flow

At the start of this week, I spent a morning doing stuff that doesn’t necessarily make my brain fire. But this morning I woke to a huge list [I am mad for a list] of Business Things to Do.

The difference between the two experiences was incredibly stark.

You know those people that say: when I’m doing something I love, I just forget to eat? And you feel a little nauseated? Well, I could never forget food. But where earlier in the week I had found myself clock.watching, this morning I looked up, it was lunch time and I had forgotten to have my second coffee.

Crazy.

Flow is that experience of being so involved, so engaged in an activity that you lose sense of time and of yourself; it is joyful and effortless. Flow increases efficiency, boosts satisfaction and enhances wellbeing. It can happen very naturally; some folk are more inclined than others to experience the Flow State. But there are things you can do to encourage it in your own life:

make sure your level of skill meets the challenge you’re facing; set clear, short term goals; and establish the the activity in a way that will allow you to receive immediate feedback on your progress.

[and finally folks: remember to nominate a trusted friend to pull you out of the Flow State at coffee.time.]