What is flow?

Flow, is an experience of intense engagement, focus and satisfaction in the present moment while performing an activity. Sometimes this experience is also referred to as being “in the zone.” The benefits of flow are many and include a higher overall quality of life (feeling happy) and increased self-efficacy (belief in one’s own abilities). Furthermore, the work created during flow experiences is often more creative and of higher quality (Csikszentmihalyi, 1997). Flow experiences are considered profound and improve overall satisfaction in an individual’s life. The concept of flow was introduced in 1975 by psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi who was also one of the two founders of positive psychology later in 2000. He conceptualized flow using nine elements. These can be broken down into conditions and characteristics (Nakamura & Csikszentmihalyi, 2009; Van den Hout, Davis & Weggeman, 2018). The six conditions that you could (partially) create in your personal task environment and thereby increase the likelihood of flow are:

1) Intrinsic motivation: You might consciously choose a task that motivates you intrinsically because it is important or just plain cool, for example!

2) Clear near-term goals: You could set clear goals and anchor points for the performance of your task in advance. Goals or anchor points that will help you perform the task to the best of your ability. During execution, you then know exactly what the next move should be and where you stand.

3) Challenge balanced with skill: You could match the challenges in the task exactly to your abilities or maybe even just above them, because you can often do more than you think you can.

4) Immediate feedback: You might consider, prior to performing your task, how you will receive information (feedback) about how well you are doing during performance. The anchor points as mentioned earlier are a good starting point for this.

5) Supreme concentration: You have trained yourself to be able to fully concentrate while performing the task. Anchor points again play an important role in this. Possible distractions and jammers you have cleverly “eliminated” in advance or filtered out for yourself if that would have been possible at all. Often, however, you are so focused that these simply escape you at the moment it matters.

6) Sense of control over the performance of the task: You have previously identified what you could do to prevent fear of failure, for example, you have learned to focus on your breathing or a mantra just before the task begins, you pep yourself up a bit with self-talk. As a result, tensions diminish you may feel in control or mastery of the task during performance.

Thus, the top six conditions increase the probability of flow. So it is smart to optimize these conditions beforehand. Then you give yourself completely to the activity. You let go of everything and get to work, and then flow may happen to you. In fact, the six conditions do not only characterize the flow experience, for that something else must happen to you that completes the feeling of flow. The six conditions must therefore be supplemented, as it were, by three characteristics. Above all, you should not try to realize these characteristics because they will work against you. They arise because you completely surrender yourself to the activity and if you have optimized the six conditions there is a good chance that they will occur. The last three characteristics of flow are:

7) Feeling that action and awareness converge in the activity: Acting seems to be entirely spontaneous or automatic, but of course you are still (cognitively) in control of the execution (e.g., direction) of the activity or task.

8) Loss of reflective self: You completely forget yourself in the activity. You are not concerned with yourself at all, but purely focused on the performance of your task. Thus, the inner-critic is totally absent.

9) Transformation of time: Time eludes you. Time seems to have flown by or may even have stood still for your feeling because the moment was so beautiful. Maybe for a moment you were part of another dimension. 😉

Why is flow valuable to teams?

Cultivating flow can bring many benefits to teams and the organization as a whole. Among team members, it can produce positive outcomes such as higher levels of satisfaction, happiness, performance, creativity and development (Csikszentmihalyi, 1997; Ilies et al., 2017; Asakawa, 2010). So now the question is, is there such a thing as team flow? Yes, there is! Recent studies show that in addition to individual flow experiences, you can also have shared flow experiences in teams. So this principle is called team flow. During team flow, one experiences that a team as a whole is in focus, forms a unit, makes progress, and has the confidence to collectively be up to the task (Van den Hout, Davis & Weggeman, 2018). A team flow experience can provide benefits such as increased creativity (Verhoeven, 2018), improved performance, a positive work atmosphere, and individual happiness (Van den Hout, Gevers, Davis & Weggeman, 2019) . To achieve team flow, team members must agree on additional conditions. You can read more about that here.

Are you curious about how to generate more flow in your organization?

Or email us at: info@flowconcepts.nl

References

• Asakawa, K. (2010). Flow Experience, Culture, and Well-being: How do autoletic Japanese College Students Feel, Behave, and Think in Their Daily Lives. Journal of Happiness Studies, 205-223.
• Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1997). Finding flow: The psychology of engagement with everyday life. New York, NY: Basic Books
• Ilies, R., Wagner, D., Wilson, K., Ceja, L., Johnson, M., DeRue, S., & Llgen, D. (2016). Flow at Work and Basic Psychological Needs: Effects on Well-Being. Applied Psychology, 3-24 (66).
• Nakamura, J., & Csikszentmihalyi, M. (2009). Flow theory and research. In S. J. Lopez & C. R. Snyder (Eds.), Oxford library of psychology. Oxford handbook of positive psychology (pp. 195-206). New York, NY, US: Oxford University Press.
• Van den Hout, J. J.J., Davis, O. C., & Weggeman, M. C. (2018). The conceptualization of team flow. The Journal of psychology, 152(6), 388-423.
• Van den Hout, J. J.J., Davis, O. C. (2019).Team Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Collaboration. Cham: Springer International Publishing.
• Verhoeven, B. A. G. W. (2018). Let’s flow! Transformational leadership and team effectiveness: the mediating role of team flow in organizations. Thesis: Eindhoven University of Technology

Written by JEF VAN DEN HOUT