You know how it can sometimes feel like time is d.r.a.g.g.i.n.g? And and other times it can feel like the time is just flying by, or you just lose track of time altogether while you’re doing something, and then when you look over at your watch, you’re shocked to see that 4 hours have flown by…

Time really does fly when we’re having fun

When we’re doing what we love, and challenging ourselves just a little, we slip into a state that a lot of psychologists and productivity experts call “flow.”

“Flow is…being completely involved in an activity for its own sake. The ego falls away. Time flies. Every action, movement, and thought follows inevitably from the previous one, like playing jazz. Your whole being is involved, and you’re using your skills to the utmost.” – Csíkszentmihályi

How to get into flow

Csíkszentmihályi, who wrote “Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience” says that there are 8 things correlated with (and which can contribute towards creating) the flow state, although you don’t have to have all 8 in place to experience flow:

• Clear goals: knowing what outcome you want, rather than focusing on what you don’t want.
• Focus: a high degree of concentration on a limited field of attention, rather than multi-tasking.
• Lack of self-consciousness: switching off your self-talk.
• Distorted sense of time: For me this is more of a result of flow than a contributing factor, and I have no idea how you’d create a distorted sense of time, except with deep relaxation or drugs! I’d love to know your thoughts if you know a bit about this.
• Direct and immediate feedback that allows continuous responsive adjustment, especially if there’s a slight sense of urgency to respond, such as when you’re doing an adrenalin activity, or if you’re leading a participatory workshop where you have to think on your feet.
• Balance between your ability level and the challenge: you’ll perform best when you’re just a little outside of your comfort zone.
• Personal control over the situation or activity. This one’s really interesting… do you think that entrepreneurs experience more flow than employed people, just because of this factor?
• Authentic enjoyment: the activity is intrinsically rewarding, and you enjoy doing the activity for the activity’s sake, rather than as a means to another goal, so the action feels effortless.

Is doing what you love the key to flow?

My sense is that this last point may be the big key to flow – when you’re doing what you genuinely love doing, you automatically create visions of what you want, you get focused and absorbed in the task, you switch off your self-talk, you lose track of time, you’re responsive and continually tweaking and improving, you have an appetite to keep learning more and pushing your comfort zone, and you fully commit and take control of the situation. What do you think?

What sorts of things are you doing when you lose track of time and getting into a flow state? What does that tell you about the direction you could be leading your life in, if you want to experience more flow in your life?
Which of the 8 ingredients could you add to your daily “to do” list to experiment and see whether you can bring more “flow” into your day?

Photo by Leo Chimaera

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