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Flow is something that we’ve all experienced at one point or another. It gets us out of bed early in the morning so that we can get a few quiet hours in at the office. It keeps us there late, after every one has gone. It also keeps us glued to video games or out jogging on the street.

So what is this experience that keeps us coming back for more? Most of us call it “getting into the Zone”. The psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi coined the term “flow”. Flow has also been called ‘a highly productive state of concentration’. Csikszentmihalyi found flow so compelling that he dedicated his life to studying and deconstructing the experience.

Flow matters

What’s so great about flow? Being in the flow state while doing your work produces vastly better results than when you do your tasks on autopilot. You get things done more quickly, and it’s a very gratifying experience in and of itself.

None of this would matter if going into flow was just a nice fluke that happened every so often. But in fact, you can learn to control it. You can harness its power to get better work done faster.

There are two main aspects of learning to harness flow: learning to train your attention, and engineering circumstances that allow flow to occur more easily.

Attention is key

Attention is key to your experience of life. What you get out of an experience is proportional to the amount of attention you pay it.

For example, you could have an amazing meal sitting in front of you, but if you are too distracted to notice the textures and flavors while you’re eating it, it will be gone before you remembered to enjoy it. So that amazing meal becomes a mediocre, forgettable one.

Similarly, if you only half-watch a movie, you miss the themes, plot twists, and character development that make it interesting. An otherwise compelling movie becomes a dull one in your experience, when you remove your attention from the equation.

In the same way, doing your work using only part of your attention blocks out opportunities for discovering novel approaches as well as elegant solutions.

Engineer circumstances that are favorable to flow

The second aspect of learning to harness flow is to engineer circumstances that allow your mind to go into the flow state. This aspect emphasizes making it easy on yourself, and not sabotaging the process of going into flow.

Since a large part of the flow state depends on engaging your full attention, there is an emphasis on screening out distractions as much as possible. While you can’t necessarily screen out your colleagues, you can close down IM, your email client, and your RSS reader. You may still need to browse the web, but be careful to stick to relevant pages, and not let yourself go from site, to site, to site, suddenly realizing 15 minutes later that you’ve gone on an unproductive tangent. It is extremely easy to go down the online rabbit hole these days, but it is also one of the biggest modern barriers to flow.

Nine components of flow

Csikszentmihalyi identified nine components that characterize the flow state. You’re probably already familiar with some of them and you might already do these. Finding ways to integrate all of the nine components into the way we work will help with this process of engineering situations where flow comes easily.

1. Clear goals
The first thing that characterizes flow is the presence of clear goals. It’s having a good idea of what you’re shooting for.

It’s important for these goals to not be too abstract or long-term. I don’t mean the sort of goal where you decide you’re going to build the world’s greatest social web app. It needs to be at a scale that is achievable one session.

You sit down, decide what you’re going to do, and by the end of the session, you’ve done it.

If you’re working on a website, it may be cracking just the one UI problem. If you’re a writer, it would be writing just a few pages, or one article. The important thing is that you have a clear idea what you want to achieve, and that you know it is achievable. You don’t need to know exactly how you’re going to do it; you just need to know roughly what it is and how you’ll know when you get there.

2. A high degree of concentration on a limited field of attention
Another characteristic that Csikszentmihalyi noticed was part of the flow state is a high degree of concentration on a limited field of attention.

We have so many interesting things available to us while we’re sitting at our computers these days. In fact, half of the apps we’ve seen this week exist to suck in our attention. While this makes having a desk job way more fun then it used to be, it also tempts us to spread out our attention very thinly between IM, email, twitter, flickr, reddit, digg, and on and on.

As much as we like to think of ourselves as multi-taskers, the truth is we can only really concentrate on one thing at a time, and multi-tasking for humans is really just switching very quickly between tasks. There is a cost associated with each instance of switching tasks, and it’s usually our work that pays the price.

The good news is, it’s easy to turn many of these things off! They are virtual, and so they can be gone with a click. Web sites are a bit trickier to screen out if the web is big part of your job, so you may just need to ban yourself from certain sites while you’re in a flow session.

3. A loss of self-consciousness, the merging of action and awareness.
The third component of flow is a loss of self-consciousness – getting out of your head and into your task.

