Being in the flow

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There is extensive use of “Tooltips” text to support learning which do not seem to render on a Smartphone
Therefore this site is best viewed via a computer’s HD monitor

The importance of being in the “Flow Channel”

During DH’s recent Masters in Software Engineering, he came across the image below, from (Csikszentmihalyi 2013, p. 74) via the University of Liverpool’s Online research portal…

DH instantly and intuitively recognised that being in the “Flow Channel” was where he spent most of his time while performing his Baremetal programming activities

The letter “A” “represents a boy called Alex who is learning to play tennis”

A1   Where Alex has practically no skills and his only challenge is hitting the ball over the net…

A2   Where Alex has become bored just hitting the ball over the net…

A3   Where Alex has met a more skilled opponent & Alex worries about his own performance…

A4   Where Alex resolves to be a better player to beat his more skilled opponent…

Understanding How to Use the Simple Flow Principles

Even the simplest act ¹ becomes enjoyable when it is transformed so as to produce flow
The essential steps in this process are:

(a)   to set an overall goal, and as many subgoals as are realistically feasible;
(b)   to find ways of measuring progress in terms of the goals chosen;
(c)   to keep concentrating on what one is doing, and to keep making finer and finer distinctions in the challenges involved in the activity;
(d)   to develop the skills necessary to interact with the opportunities available; and
(e)   to keep raising the stakes if the activity becomes boring

Being “in the flow” is pleasurable

“New discoveries come to people who so enjoy playing with ideas that eventually they stray beyond the limits of what is known, and [then] find themselves exploring an uncharted territory…“    (Csikszentmihalyi 2008, p. 134)

“If “normal” scientists are motivated in their work by the challenging intellectual puzzles they confront in their work, “revolutionary” scientists - the ones who break away from existing theoretical paradigms to forge new ones - are even more driven by enjoyment“    (Csikszentmihalyi 2008, p. 135)

“The flow state is pleasurable. People like being in the flow state”    (Weinschenk 2011, p. 92)

The Importance of the Flow Principles in Design

It is important to use the flow principles in design, too

Using Flow to overcome and/or transform Adversity

The Simple Flow Principles detailed above can be harnessed to overcome or transform adversity and these steps can/could be used to cope with aspects of Lockdown…

“When adversity threatens to paralyse us, we need to reassert control by finding a new direction in which to invest psychic energy, a direction that lies outside the reach of external forces”    (Csikszentmihalyi 2013, p. 92)

“When every aspiration is frustrated, a person still must seek a meaningful goal around which to organise the self. Then, even though that person is objectively a slave, subjectively they are free”    (Csikszentmihalyi 2013, p. 92)

“Lost in Antarctica or confined to a prison cell, some individuals succeed in transforming their harrowing conditions into a manageable and even enjoyable struggle, whereas most others would succumb to the ordeal”    (Csikszentmihalyi 2013, p. 90)

Following the “blueprint” of Flow Activities…

“Richard Logan, who has studied the accounts of many people in difficult situations, concludes that they survived by finding ways to turn the bleak objective conditions into a subjectively controllable experience..”

“They followed the blueprint of flow activities:”

“First, they paid close attention to the most minute details of their environment, discovering in it hidden opportunities for action that matched what little they were capable of doing, given the circumstances”

“Then they set goals appropriate to their precarious situation, and closely monitored progress through the feedback they received. Whenever they reached their goal, they upped the ante, setting increasingly complex challenges for themselves”    (Csikszentmihalyi 2013, p. 90)

The Imprisoned Vietnam Pilot who played a perfect round of golf when released…

“An acquaintance who worked in United States Air Force intelligence tells the story of a pilot who was imprisoned in North Vietnam for many years, and lost eighty pounds and much of his health in a jungle camp”

“When he was released, one of the first things he asked for was to play a game of golf. To the great astonishment of his fellow officers he played a superb game, despite his emaciated condition”

“To their inquiries he replied that every day of his imprisonment he imagined himself playing eighteen holes, carefully choosing his clubs and approach and systematically varying the course”

“This discipline not only helped preserve his sanity, but apparently also kept his physical skills well honed”    (Csikszentmihalyi 2013, p. 91)

The WW2 PoW in Solitary Confinement…

”Christopher Burney, a prisoner of the Nazis who had spent a long time in solitary confinement during World War II, gives a fairly typical example of this process:”

“If the reach of experience is suddenly confined, and we are left with only a little food for thought or feeling, we are apt to take the few objects that offer themselves and ask a whole catalogue of often absurd questions about them”

“Does it work? How? Who made it and of what?”

“And, in parallel, when and where did I last see something like it and what else does it remind me of?”

“So we set in train a wonderful flow of combinations and associations in our minds, the length and complexity of which soon obscures its humble starting point…“

“My bed, for example, could be measured and roughly classified with school beds or army beds…
When I had done with the bed, which was too simple to intrigue me long, I felt the blankets, estimated their warmth, examined the precise mechanics of the window, the discomfort of the toilet … computed the length and breadth, the orientation and elevation of the cell”

“Essentially the same ingenuity in finding opportunities for mental action and setting goals is reported by survivors of any solitary confinement, from diplomats captured by terrorists, to elderly ladies imprisoned by Chinese communists”    (Csikszentmihalyi 2013, p. 91)

Eva Zeisel, political prisoner in Moscow’s Lubyanka prison…

”Eva Zeisel, the ceramic designer who was imprisoned in Moscow’s Lubyanka prison for over a year by Stalin’s police, kept her sanity by figuring out how she would make a bra out of materials at hand, playing chess against herself in her head, holding imaginary conversations in French, doing gymnastics, and memorizing poems she composed”    (Csikszentmihalyi 2013, p. 91)

