Imagine a scenario like this:
At the moment, you are looking at a magnificent waterfall and preparing to take a boat ride up the waterfall. What thoughts came to your head?
First, you should realize that you are facing an extremely serious challenge. No one has ever practiced or even produced such an idea. Despite the challenges, you and the team members you work with are extremely skilled.
They have decades of experience navigating rivers, some are very good mechanics, some are African wildlife experts, and he can play a huge role in dodging grumpy hippos. You are all trained in first aid. Tough challenges and great skill, that's the reality.
Psychologist Mikhari Siszent Mihayi uses the term "flow" to describe the mental state in the above condition.
Through decades of highly influential research, Hiszant Mikhayi has shown that when a challenge is slightly more difficult than a skill level can handle, the combination of challenge and skill can lay the foundation for a mental state of high concentration, creativity, and determination.
Heatzant Mihay also showed that if explicit goals can be added to the above combination, and feedback can be continuously obtained during execution, flow will continue to emerge. Despite the effort, people in a state of flow can feel loved by the task and are more likely to create novel, effective solutions.
If you ask a person who has experienced a state of flow why they do something, they will invariably point to the satisfaction that the task brings them. Flow is an important source of intrinsic motivation.
Hiszant Mikhayi's concept of flow originated from his personal experience as a rock climbing enthusiast.
Faced with a difficult challenge, Hiszant Mikhail has excellent skills and a clear goal of climbing the surface of the rock, and he finds himself filled with the determination and energy needed to take risks and overcome natural conservatism. When he finds other people who have had similar experiences, such as artists, surgeons, investors, and CEOs, he can repeatedly hear people's descriptions of this state of dynamism.
To make it easier for people to understand and achieve a state of flow, Hiszant Mikhayi created a simple form of visual presentation. He showed a flow channel, which is an airworthy pathway. Entering this channel, one can avoid both the fear and helplessness caused by not having enough skills to cope with the challenge, as well as the boredom and indifference caused by the high skill level.
Standing on the surface of the rock, it is not difficult to imagine that a person's flow will be at a high level. What about sitting at your desk? We can also find flow there.
When the famed prolific writer John Owen was asked about his personal career, he replied, "The tacit factor is love." The reason I work so my writing is because writing is not a job for me. ”
Owen describes a situation in which you have been in a state of flow for decades. Whether it's for an individual, a team, or a company, breaking down the long-standing way of running can be extremely difficult and energy-intensive.
Access to the flow channel allows us to maintain a high level of energy and confidence, and allows us to have enough love for our work to take valuable risks in the face of challenges. The flow channel is not only worth having, but also has the possibility of achieving it; although it takes some effort, entering the flow channel does not require mastery of advanced technology.
Make sure you have a clear goal, and then examine the contrast between the challenge and your skills. By trying to match the two, you have the potential to enter a more active state of flow.
In the state of flow, even if the work itself is not very important, the internal motivation will continue to appear. Remember, intrinsic motivation means we enjoy the journey and we don't just focus on getting to our destination. The flow state makes the journey even more exciting and fun.
But when the difficulty of the challenge is beyond the scope of an individual or team's ability to cope, people's anxiety levels rise. It won't be long before the journey stops making people happy. People's attention will start to be distracted, and it may be that anxious managers who want to see results immediately are deliberately distracted, and we will start looking for reasons to complete the challenge from the outside. Because we have fallen out of the flow state at work or have never entered the flow state, we feel that work is a torture.
But we don't need to quit our jobs and risk our lives on a river to regain our flow state.
We just need to find or return to the flow channel.
The above content is excerpted from "The Safer the More Dangerous", which advocates breaking the conventional cognition to obtain great ideas, and gives 6 strategies to break through the safe zone and maintain creativity, helping organizations and individuals eager to innovate and break through to solve the problems they are extremely concerned about:
How to make "flow" continue to emerge?
How to use the "discomfort" well to break the cycle of safety thinking?
How to avoid falling into the "expert trap" while becoming more professional?
How can you get strong counterintuitive ideas?
How to break the "affinity trap" and create beneficial conflicts?
What measures can motivate the team to make innovative breakthroughs?
By reading this book, we can do things in a more open, creative, innovative, and joyful way, which is beneficial to entrepreneurs, managers, and every individual who wants to cultivate creative thinking.
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