Flowing with life
The optimal state of experience
Where did my time go?
You are at your desk, immersed in a task. You can’t stop. Eating, drinking, talking, seems superfluous. You loose track of time. From time to time, you raise your head, just to engage with a disruptive thought, then you go head back to your work. Soon enough, you take a good inhale and feel content. When you look at your watch, you see it’s 9pm. You didn’t realise it was so late! As a matter of facts, you are the last in the office. Life’s event stream catches up, you pack your stuff and get ready to leave. You’re left wondering: what happened? how did I lose track of time? You were so absorbed, you even lost your sense of self, of personality. How come you can actually loose yourself for a moment?! Weird!
At the same time, it was delightful. You feel accomplished now.. Like you’ve done work you were meant to do. It felt like dancing, like flowing with life.
The optimal experience
The short above story depicts the typical experience of flow.
Flow is a state of mind, an altered state of consciousness, where you are 100% engaged in what you do. Research says it’s one of the most, if not the most, engaging experience in life. And as a matter of facts, it’s more appreciated than most leisure activities! Like watching a movie, or playing a song you’ve known for a long time is relatively boring, when creating a new piece is actually more rewarding, exciting, inspiring...
Flow is said to happen when you are challenged exactly the right bit. The problems you face are just beyond your capabilities. You feel challenged, yet you feel comfortable enough to take on the challenge. As such, you avoid boredom as well as overwhelming stress.
Feels like a game, or science 🤔
People like games for a reason. They are creating conditions for flow. Take a competitive game which difficulty increases as you progress… and you have the perfect flow-inducer! (Remember, the right level of challenge?)
Work is actually a pretty good game too! Research shows that people have more flow states at work than at home. This also lets us understand the attraction to jobs like trading or sales for instance: they are very gamified, so it’s easy to flow.
Going further, the author of the book Flow argues that science, religion, philosophy have all also emerged from this human need to flow (they are mental games).
Nature flows, humans sail
This emergence seem to indicate spontaneous evolution by simply flowing. However, while water just needs a source and flows naturally from there, humans are builders. We build canals. We use the wind to sail. We set a direction that satisfy our meaning-making (which makes sense! ;)).
Flow happens at the intersection of constraint (direction) and surrender. You’ve got to aim first, then you can flow like water.
The optimal state: satori or 100% flow
In “Peaceful warrior”, Dan Millman describes the objective of life as being able to flow all the time. What he calls “satori”. In buddhism, satori is a state beyond the ego. It’s a state where you’re blended with life, there’s no separation between you and others. There’s no holding back. It’s just pure flow.
Pretty appealing to me!
Tips?
Aim first, then flow
In order to flow, objectives need to be very clear. There has to be a clear milestone to reach. Otherwise there’s just too much chaos. You need to balance order and chaos.
Which objective should you choose? Pretty much anything that is specific enough and driving you. Ideally though, if you want to be completely congruent and aligned, your objective should be drilling from your life mission, objectives, values… This requires conscious work to define your self leadership.
And flow can actually help you progress on your inner journey as well and establish your self leadership / authorship. The author claims that after flowing, you feel “bigger”. Your ego has grown. And also flowing allows you to meet objectives, then course-correct. By trial and error, you’ll find what you’re meant to do :)
Go through the forest
As Tim Urban brilliantly describes in his procrastination article, you first need to go through the “Dark Woods” before you’re able to flow. You might have noticed it, but before engaging with something challenging, you usually face reluctance. It’s like dipping a toe in the water, and it’s too cold, you don’t want to go in there.
Once you’re there, it’s great though!
This feeling is normal, and with practice, it can disappear. It will disappear the more you surrender to your experience and what you truly want to accomplish in the moment.
Meditation helps
As often in topics I deal with, meditation is helpful. Meditating will help you feel your inner experiences more accurately. You’ll spot the woods, you’ll spot the flow, you’ll spot stress or boredom. You will fine-tune your compass, and with this information in mind, you’ll be able to craft the best experience for yourself.
Energy rotation
Meditation can also help you notice what type of energy you feel in your body. Or the lack of it. Something that is missing in Mihali’s book is the notion of rest. If flow is optimal, does that mean you have to flow all the time? or is there rest sometimes? Can you flow 15h per day? My assumption is that while flow is an optimal experience, it’s energy-draining. So you can’t flow on the same bucket of energy forever. Or even for a full day. At some point, you’ll be drained.
The tip is to switch energy bucket. There are many ways of looking at this, but you could say you have at least four buckets: physical, emotional, mental and spiritual energies. You should flow in one bucket, then when it’s depleted, flow in another energy, while the other refills. Attend to all your buckets, and you’ll flow in all dimensions of life rather than one single thread. Write it down! ;)
Professional engagement
In many ways, you’re engaged at work if you are able to create this optimal state, often.
You might not be able if you don’t have clear objectives. Or if it’s too hard or too easy for you. Think about it when you go about your work day today. Do you feel it? Do you wish you had more of it? Do you feel you have it but your direction lacks meaning and you still feel empty?
These are themes I help people and organisations work with: how to craft the right environment for people to flow, and have more engagement in their work, thus more joy, impact, and results?
If these topics interest you for your self or your organisation, reach out! I’ll write more about my philosophy on those professional topics.
Appendix: For me, writing is flow
I love writing. It feels like play. Finding the right tone, the right words, the right approach. Writing is often depicted as deeper thinking, as there’s more effort to put into thinking clearly to write something coherent. So it’s a challenge…
And at the same time, I don’t have a hellish publication schedule, so I don’t fret about the output. It’s not too stressful…
…I’m in the zone!
I also know I’m there because of the time it takes to get there. Setting to write is hard, I have dense dark woods to go through. But it’s highly rewarding, once I get to the other side. Anyone wondered why I hadn’t published in weeks? ;)
Cheers everyone!