Flow Psychology; Guide on How to be "In the Zone"

What is being in the Zone?

Did you ever get so engrossed in a work, the whole world just dissapear in front of you, and 4-5 hours just past by?

That's what psychologist know as flow psychology, or what we recognize as 'being in the zone' 😉

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Flow Psychology; or How to Be in the Zone

 

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Being in the trance, 

Being in the zone, 

Being in pipe, 

Being in the groove,

Being in the box, 

are all kind of terms people use to describe the state of conciousness they feel when they transcend in their work and came out with an otherworldy quality of workpiece. 

Psychologist label this state as 'Flow'.

Flow Psychology is an ultra-state of conciousness first researched by Dr. Mihalyi Chikszentmihalyi in 1970. He was curious when looking at artist doing drawing. The artist that was doing drawing, he would just sit there for 8 hour. He do not eat, he do not drink, he do not take a sh*t, he do not even remember to move an inch. He is in trance mode where his attention is elsewhere beyond this world. And after 8 hours, he would be like "Done!"

Then he came out with a masterpiece drawing. 

Dr.Mihalyi asked, "H-how?" 

The artist just shrug.

"I don't know. It just happens."

Dr. Mihalyi was stunned and decided to do research about this state of psychology. He research what happen to artists' psychic when they do their drawing. What he found out was a specific state of conciousness which he would later call as "Flow". 

Being in the flow, or being in 'the zone', can be recognized the most when we look at people who are in trance mode; often times doing artistic thing or sporty things. For art people, they enter a trance mode where all work become magic and 8 hour just past by. For sport people, they enter a trance mode where things pass by slowly, time slows down, and they transcend their body and understand all that happen. 

But the interesting thing is, flow/being in the zone can happen to everyone on every job.

Flow happens from stand-up comedian to stock trader. Flow happens from journalist to yogis monk. Flow happens to designers, chess masters, athletes, and surgeons. Being in the zone a.k.a flow can work for anyone, on any job, for any skill-requiring-activity that your imagination can think of.

 

Why would I apply flow in my work?

 

Flow is often known as 'effortless' work. When you're in the flow, you reach effortless ultra-performance state without any care for time or peers critic at all.

Being in the flow means your performance increase by 500%. When you're in the zone, your work-quality suddenly goes through the roof. You ignore everything else. 4 hour just pass by. You no longer worry about anything. Anxiety can't touch you. You do not care what people will think and what people will judge about your work. Your prefrontal cortex shut down. You no longer care. You're immune to people's comment.

In metaphor, flow can turn rock into diamond. If you want to be the edgiest in the world, training to be in flow is the way.

Being in the flow means work no longer excruciate. Work no longer torture you. Instead, work become a bliss. Masterpiece become effortless. You dance in the process of creating your masterpiece, instead of ramming your head against the wall.

 

I want to be in bliss next time I work! ✨ How can I be in flow?

 

Applying flow without understanding a freaking thing is disastrous. So if you want to be in the flow, you'll want to understand how flow works first😉

So, how the heck does flow works? 😆

Flow happen by concentrating the attention of your brain ultimately into your work. Dr. Mihalyi explain human can process 110 bits of information per second. But, most of the time, this 110 bits attention is scattered everywhere. You analyze around you, you worry about stuff, you listen to people talking.. 

But when you're in flow, your prefrontal cortex shut down.

Prefrontal cortex is the part of the brain that consume most bits. This is the place where moral & emotional judgement happens. You worry about people, you care about people, you analyze people around you. It happens in the prefrontal cortex.

When you enter flow, that means the work that you do is 'challenging' and 'meaningful'. If it's not, you can't enter flow. You just don't care. 

When the work you do fulfill those 2 criteria, your brain goes "Okay, this thing I work on, this is meaningful to me. I care to work this. This work is challenging to me as well. That means i gotta put all resource that I have on this thing, or else I will not be able to finish this thing."

So the button is on, the gear is switched, and your brain goes into ultra-production Flow mode.

 

 How do You Enter Flow Mode?

 So, you want to output a masterpiece. How?

So, pick an activity. Choose certain activity that you like.

"Like" is the first keyword.

Is there something that really interest you? Something that you're curious about? Something that has been tingling your senses for a long time but you haven't touch your hand upon? 

If the answer is yes, that's the thing. 

If the answer is no, you can take a moment to ponder is there a thing that passionate your soul.

After you found that passion, you set an activity to complete that passion.

Sit down, and do that activity for 2x25 minutes.

You will start in the state of discomfort. You haven't finish anything, a scary blank page is looming in front of you. Your urge will tell you to leave and do something else. It doesn't make sense. Why would you sit down and face such discomfort?

This is the phase where you transition from outside world to inner world. From scattered attention to laser-focus. Your urge will tell you a bunch of stuff, you will find all excuses to leave. If you find a life-threatening excuse (for instance, you haven't wash your dishes in 3 days), you might do want to leave. But most of the time, no. You don't want to leave. 

Why? Because at the end of this Flow work, you'll finish with a masterpiece. 

You will be really satisfied, and you will feel that your purpose has been fulfilled.

So stay on that seat.

We've found what theme we like to work on previously. This first 2x25 minutes will be the time where you adjust the difficulty of your activity. You do it by fiddling around your work across that one hour of work.

The key to Flow is to find the right balance between 'challenge' and 'skill'.

"Challenge" is the second keyword.

If your work is too hard, anxiety will kill you. If your work is too easy, you'll get bored to death. So find the right difficulty. This is what these first 2x25 minutes meant for. Here, I bring an awesome graph from Wikimedia Commons to help you illustrate.

 

This graph represents the challenge difficulty and what skill level you possess when you do a certain work.

This graph will not work for everything. But, this graph is good to give you image of what happen.

The higher the graph go, the more challenging your work is. The more sideways the graph go, the more skill you possess to finish that challenge.

When your work is extreme hard and your skill is low, you will feel life-threatening anxiety. When your work is extremely easy and your skill is unusually high, you'll feel at bliss, in the mode of relaxation.

Or probably, not. You'll probably feel just bored. The work is insignificant, that's what you will feel when something is not important to you. 

Every time you do a work, I want you to be aware what you currently feel. After that, see where that feeling lie in the spectrum of this Flow's graph table. What actually happen?

The key to achieve flow is to face a higher-than-normal challenge and possess higher-than-normal skill a.k.a ability at the same time. When you possess both, you reach novelty.

"Oh my God, this is really cool. This is a really complex/novel thing that I work on!"

 

For the sake of example, we'll take an activity. 

Let's do a drawing. 

Why drawing? Because I like it :)

 

So let's draw something. Find the right intensity. 

If you're tired, you might want to draw something calm a.k.a relaxing. If you're bursting, you might want to draw something complex. Find the right suit, something that stretch your nerve. Spend this first 2x25 minutes to find that.

After you find it, great! Keep going.

After you have gone through an hour, your prefrontal cortex will gradually began to shut down. Hours will pass in a breeze. Anxiety will be gone. You'll no longer worry about how ugly your drawing is. You'll just keep drawing. Without realizing, you might smirk a smile. Drawing gradually progress from sketch, to lineart, to coloring, to shading, to detail, to finishing.

Without realizing, you've finished.

And look at that. That ugly sketch of your has turn into a masterpiece just now.

You will really like it.

 

That example i give you earlier can be applied to all range of active job. 

If you want to achieve extreme performance at your work, try it by yourself.

See ya!