The only magazine I currently subscribe to is Cosmo. However, while perusing their site, I found that there are way more articles and topics on their site than in the mag (not surprising!). I came across one article about a book by Daniel H. Pink entitled Drive. In his book, he discusses intrinsic vs. extrinsic motivation and flow. We all experience days when we wake up and feel like the day should be over... Every class feels like it's never ending, you sit down to do work but nothing happens... But then, we all have also experienced those "miracle" days when you wake up and the next thing you know, it's time for bed! You just get so caught up in all of the day's activities, that the day just flew by!
As we've learned in class, it's much more likely that tasks will be completed accurately and more quickly when we have an inner desire to do them - the activity is interesting, we enjoy the material, etc... aka intrinsic motivation. This is the way we are also most likely to experience "flow." According to Reeve (2005), flow is described as "a state of concentration that involves a holistic absorption in an activity" (p. 115).
What we most experience when we complete tasks is extrinsic motivation. For example, we have our part-time (or full-time for some) jobs to make some money - not because it's really something we love to do. When we don't love to do something - we aren't interested, don't enjoy it, and don't care too much, you won't experience flow.
However, Pink argues that YOU can experience flow every day, all day. In his book, he describes 9 strategies to produce flow more often. I apologize, as I couldn't find any excerpts of the 9 strategies, but the Cosmo article reports that one way to experience flow more often is to recognize when you are most likely to experience it. By doing so, you should "give yourself a 'flow' test - set an alarm to go off randomly 40 times during the week. Each time it goes off, write down what you're doing, how you feel, and whether you're in 'flow' or not." This will allow you to look back and reflect the situations and environments you were in when you experienced flow, permitting you to recreate those times every day.
Furthermore, Daniel Pink's website discusses the book. This description states that the book outlines the 3 elements of true motivation - autonomy, mastery, and purpose. He also elaborates by discussing how we can achieve these 3 elements, in order to increase our motivation -- and drive.
Flow is something that is becoming increasingly more fascinating to me. In another class of mine we are also learning about flow and how and why it is acquired. The book we are reading for my other class has a whole chapter dedicated to discussing the concept of flow (the author, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, ties in flow to other chapters in his book, as well). Moreover, this psychologist and author is also the main proponent of the idea of flow. It is very interesting to read the chapter on flow from this author, because he associates the importance of flow to personal, social, and cultural evolution. Csikszentmihalyi posits, "Flow seems to be the engine of evolution propelling us to higher levels of complexity." If everyone can achieve and regularly experience flow regularly, especially in the work capacity, then greater happiness will consume us all, helping to impel society to greater heights.
As a helpful guide, Csikszentmihalyi lays out eight characteristic dimensions of the flow experience (these come directly from his book):
1) Clear goals: an objective is distinctly defined; immediate feedback: one knows instantly how well one is doing.
2) The opportunities for acting decisively are relatively high, and they are matched by one's perceived ability to act.
3) Action and awareness merge; one-pointedness of mind.
4) Concentration on the task at hand; irrelevant stimuli disappear from consciousness, worries and concerns are temporarily suspended.
5) A sense of potential control.
6) Loss of self-consciousness, transcendence of ego boundaries.
7) Altered sense of time, which usually seems to pass faster.
8) Experience becomes autoletic: worth doing for its own sake (aka intrinsic motivation).
