase ability for self-regulation, improve inter-personal relationships, and a general sense of personal well-being. As you work towards adding more flow state experiences in your life, you may find that you create other healthy routines as you reduce distraction around you (tea instead of coffee, less screen time, etc).
Does flow equal play?
When we think about our definition of play, it is very similar to flow! For me, I experience flow when I’m skiing. A nice long, winding, blue run on a bluebird day is one of my favorite things in the WHOLE world. When I talk with my community about getting into flow, I get a range of answers about how they experience flow from art, to running, to yoga, to jigsaw puzzles. A friend of mine experiences flow when she paints, often accidentally staying up until 3am. Another friend that studied fashion and textiles experiences flow when shopping for and finding just the right outfit for an event. Though flow is often found in physical activity, Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi (chick-sent-mee-hi) found in his research that individuals experience flow more often at work than outside of work.
What keeps us from flow?
I also hear a lot of struggle getting into flow because of overwhelming stress and responsibility. Herein we find another similarity between flow and play. When we aren’t able to prioritize times of enjoyment for ourselves, the stress and anxiety build up and take over. (See Play is Survival)
Flow is not easy to achieve. Play is. If you are prioritizing self-care, consider adding “play to flow” to your self-care list. Consider some self-reflection about where and when you experience joy. Analyze what you are good at. Find an activity that might bring you the focus and joy necessary to achieve flow and schedule it into your weekly routine.
Flow at Work
Finding flow can bring benefits to work. Leaders and team members alike are more often in a positive state of mind resulting from a healthy dose of neurochemicals that boost our joy, stress regulation, problem-solving, creativity, and more. Collaboration and communication will improve. Office spaces should consider environments designed to facilitate states of flow through the reduction of distraction, freedom of scheduling, and creativity of elements.
Step 1 - Identify the Activity: Be specific. Decide on the task and how you will know when it is complete (for this session). Flow state requires clear goals and immediate feedback.
Step 2 - Reduce Distractions: Turn off notifications, limit screens, set sound as well as lighting to your personal preferences, sit or stand comfortably, and prepare all tools needed. Set an alarm if you have a hard out.
Step 3 - Low-Stakes Play: Go for a short walk, do fun stretches or a shaking exercise, and maybe a quick activity such as a round of Mondrian Blocks or creating three shapes with a Shashibo cube. (Edited later: Consider steps 1 and 2 of the Huberman Neuroplasticity Protocol)
Step 4 - Just START: Once in the flow state, you'll lose self-consciousness so just go for it, don't worry about those first attempts, just start and then iterate!
If you’re interested in improving the well-being of your workspace by helping your leaders and team members find play and bring flow to their work, schedule a discovery call here!
IMPORTANT UPDATE! NEW RESEARCH!
I’m always reading about flow, and came across Steven Kotler and an amazing new theory based on the research of Herbert Benson, a cardiologist. Scientists now believe there are actually four stages to the flow experience and stage 3 is what we usually think of as being “in the zone”. The other three stages are crucial to the process though.
Stage 1 : Struggle
This is the preparation stage. This is the research, learning, or studying you need to do before the activity itself that will take you into the peak performance/experience stage. This can be difficult at times. We are essentially loading and preparing the brain to participate. During this stage, we get boosts of cortisol and adrenaline - stress hormones that are actually responsible for motivation!
Stage 2 : Release
This stage aligns perfectly with my persistent recommendations of taking a break and participating in some low-stakes play. During this stage, the brain will release nitric oxide which will flush out those stress hormones.
Stage 3: FLOW
This stage is what we generally know as flow itself. During this stage, the brain (newly free of stress hormones after the nitric oxide release) goes into a phase of transient (temporary) hypofrontality. This means that the activity in the prefrontal cortex of our brain actually slows down. The prefrontal cortex is the area of our brain that controls executive function; so our logic and rigidity and rule-following exist there. When that area’s activity is reduced, our actions aren’t guided by our inner critic, our actions are guided by the rest of the brain. During flow, the rest of our brain is happily busy releasing an amazing, perfectly measured and crafted cocktail of beneficial neurochemicals like dopamine, serotonin, anandamide, norepinephrine, brain-derived neurotropic factors, and more. These chemicals are the ones that allow for creativity, pattern recognition, lateral thinking (identifying two unrelated ideas and finding a link), and just plain joy. (Not to mention 400-700% more creativity and 5 times as much productivity).
Stage 4: Recovery
During this stage, we are essentially coming down from the high we were on during flow. All those neurochemicals that contributed to the peak experience are waning back to their baseline levels. This is not a fun stage (in fact, I believe this stage is what’s probably responsible for the imposter phenomenon, but that’s for another blog.) Allowing yourself to rest and play during this stage is a great way to get through it without sacrificing your well-being. I highly recommend actually scheduling in time for this stage, just as you scheduled in time for the flow stage itself. Giving your permission to rest and play will build the resilience in your brain to bounce back to more positive baseline levels with a great ease during the transition. Identifying the appropriate rest and play for you can be difficult, so please reach out - I can help!
Csikszentmihalyi, M., & Csikszentmihalyi, I. S. (Eds.). (1988). Optimal experience: Psychological studies of flow in consciousness. Cambridge University Press.
