March 18, 2007
On Serendipity and Flow
Serendipity perhaps? Several times recently I have had cause to focus on the psychological concept of flow. What is 'flow', you may ask? I'll explain as I relate these coincidences.
A few weeks ago my Dad, a semi-retired psychologist, sent a letter to help my son in his sporting endeavours. Dad related the sporting experience of 'being in the zone' to Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's work, in particular his book "Living Well", which uses the metaphor of 'flow'. He notes that many people have used this metaphor to "describe the sense of effortless action they feel in moments that stand out as being the best in their lives". Dad drew attention to the following passage:
"When goals are clear, feedback is relevant, and challenges and skills are in balance, attention becomes ordered and fully invested. Because of the total demand on psychic energy, a person in flow is completely focused. There is no space in consciousness for distracting thoughts, irrelevant feelings. Self-consciousness disappears, yet one feels stronger that usual. The sense of time is distorted: hours seem to pass by in minutes. When a person's entire being is stretched in the full functioning of body and mind, whatever one does becomes worth doing for its own sake; living becomes its own justification. In the harmonious focusing of physical and psychic energy, life finally comes into its own."A few days later my father asked me whether I'd read Ross Gittins' article in the Sydney Morning Herald about job satisfaction and flow. I hadn't but looked it up because I have a high regard for the way Gittins appears to look outside the square when researching material for his columns. This time he was focusing on what psychologist Martin Seligman has to say about flow in the context of work. The guts of the article centred on the three distinct kinds of work that psychologists have identified: a job, a career and a calling. Seligman argues that "when your work is a calling you more frequently experience a psychological state known as flow." The article went on to conclude that "Seligman's recipe for finding your calling and getting more flow is to identify your signature strengths, choose work that lets you use them every day and recraft your present work to use your signature strengths." Dad observed that perhaps Seligman could have acknowledged Csikszentmihalyi's ground-breaking work on flow.
All of this had me curious. In my sporting life I have on occasions - too infrequent for my liking - experienced the exhilaration of being 'in the zone'. Steve Waugh has written that he was in "that special place called the zone" as he breezed towards his unforgettable last ball of the day hundred against England in 2003. In my professional life I know I have on many occasions experienced the feeling of flow when I have been immersed in a programming activity.
The real coincidence of this story occurred when I was checking my RSS feeds and noticed this brief blog entry by Esther Derby, leading back to Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. This article that Esther linked to appears to be an excerpt from Csikszentmihalyi's book "Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience". It's well worth a read.
So where does that leave me? With two thoughts. Firstly that it is well worth trying to create the conditions to experience flow more often. And secondly that Csikszentmihalyi is on to something. I might have to add his books to the growing list that I'd like to read one day.
Posted to Peopleware, Personal, Psychology, Software Development, Sport by Keith Pitty