Alexander Solzhenitsyn in the Lefortovo jail; Albert Speer in Spandau prison

”Alexander Solzhenitsyn describes how one of his fellow prisoners in the Lefortovo jail mapped the world on the floor of the cell, and then imagined himself traveling across Asia and Europe to America, covering a few kilometers each day. The same “game” was independently discovered by many prisoners;”

“… for instance Albert Speer, Hitler’s favorite architect, sustained himself in Spandau prison for months by pretending he was taking a walking trip from Berlin to Jerusalem, in which his imagination provided all the events and sights along the way”    (Csikszentmihalyi 2013, p. 91)

Tollas Tibor, a poet who spent several years in solitary confinement

”Tollas Tibor, a poet who spent several years in solitary confinement during the most repressive phases of the Hungarian communist regime, says that in the Visegrid jail, where hundreds of intellectuals were imprisoned, the inmates kept themselves occupied for more than a year by devising a poetry translation contest”

“First, they had to decide on the poem to translate. It took months to pass the nominations around from cell to cell, and several more months of ingenious secret messages before the votes were tallied. Finally it was agreed that Walt Whitman’s O Captain! My Captain ² was to be the poem to translate into Hungarian, partly because it was the one that most of the prisoners could recall from memory in the original English”

“Now began the serious work: everyone sat down to make his own version of the poem. Since no paper or writing tool was available, Tollas spread a film of soap on the soles of his shoe, and carved the letters into it with a toothpick. When a line was learned by heart, he covered his shoe with a new coating of soap”

“As the various stanzas were written, they were memorized by the translator and passed on to the next cell. After a while, a dozen versions of the poem were circulating in the jail, and each was evaluated and voted on by all the inmates”

“After the Whitman translation was adjudicated, the prisoners went on to tackle a poem by Schiller“    (Csikszentmihalyi 2013, p. 91)

Admiral Byrd, Charles Lindbergh

“Not only prisoners report these strategies for wresting control back to their ‘own consciousness’. Explorers like Admiral Byrd, who once spent four cold and dark months by himself in a tiny hut near the South Pole, or Charles Lindbergh, facing hostile elements alone on his transatlantic flight, resorted to the same steps to keep the integrity of their selves”

“But what makes some people able to achieve this internal control, while most others are swept away by external hardships?”    (Csikszentmihalyi 2013, p. 92)

Richard Logan’s Conclusions…

“Richard Logan proposes an answer based on the writings of many survivors, including those of Viktor Frankl ³ and Bruno Bettelheim ⁴, who have reflected on the sources of strength under extreme adversity. He concludes that the most important trait of survivors is a “non-self-conscious individualism” or a strongly directed purpose that is not self-seeking. People who have that quality are bent on doing their best in all circumstances, yet they are not concerned primarily with advancing their own interests”

“Because they are intrinsically motivated in their actions, they are not easily disturbed by external threats”

“With enough psychic energy free to observe and analyse their surroundings objectively, they have a better chance of discovering in them new opportunities for action”    (Csikszentmihalyi 2008)

Csikszentmihalyi characterises this as an “Autotelic Personality” - See the next section

”Narcissistic individuals, who are mainly concerned with protecting their self, fall apart when the external conditions turn threatening. The ensuing panic prevents them from doing what they must do; their attention turns inward in an effort to restore order in consciousness, and not enough remains to negotiate outside reality”

Csikszentmihalyi goes on to quote Richard Logan as saying: “this is an ability open to cultivation, a skill one can perfect through training and discipline..”    (Csikszentmihalyi 2013, p. 97)

The Autotelic Personality

“An autotelic person needs few material possessions and little entertainment, comfort, power, or fame because so much of what he or she does is already rewarding. Because such persons experience flow in work, in family life, when interacting with people, when eating, even when alone with nothing to do, they depend less on external rewards that keep others motivated to go on with a life of routines”

“They are more autonomous and independent because they cannot be as easily manipulated with threats or rewards from the outside. At the same time, they are more involved with everything around them because they are fully immersed in the current of life”    (Csikszentmihalyi 2008)

DH’s comments

I found this part of Csikszentmialyi’s book very inspiring and upon reflection, I realised that I was an “autotelic person” and I had employed similar flow techniques when I found myself an “unwilling guest” at a boarding school for naughty boys near Gloucester in the late ’60s

Understanding the “Complexity of Consciousness”

The caption for Csikszentmihalyi’s “Flow Channel” diagram (Csikszentmihalyi 2013, p. 74) above says “Why the complexity of consciousness increases as a result of flow experiences”

DH Comments:
“It has become obvious to me that I have intuitively spent most of my life in a “flow channel” without even realising what “Flow” actually was… So what you may see reflected on this website would seem to be a good indicator of where my own “complexity of consciousness” has taken me…“

About Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

”Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (born 29 September 1934 - died 20 October 2021) is a Hungarian-American psychologist. He recognised and named the psychological concept of flow, a highly focused mental state conducive to productivity. He is the Distinguished Professor of Psychology and Management at Claremont Graduate University. He is the former head of the department of psychology at the University of Chicago and of the department of sociology and anthropology at Lake Forest College”    Source: Wikipedia

His book(s) on Amazon:
FLOW - the psychology of optimal experience

References:

Csikszentmihalyi, M., 2008. Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. Harper Collins Publ. USA.
Csikszentmihalyi, M., 2013. Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. Kindle. Ebury Publishing.
Weinschenk, S., 2011. 100 things every designer needs to know about people. Berkeley, CA: New Riders.