We all are capable of reaching that stateof effortless
concentration and enjoyment called "flow." Here, the man who literally
wrote the book on flow presents his most lucid account yet of how to
experience this blissful state.
IMAGINE THAT YOU ARE SKIING DOWN A SLOPE and your full attention is
focused on the movements of your body and your full attention is focused
on the movements of your body, the position of the skis, the air
whistling past your face, and the snow-shrouded trees running by. There
is no room in your awareness for conflicts or contradictions; you know
that a distracting thought or emotion might get you buried face down in
the snow. The run is so perfect that you want it to last forever.
If skiing does not mean much to you, this complete immersion in an
experience could occur while you are singing in a choir, dancing, playing
bridge, or reading a good book. If you love your job, it could happen
during a complicated surgical operation or a close business deal. It may
occur in a social interaction, when talking with a good friend, or while
playing with a baby. Moments such as these provide flashes of intense
living against the dull background of everyday life.
These exceptional moments are what I have called "flow"
experiences. The metaphor of flow is one that many people have used to
describe the sense of effortless action they feel in moments that stand
out as the best in their lives. Athletes refer to it as "being in the
zone," religious mystics as being in "ecstasy," artists and musicians as
"aesthetic rapture."
It is the full involvement of flow, rather than happiness, that
makes for excellence in life. We can be happy experiencing the passive
pleasure of a rested body, warm sunshine, or the contentment of a serene
relationship, but this kind of happiness is dependent on favorable
external circumstances. The happiness that follows flow is of our own
making, and it leads to increasing complexity and growth in
consciousness.
WHERE TO FIND FLOW
Flow tends to occur when a person faces a clear set of goals that
require appropriate responses. It is easy to enter flow in games such as
chess, tennis, or poker, because they have goals and rules that make it
possible for the player to act without questioning what should be done,
and how. For the duration of the game the player lives in a
self-contained universe where everything is black and white. The same
clarity of goals is present if you perform a religious ritual, play a
musical piece, weave a rug, write a computer program, climb a mountain,
or perform surgery. In contrast to normal life, these "flow activities"
allow a person to focus on goals that are clear and compatible, and
provide immediate feedback.
Flow also happens when a person's skills are fully involved in
overcoming a challenge that is just about manageable, so it acts as a
magnet for learning new skills and increasing challenges. If challenges
are too low, one gets back to flow by increasing them. If challenges are
too great, one can return to the flow state by learning new
skills.
How often do people experience flow? If you ask a sample of typical
Americans, "Do you ever get involved in something so deeply that nothing
else seems to matter and you lose track of time?" roughly one in five
will say that this happens to them as much as several times a day,
whereas about 15 percent will say that this never happens to them. These
frequencies seem to he quite stable and universal. For instance, in a
recent survey of 6,469 Germans, the same question was answered in the
following way: Often, 23 percent; Sometimes, 40 percent; Rarely, 25
percent; Never or Don't Know, 12 percent.
A more precise way to study flow is the Experience Sampling Method,
or ESM, which I developed at the University of Chicago in the early
1970s. This method provides a virtual filmstrip of a person's daily
activities and experiences. At the signal of a pager or watch, which goes
off at random times within each two-hour segment of the day, a person
writes down in a booklet where she is, what she is doing, what she is
thinking about, and whom she is with, then she rates her state of
consciousness on various numerical scales. At our Chicago laboratory, we
have collected over the years a total of 70,000 pages from about 2,300
respondents. Investigators in other parts of the world have more than
tripled these figures.
The ESM has found that flow generally occurs when a person is doing
his or her favorite activity--gardening, listening to music, bowling,
cooking a good meal. It also occurs when driving, talking to friends, and
surprisingly often at work. Very rarely do people report flow in passive
leisure activities, such as watching television or relaxing.
Almost any activity can produce flow provided the relevant elements
are present, so it is possible to improve the quality of life by making
sure that the conditions of flow are a constant part of everyday
life.
FLOW AT WORK
