![]() We want to see challenges through to the end because we enjoy the feeling of pushing ourselves. ![]() This is what Ernest Hemingway meant when he said, “Sometimes I write better than I can.” The ideal is to find a middle path, something aligned with our abilities but just a bit of a stretch, so we experience it as a challenge. If, on the other hand, we assign ourselves a task that is too difficult, we won’t have the skills to complete it and will almost certainly give up-and feel frustrated, to boot. If the rules for completing a task orĪchieving a purpose are too basic relative to our skillset, we will likely get bored. Schaffer’s model encourages us to take on tasks we have a chance of completing, but that are slightly outside our comfort zone.Įvery task, sport, or job has a set of rules, and we need a set of skills to follow them. Knowing where to go (where navigation is involved) ![]() If you often find yourself losing focus while working on something you consider essential, there are several strategies you can employ to increase your chances of achieving flow.Īccording to researcher Owen Schaffer of DePaul University, the requirements for achieving flow are : Csikszentmihalyi analyzed data from people around the world and discovered that flow is the same among individuals of all ages and cultures. Most athletes, chess players, and engineers spend much of their time on activities that bring them to this state.Īccording to Csikszentmihalyi’s research, a chess player feels the same way upon entering a state of flow as a mathematician working on a formula or a surgeon operating. It is not only creative professionals who require high doses of concentration that promote flow. To achieve this optimal experience, we have to focus on increasing the time we spend on activities that bring us to this state of flow, rather than allowing ourselves to get caught up in activities that offer immediate pleasure-like eating too much, abusing drugs or alcohol, or stuffing ourselves with chocolate in front of the TV.Īs Csikszentmihalyi asserts in his book Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, “Flow is the state in which people are so involved in an activity that nothing else seems to matter the experience itself is so enjoyable that people will do it even at great cost, for the sheer sake of doing it.” Csikszentmihalyi called this state “flow,” and described it as the pleasure, delight, creativity, and process of being completely immersed in life. These questions are also at the heart of psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s research into the experience of being completely immersed in what we are doing. The funny thing is that someone else might enjoy the same task, but we want to finish as quickly as possible. Sit with a pretty girl fo, an hour, and it seems like a minute. As the quip attributed, Einstein goes, “Put your hand on a hot stove for a minute, and it seems like an hour. This is the kind of experience Bruce Lee described with his famous “Be water, my friend.” Your ego dissolves, and you become part of what you are doing. You are completely immersed in the experience, not thinking about or distracted by anything else. You know precisely how to move at each moment. Imagine you are hiking down one of your favorite slopes.
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