Although these conditions seem rather exact and detailed, the experience of flow generally occurs automatically, so one does not and cannot ruminate on each individual criterion. Within these criteria of flow there are a couple aspects of goals and goal setting. The most blatant is the first condition. Feedback, as we all know, is a critical component in goal setting and maintenance. When one achieves flow he or she is immediately provided with feedback of his or her actions.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's books on Flow:
"The Evolving Self": http://www.amazon.com/Evolving-Self-Mihaly-Csikszentmihalyi/dp/0060921927/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1269221466&sr=8-1
"Flow": http://www.amazon.com/Flow-Psychology-Optimal-Experience-P-S/dp/0061339202/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1269221573&sr=1-1
The first comment really sums it up pretty well, so I only want to add a couple of things. I would encourage anyone interested in the concept of Flow to read one of Csikszentmihalyi's books. I read "Flow" recently and found it to be incredibly useful and informative. While it reads kind of like a textbook, he uses a lot of concrete examples from people he has interviewed about their experiences with flow. The concept emerged from listening to athletes, artists, and other people with certain elite skills describe the experience of doing their 'best work'. They get in 'the zone' and everything other than what they are doing fades away (worries, plans, etc). The key to staying in a state of flow in any task is to balance one's skills with the potential challenge. If the challenge exceeds skill, it can lead to frustration. If the challenge is below one's skill, it can lead to boredom. The challenge also has to be at least somewhat challenging to experience flow. In the book, he concentrates a lot on discussing how we can control our consciousness, that psychic entropy (negative thoughts) are things that result from external sources, and that our experience can be freed from these things to produce happiness in every situation. Almost everything about who we are is based on our conscious experience, which is finite. Therefore, if we can control our consciousness and only allow certain things in, our direct experience will be under our control rather than imposed upon us. Of course, there are certain things that we can't block out of our consciousness like biological needs (I really have to pee). Other things, however, enter consciousness through the environment and by focusing our attention on certain things, we can determine certain aspects of our conscious experience.
Personally, I don’t see how it could be possible to experience flow every day, all day like Pink suggests. I guess I need to read this book to understand his hypothesis. The whole idea of the ‘flow test’ seems utterly absurd to me and completely intrusive. Also, what if you were in the flow of things and the alarm goes off? I would be upset. Additionally, how do you truly know when you are in the flow of things? Plus, you cannot always recreate the conditions in which you experience flow; therefore, you cannot it all day, every day. People have to do things that they don’t always enjoy; it is a fact of life. Apparently, true motivation encompasses the concepts of autonomy, purpose and mastery. But what if I don’t know my purpose? If I don’t have a purpose then I cannot achieve mastery.
Other people’s comments were intriguing. Flow may be a way to increase human complexity but humans are still relatively simple beings. We have needs to be met: sex, food, water, air, social needs, etc. We feel anger, fear, joy, and sadness. We are basic, we are complex and flow isn’t always a part of our lives. We do not always find our ‘in the zone’ environment because we do not find the adequate experience that fits our skills yet challenges us.
Before this class, I never paid much attention to when I was experiencing flow. I noticed that some days went by faster than others but it was never really that significant to me. After learning about flow, I immediately noticed that I was experiencing it during my internship at the probation office. During the times that I would work at my internship, I always felt like the day went by too fast. Knowing what I know now about flow, it makes complete sense. I was so immersed in my tasks and enjoyed them so much, time literally flew by. The work was just challenging enough for my abilities that it allowed me to get into the "zone."
After reading this blog, I'm not sure how I feel about being able to experience flow everyday. My first thought is yes, it is possible. I experienced flow every time I worked my internship (which was 3 days a week). But then another thought immediately came to mind. Was I experiencing flow because the tasks of the job were relatively new to me which presented itself as a minor challenge? Or was the job as a whole producing the flow and would continue to do so for the rest of my career? In other words, was the flow that I was experiencing on a limited basis. I can say that after 3 months on the internship, I was still experiencing flow (which contributed to this semester flying by for me) but then again, I still hadn't learned every nuance of the probation officer position.
This brings me to another point, working the internship made me experience flow which contributed to my feeling that this semester flew by. I'm not sure in the long run I really liked that. I kind of feel like I lost out on time. I wasn't able to accomplish all the things that I wanted to during the time period and now here I am 2 weeks before graduation at 2 o'clock in the morning, scrambling to get everything done that I wanted to finish earlier in the semester. So is experiencing flow everyday, really a good thing in the long run? Maybe not so much. I think it's kind of like chocolate, good in moderation but sickening in large amounts.