book: Flow by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
I’ve been reading lots of Mihaly Csikszentmihayli (pronounced “ME-high CHICK-sent-me-high-ee”), famous for his concept of ‘flow’ , including Flow, Creativity and this interview in Wired.
The basic concept is that “Flow is the mental state of operation in which the person is fully immersed in what he or she is doing, characterized by a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and success in the process of the activity”. There has to be a balance between feeling challenged and feeling skillful (my parents first attempt to teach me and my husband Bridge left us feeling significantly more challenged than skillful).
Games and play are often the epitome of flow, although flow can be different in that we don’t always consider it ‘fun’ at the time but it adds to our general well-being and sense of happiness about our lives. Video games in particular seem to achieve the timeless quality of the flow state.
But it’s not all about leisure stuff. Work begins to be magical and not such a chore in those times when you experience flow. Those times when you look up and realise everyone else when home hours ago and the cleaners are irritated because you are getting in their way. I’ve got better over the years in identifying what types of stuff get that reaction from me and building my career around it. But I’m also interested in how we create those experiences for our colleagues using the tools we build and the consumers of our products.