When are you in the Flow?

I truly hate the banality and sickening commercialism of self help books. Or the new age pseudo science stuff, or new spirituality. But I always browse them when in the bookstore, and if any of them catches my eye for more than 10 seconds, I take a photo of the cover, to check back them on interwebs if they are truly worth something. I stumbled upon a few gems during the last decades like one or two “Rules of …” series, James Altucher, and Tim Ferris. There is also Zen Habits blog, that I liked a lot in the beginning, but somehow, feeling I’m losing touch with that. Think Leo should do something new, and surprise us Like Tim Ferris, though did not even bother to read Tim’s Chef thingy-book.

My latest hero is Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (Mee-hi-el Chick-scent-mee-hi-yee) (MrC). When you read about his works, watch his TED talk, you feel like he is a living Yoda.

MrC literally invented the concept of FLOW, which is the underlying real science of happiness.

“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.”

When you google him up, the wrath of information age will hit you, because, he is truly the king of the subject, and unfortunately he is also responsible for that 2.99 in-app purchases you keep doing when you are stuck at the Candy Crush.

Wait, what?

Also, if you have kids and if they are attending to a modernish school, I am sure you observe the new weird things from the school like all these “abstract” homeworks, and buzzy sounding concepts like “exactness”. Well, give it some credit, because alumni of this education system include Jeff Bezos, Sergey Brin and Larry Page (true story). My head is exploding now, being happy, Candy Crush and Amazon & Google Guys. What is the common element?

These guys attended schools that are based on Montessori principles, that are built upon putting the students in a continous Flow state, that is the concept the coined by MrC. Imagine, you are going to school everday just to be in Flow.

You remember how Walter White was happily cooking Meth in his lab, he was in Flow state; remember how Antonio Salieri happily humming and creating average music until Amadeus arriving town? He was in Flow. For me, I am definitely in Flow when snowboarding down thru a lonely trail with A Letter to Elise.

Now, I will give you tl;dr version of key elements of the Flow state, right here, right now and you will not need the read the book itself or the surrounding doctorate material.

But Before I give you these 8 points, you must understand that when MrC was conducting experiments on the subject, he covered a lot of bases. The spectrum of activities was vast, and also the test subjects were from all different backgrounds, countries, social class, age or gender. Nevertheless, elderly Koreans, or members of motorcycle gangs shared very very similar moments.

Aha! That is really something, and MrC calls this Optimal Experience, that is also the title of his book.

1. Experience occurs when you are faced with tasks that you have a chance of completing.

2. We need quality time to concentrate.

3. Clear objectives.

4. Immediate feedback.

5. Immersion; you are so in it, you forget the pains of everyday life.

6. Development of sense of controlling your actions.

7. Concern for self disappears.

8. Sense of duration of time is disappeared.

Now think of your favorite mobile game (Candy Crush, Cut the Rope, Angry Birds, etc), and read the above again.

Now you understand the addictive nature, because we all want to be in a Flow state.

I do not imply here, lets play games all the time and be happy. That is not the answer, as we all know, that fix is a short lived one.

To truly find your Optimal Experience, you need to reflect and think about yourself.

When are you in the Flow?

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