Finding your flow
Image: Pascal Bernardon on Unsplash
When was the last time you lost yourself in an activity? One of the most profound feelings we experience as humans is to become so engrossed in something that we lose our awareness of time passing.
This is the first in a series of pieces to better understand how we can reach this ‘flow state’ to make writing and editing less painful and more rewarding.
Where does ‘flow’ come from?
The Hungarian-American psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi conducted pioneering research into flow state activity in the 70s and 80s. He interviewed scientists, athletes, artists, executives and others who harnessed flow in their practice.
This qualitative research culminated in his now seminal book, Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. His TED talk from 2004 is one of the most watched of all time. Until his death in 2021, Csikszentmihalyi’s life’s work was to articulate the joy of being immersed in a task.
Where does the time go?
When I taught creative writing at university, easily the most common excuse for not having completed a writing task is that they ran out of time. Who has more time than a uni student?
I was first exposed writing in the flow state at a conference presentation given by a writer who was 8 months pregnant. In the 2 years after the birth of her first child, she had been able to write a novel while never working on it for more than 2 hours in a day.
She said she found it easy because she was intrinsically motivated to write her novel. As hard as she knew it would be, she also knew the task was worth doing and that she was the right person to do it. It wasn’t that she needed to find more time (she couldn’t), but that she needed to be as productive as possible with the time she had.
Creating the conditions for flow
Her idea was, that by using what she knew about herself as a writer and setting achievable goals for the day, she could get into the flow state quickly and easily. Writing in the flow state is more generative, but also more exhausting.
Her aim was not to cram writing into every nook and cranny of her schedule, but to instead write in 2 bursts each day: one lasting 75 minutes and then another for 45, with a 15-minute break in between.
She spoke about having a ‘trigger’ activity (a sudoku) which got her out of her day and into the flow. Her challenge to us was to find our own.
Write less, write better
Based on this presentation and my own research into Csikszentmihalyi’s work, I have reflected on my own writing and teaching to produce a guide to incorporating flow into your writing practice.
Whether it’s for report writing, copywriting, administrative writing or creative writing, flow can make the experience much more enjoyable. Over the coming months, I’ll go through the 4 main aspects of flow in detail.
These involve creating:
goals which are measurable and achievable
an environment which supports focus
access to feedback which can loop back into practice
novelty in the task which generates curiosity.
