How the “Flow State” Can Boost Productivity and Creativity
In our increasingly anxious, distracted and overloaded professional lives, intentionally pursuing a regular flow state can benefit us in six specific ways at work
I recently watched a documentary film called The Alpinist. It told the story of a shy twenty-three-year-old Canadian mountain climber and alpinist called Marc-André Leclerc. Even within the extreme sports community, Leclerc was an outlier, climbing anonymously with no ropes or partner, scaling ferocious walls of ice and rock with the intuitive grace and speed of a master technician.
The footage in the film is both electrifying and terrifying. What struck me most about Leclerc was the purity of his dedication and his zen-like state of ‘flow’ when climbing: his body and mind in perfect alignment, his extraordinary skills matched to the audacity of the challenge. Leclerc wasn’t climbing a mountain. He was part of it.
In his famous investigations of “optimal experience”, psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s seminal book, Flow, revealed that what makes an experience genuinely satisfying is a state of consciousness called flow.
His research showed that the best moments in people’s lives (what makes life worth living) usually occurred when a person’s body or mind is stretched to its limits in a voluntary way to accomplish something difficult or worthwhile. They’re completely immersed in the task. Everything feels effortless and there’s no sense of time passing. And it feels great. This is flow.
But it can be elusive.
Benefits of a regular flow state
In our increasingly anxious, distracted and overloaded professional lives, intentionally pursuing a regular flow state can benefit us in six specific ways at work.
More satisfaction
More engagement
More creativity (as we are less self-conscious in this state)
More confidence (that we can achieve what we originally thought impossible)
More productivity
More career capital (through higher quality work)
Work is, in fact, one of the best environments for flow. Csikszentmihalyi’s research showed that people experienced flow 54% of the time at work, compared with only 18% for leisure activities. It’s why you’ll hear a colleague say they were “in the zone” (although more often today you’ll probably hear them say they are “swamped”.)
Despite over half of those respondents experiencing flow at work, when asked, most said they would prefer to work less and have more free time. The author concluded this is because people feel they are investing their attention against their will at work. This correlates with a previous theme I explored about unreasonable work volumes overloading the brain and creating anxiety and unhappiness.
Practical ways to help achieve a flow state
So if work is one of the best environments to experience a flow state (and all the benefits that go with that state), yet people feel they are investing their attention against their will at work, how can we change this?
Here are three practical ways to help achieve a flow state at work.
1. Balance challenges and skills
If something is too challenging, you likely won’t get into a flow state because you’ll be stressed and anxious. If it’s too easy, you’ll get bored, which doesn’t create flow. The sweet spot is when you have an interesting, challenging task and the skills and competencies to tackle it.
2. Establish clear goals
Another key element of flow state is setting clear and realistic goals. Start by connecting your regular work to larger team and company objectives. When you see how your work moves the wider organisation forward, you’re more able to prioritise that work and accomplish it to a higher standard.
3. Focus deeply with no distractions
A cornerstone of flow is working with deliberate and unbroken focus. And that means no distractions. Context-switching or multi-tasking is poison to the flow state. Your brain can only focus on one thing at a time.
Project management company Asana ran a study showing 80% of knowledge workers report working with their inbox or other communication apps open. So give yourself permission to make yourself unavailable for a time. Turn off your phone, close your inbox, and disable all instant messenger tools.
Motivation from within the self
There is another important factor conducive to the flow state - working off intrinsic rather than extrinsic motivation. Intrinsic motivation is doing an activity for its inherent satisfaction, such as the fun or challenge involved. It comes from within the individual. Extrinsic motivation is about behavior driven by external rewards, such as money, praise, or status, such as what other people think of us.
There are three major tenets of intrinsic motivation: autonomy, mastery, and purpose.
Flow is far more likely to be achieved when we pursue intrinsic motivation over extrinsic. It feels more natural and autonomous, where we have a sense of personal control over the task. Something we choose rather than something we are forced to do.
To be more intrinsic-led in our professional lives, we should seek new challenges at work, such as trying to surpass our usual performance, as well as learning as much as possible about our roles rather than just clocking in and out.
This is where curiosity is a great partner: our desire to learn more about how an organisation works and how we can play a specific role in its growth and success. This transforms work into something more enjoyable by recognising the opportunities for action and developing new skills.
Isaac Newton spent eighteen months living in a farmhouse and it was there he formed his theory of gravity and changed the face of science. He simply enjoyed the act of improving his scientific skills. He was building his craft on the way to mastering it.
Curiosity and Purpose
I’m celebrating 16 years at my company, Dell Technologies. It’s a remarkable company to work for because it has a remarkable founder and leader, Michael Dell, who embodies curiosity and understands the importance of purpose. In his 2021 book, Play Nice But Win, he talks about having a purpose for his company.
“What you really want is for your employees to understand the purpose of the company and feel inspired by it. To feel that what they’re doing is incredibly important to all your customers and serves a greater purpose.”
Many people need something more than just a pay cheque to find meaning in what they do. All the research shows the sole pursuit of wealth and status rarely leads to a fulfilling life. Look no further than Charles Foster Kane.
Finding more flow
Being more intentional about what we pursue, feeling like we have personal control over our tasks, building and mastering a craft, stretching and immersing ourselves in worthwhile things we enjoy, and aligning and unifying our goals towards an overarching purpose are foundations to a fulfilling life, with the flow state a powerful conductor.
The more flow we can find in our daily lives, the more we can move towards the promise of a life well-lived. Scaling our own mountains of ice and rock on our own terms, reaching for the sublime.