THE THEORY OF FLOW: UNDERSTANDING THE SCIENCE OF OPTIMAL EXPERIENCE
CHAPTER — 02
***Continued from Chapter 01 (Covered previously: What is Flow, Benefits of Flow, The Neuroscience of Flow, Attaining a Flow State, Flow State Triggers)
Link to Chapter 01:
The Importance of Flow in the Workplace
In the workplace, Flow has huge implications for productivity. We’ve all heard the old adage pick a job you love and you’ll never work a day in your life. In the reality of the 21st century, however, distractions abound. From buzzing telephones to constant email notifications, we’re much better equipped to focus on and enjoy the tasks at hand if we can enter a Flow state.
There are many benefits that Flow can have in the workplace — starting with faster learning.
Flow even has implications for how we tackle our approach to innovation. These aren’t unrelated to the concept of faster learning, either. As entering and attaining a Flow state is closely linked to our awareness, being ‘in Flow’ can help us mitigate the impacts of those constant distractions on our creativity. Flow allows us to absorb information, synthesize it, and integrate it. This drives the creative process. So while everyone else is driven to distraction, people in flow are adapting — they’re using the state to take performance to the next level.
How Can We Measure Flow?
Flow is a subjective experience, which creates a challenge when it comes to identifying psychometrically sound measurement. Because the enjoyable experience of flow represents both the reason for and outcome of engaging in an activity, its measurement represents an additional challenge. The most common way to measure flow is by asking respondents about their experiences, which has been achieved via the following methods:
Integrating The Concept of Flow in Education & Learning
On some level, flow experiences will always be serendipitous. But we can create an environment where flow experiences are more common. Flow is one of eight mental states that can happen during the learning process. In addition to flow, these mental states include anxiety, apathy, arousal, boredom, control, relaxation, and worry; they result when a learner experiences a combination of skill and challenge levels of a task in non-optimal combinations.
Flow is not an easy state to achieve and distractions will interfere with it or stop it from happening in the first place. One approach involves bringing curricula alive by making them relatable to real life and rooting them in the now. A teacher needs to be attentive to the learner’s needs and interests, they need to show enthusiasm and excitement for learning:
#1: Learners Need to Find the Task Intrinsically Rewarding: We have to start with something that fits our passions, interests, talents, or desires. It can be solitary or in a group. It could be competitive or non-competitive. It could be athletic or artistic. But it has to start with an internal drive.
#2: Learners Need Clear Goals & A Sense of Progress: There’s a sense of intentionality to flow experiences. Learners need to know what they are doing and where they are going. As they move through the task, there is a sense of progression. Hence, a sense of agency is so important. Learners need to feel that they have a command over their actions. What people enjoy is not the sense of being in control but of exercising control in difficult situations.
#3: The Task Needs Clear & Immediate Feedback: It must be easy to figure out what’s working and what’s failing. Learners need not have to stop what they are doing to receive feedback. Unlike a classroom, where feedback often disrupts the learning process (especially with tasks), the idea here is that the feedback is immediate and that we modify and adjust what you are doing based on this instant feedback.
#4: The Challenge Must Match the Perceived Skills: This requires a sense of personal control or agency over the task. If a task is too easy, learners might experience apathy or boredom but if a task seems too hard, they will be anxious.
#5: Flow Requires Powerful Focus On the Present Moment: Often, in the state of flow, you experience hyper-focus. You seem intensely aware of what’s around you. At the same time, you are capable of tuning things out entirely. At times, you don’t even feel like you’re concentrating at all. Things are just clicking and you hardly notice how intense your focus has become.
When learners are experiencing flow, they often have a sense of “losing themselves.” At the same time, these moments when they have “lost themselves” are the very moments where learners feel most alive. This sounds great but it can be challenging to reach a state of flow in a school system with bells, tight schedules, curriculum maps, and testing. These flow experiences are rare in the classroom, partly because it requires total buy-in from learners. We can’t make students hit that state of focus or fall in love with the learning process. But we can create the conditions that make it possible for students to reach a state flow. Here are some ways in which this may be explored:
A) Provide The Right Scaffolding: Too often, learners give up because what they are doing is way too difficult and there is a sense that they will never learn it. Other times, learners are bored and the excessive scaffolding becomes a hurdle they have to climb over. Here’s where it can help to have students self-select the scaffolding. Instead of providing all the scaffolding for each student, we can provide tutorials, sentence stems, and graphic organizers that any learner has access to. They can learn to determine what they know, what they don’t know, and where to find additional support.
B) Intrinsic Motivation: It’s not surprising that students hit a state of flow when they are out on the ball field or in a theater or while playing an instrument. Not only do they feel competent (because of the right amount of scaffolding) but they also love what they are doing. One of the challenges in the classroom is that the system is designed around extrinsic motivation. Everything from the tight curriculum map to the PBIS system to the traditional grading system seem to push compliance.
However, we can use these limitations as creative constraint with simulations and challenges. Also, shifting toward student-centered projects, like tapping into creativity and existential big ideas through Socratic Seminars and creation of podcasts, blog posts, and documentaries, etc., can help.
C) Recognize Learner Choice & Agency: This might involve scrapping weekly tests and devoting that time to choice-centered projects. It might involve letting learners chase their own questions with the inquiry-based learning. Learners could also own the creative process through a long-term design thinking project. Ultimately, we want to empower learners to own their learning. So, it goes beyond simply providing basic daily choices.
D) Minimize distractions: When learners are making things, they will be moving around and talking and it might even get loud, which can be distracting. We will need to reduce clutter or decrease noise to support learning. Sometimes the frantic pace can get in the way of extended learning opportunities. Learners may not have the chance to focus in a leisurely and relaxed way. Sometimes it is less about action and more about suspense.
E) Help Learners with Metacognition: Learners need to engage in metacognition if we want them to establish goals and then scrutinize and adjust their approach. We can model metacognition by talking through the process of assessing the task and determining an approach. It can help to ask learners to visualize what they will do in order to accomplish a task. When working in collaborative groups, learners can engage in metacognition through the project planning process. It means students will need to engage in frequent peer feedback and self-assessment.
Flow is a state of consciousness that is associated with optimal performance and well-being. By understanding the key components of flow and learning to cultivate it in our lives, we can enhance our creativity, productivity, and learning, as well as improve our well-being and happiness. Whether we are pursuing our hobbies, our careers, or our relationships, finding our flow can help us achieve our goals and live more fulfilling lives. Achieving a state of flow can be a great way to make the activities we pursue more engaging and enjoyable. Not only do people often perform better when they are in this state of flow, but they are also often able to improve their skills in that area. Fortunately, it is also a skill we can learn to achieve with practice. It is important to remember that flow is a dynamic and ever-changing state. As our skill levels increase, we will need to continue to adjust the level of challenge that is needed to help initiate a state of flow.
Content Curated by: Dr Shoury Kuttappa
