The Hidden Art of Achieving Creative Flow

Have you ever had a creative evening when time suddenly flew by? A day when you executed a difficult project at work flawlessly? A brief moment in time when your challenging exercise routine felt effortless?

All of these times you were in a state of flow.

Flow is a concept developed by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi of the University of Chicago, who has studied the phenomena his whole career. Daniel Pink reintroduces the concept in his new book Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us.

Many people flow through their lives in an effortless fashion, while countless others have a difficult time achieving a flow state.

Why flow is hard to achieve
Flow is a moment in time when you’re both challenged at the activity that you’re doing, and when you also have complete autonomy in the task you’re conducting.

We engage in flow under your own volition, with a skill which we’ve had some amount of experience.

If you’re not flowing, it’s probably because you aren’t allowing yourself to be challenged, you’re completely overwhelmed, or someone else is holding you back.

The majority of my experience with flow has been with dance and writing. I’ve studied dance for many years, and one of the technical skills that dancers work on is called improvisation. Improv is very tricky in dance. You have to turn off your mind and simply dance with your instincts.

When you’ve mastered improv dance, you’ve reached the sweet spot between your brain transferring commands to your nervous system. There is no longer any thinking involved, as thinking in improv dance will make everything stop. There just isn’t any time for brainwork when you are constantly moving.

Csikszentmihalyi hypothesizes that these moments of flow occur because we’re simply activating too many neurological functions. Because of this we no longer have capacity to be aware of what functions we’re engaging in. So the ‘conscious of me’ part of the mind switches off, your awareness of yourself slips away, and you just do.

You’re simply flowing in the the present moment
I have also experienced flow in writing. I think it’s very important for writers to engage in flow. A lot of writers stop and meticulously edit their work after every sentence, but writing this way (for most people) is counterproductive.

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Are You Managing Your Time With Activity Or Productivity?

Rich, poor, celebrity or unknown, we are all blessed with 24 hours a day. You probably know someone, who seems to do everything in the world and you wonder how they can. You also know someone who seems to do nothing every day, yet can not seem to add anything more to their day.

What is the difference?

The difference in this time management is surprisingly simple. The difference between the person who seems to be able to do a week’s worth of work in a day and the one who has no time is all a matter of scheduling and realizing what is truly important. It is a matter of changing your productivity to match what needs to be done as part of the big picture rather than what needs to be done in the now.

How does seeing the big picture help?

Here is an time management example, imagine your aunt is coming in a week to visit you. You have not seen her in a long time, so you want the house looking nice. You are hoping you can get it clean in a week. She calls and tells you plans have changed, she is going to be there in tomorrow. You were not certain how to get the house clean in a week, yet suddenly you find either a way to clean the house or make it presentable in a day.

What changed?

The difference was you could not find ways to delay, you were forced to manage your time. You realized the what parts of cleaning your house were actually important. You accepted that some things could not be fixed in the time allowed and changed what could. You knew what needed to be done in the time allowed and did it, without question or delay.

Are you productive or active?

Moving paperwork from here to there, only to move it again later is being active. Putting papers that actually require work in an inbox, filing papers you need later, and throwing away any paperwork you do not need away is being productive. Rather than deal with all your clients focus on the clients the buy from you. Instead of organizing all your emails, decide on what is really important and eliminate the rest.

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