Flow and creativity: thanks, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Last week a hero in the field of psychology and creativity died. One who, over his 87 years, profoundly affected millions of people’s views on their creative self. And how creativity doesn’t always look like it does in the movies.

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi revolutionized the idea that certain activities led us into a state of ‘flow,’ where we would get so absorbed in an activity, we’d lose track of time, our to-do lists, our problems and worries, even our very sense of self.

Here’s what I like about the concept of flow for The Third Layer’s concept: Happiness isn’t a state of mind. It’s fleeting moments. Rather than put us into our heads, flow gets us out of our heads. If you want to be unhappy, think about your happiness more. Want it, strive for it, try to hold on to it.

But happiness is like being in a flowing river. You can feel the water as it rushes past, but try to grab hold of it. The water has to come to you; even thinking of trying to control the water changes the experience.

In comes the concept of ‘flow’. (Oooh, ‘flow,’ like a river … whoa.) Csikszentmihalyi studied the crap out of this state, and he came up with eight building blocks to what puts us into ‘flow’ (courtesy of Positive Psychology):

1. Complete concentration on the task;

2. Clarity of goals and reward in mind and immediate feedback;

3. Transformation of time (speeding up/slowing down);

4. The experience is intrinsically rewarding;

5. Effortlessness and ease;

6. There is a balance between challenge and skills;

7. Actions and awareness are merged, losing self-conscious rumination;

8. There is a feeling of control over the task.

I will say this again and again and again: creativity is not just about the arts. In fact, most of the people he researched got into flow through other modes: sports, games, family time, etc. For me, my most ‘flow-ful’ moments have come in ways that are obvious — dancing, teaching, coaching, couple togetherness time — and not so obvious. Like ProTools. Yep. My most flow-ful state in my life was working with one of my closest friends in grad school on our radio shows for 3-4 hours at a time.

There was something so engaging about listening for that exact moment where to splice the tape. It was pure concentration, challenging but with a doable learning curve, there was immediate feedback as to whether we’d done it right, and at the end: whammo! Radio show! About hula, the Day of the Dead celebration in San Francisco, operating a crane — all sorts of good sound-producing, flow-inducing ProTools sessions.