I’m currently reading Flow by Mihaly Csikszentimihalyi (I believe its pronounced “chick sent me high”).

While the book deals with the enjoyment and happiness of life as a whole, there are many references to the achievement of what he refers to as the “flow” state at work.

Flow is not simple pleasure but something more, it is the mental state of operation in which the person is fully immersed in what he or she is doing, characterized by a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and success in the process of the activity.

As Csikszentmihalyi sees it, components of an experience of flow are:

1. Clear goals (expectations and rules are discernible and goals are attainable and align appropriately with one’s skill set and abilities).
2. Concentrating and focusing, a high degree of concentration on a limited field of attention (a person engaged in the activity will have the opportunity to focus and to delve deeply into it).
3. A loss of the feeling of self-consciousness, the merging of action and awareness.
4. Distorted sense of time – one’s subjective experience of time is altered.
5. Direct and immediate feedback (successes and failures in the course of the activity are apparent, so that behavior can be adjusted as needed).
6. Balance between ability level and challenge (the activity is neither too easy nor too difficult).
7. A sense of personal control over the situation or activity.
8. The activity is intrinsically rewarding, so there is an effortlessness of action.
9. When in the flow state, people become absorbed in their activity, and focus of awareness is narrowed down to the activity itself, action awareness merging (Csikszentmihalyi, 1975. p.72).

The irony is that the major recreational activity in developed countries is watching TV, which has very little chance of getting a person into a flow state, where as the likelihood of achieving it in the workplace is much higher.

So the question for managers is how much of your work fits the nine requirements of flow set out above? Perhaps equally as importantly what are you doing to ensure that they are there and that they are present in your employees work functions?

The concept may appear at removed from main stream management but people, including yourself, who are deriving gratification from their work experience perform at the higher and better level….perhaps you should check it out.