One way to move toward this way of working is to stop viewing your work as an extension of your self-image. Instead, start thinking of it as a collection of ideas whose edges you are trying to find and carve out; you are acting as a conduit to bring these ideas into a concrete reality. This helps get your ego out of your work.

4. A distorted sense of time.
Time is most people’s scarcest resource, so it should be carefully managed. This is one of the main benefits of flow – you get more out of the time you spend in flow, so you have the option of spending less time on your tasks.

The best way to lose awareness of time is to set apart a period of time specifically allotted to your predefined task, and to block out all distractions and interruptions as much as possible. The book Peopleware found that it takes at least 15 (uninterrupted) minutes to enter a state of flow. You may find that the first 15 minutes are the most difficult to stay focused, but once you’ve made it through, you hit your stride.

If there is one kickstart system to begin getting a taste of flow, it is The Power of 48 Minutes. The idea is to work in 48 minute bursts, with 12 minute breaks in between. During the 48 minutes you are fully immersed in one task. This has an added safety net for people with short attention spans: if you start to get bored, you can race against the clock; if you’re finding focusing on your task tortuous, you’ll at least know you only have to do it for X more minutes. You’ll probably be surprised at first at just how much you can accomplish in a 48 minute session, when you are fully immersed.

After that burst, you get up, walk around, make a cup of coffee, check your email, catch up with your colleagues. Then, after what may seem like a decadently long break, you go back, refreshed, for the next round.

This system requires a timer so that you don’t need to keep checking the clock. You could use an egg timer, or a desktop widget. I’m using desktop widget called TimeLeft. It’s a little buggy to configure, but once you’ve got it set up, it’s useful and unintrusive. If you know of a better one, please let me know.

5. Direct & immediate feedback; behavior can be adjusted as needed.
Csikszentmihalyi reckons that what makes most games fun is the fact that you can continually experiment and try out new strategies as you see what works and what doesn’t. It’s also what makes any kind of driving or riding fast that demands constant fine-tuning of your course so enjoyable.

So how can we bring this immediacy of feedback into our work?

Web 2.0 is all about early releases, alphas and betas, and short, iterative cycles, where you send your product out into the wild early, so that you can see how it is actually used, and then fine-tune it accordingly, usually several times. While this way of working can seem a bit chaotic at first, it is also much more fun, because you get a constant stream of very useful feedback, which you can incorporate into your product to make it far better suited to your audience than if you had just tried to guess what they wanted.

There was an interesting study done a few years ago where they divided a pottery class into two groups. The first group was told it would be graded on the number of pots it produced over the course of the term. The second group was told it would be graded on the single best pot they produced in that term. So essentially, the first group was being graded on quantity, and the second on quality. The results of this study were quite interesting. It turned out the first group, who had the most tries, without being hung up on perfection, actually turned out the higher quality pots by the end of the term.

With web-based products, focusing on getting something built and out there and then fine-tuning it can result in a higher-quality end product than fixating on getting it perfect the first time. You won’t know how you need to adjust your behavior until you get that feedback.

6. Balance between ability level & challenge.
We can’t always choose our tasks, and even when we do, there are usually parts of it that we’d rather skip. Even in the best job, there will still be some amount of drudgery as well as some tasks that really stretch and intimidate us.

Luckily, you can adjust the level of challenge within most tasks. If something is too easy or mind-numbing, find a way to make it more efficient, more elegant, more innovative, more automated.

If a task is too hard, find a way to break it down into increasingly smaller chunks until you find the right level of challenge. Alternatively, deconstruct the way someone else has solved a similar problem.

7. A sense of personal control over the situation.
It is worth the time to master your tools; they should enable you, not get in your way. Put in the time to find the right software for the job, to understand the core concepts, to learn the best practices, to mechanize the mundane.

This way, when you’ve gotten into the flow state, you won’t have to interrupt yourself by looking up that shortcut, playing trial and error with something you should really know, or being distracted by a search for something trivial.

8. Intrinsically rewarding action, resulting in effortlessness of action.
Not everyone is lucky enough to pick and choose which projects he works on. Even on a hand-picked project, there will still be parts that you don’t enjoy doing. Keep in mind that even if you can’t choose what you do, you still have a degree of freedom in how you do it. Learn to develop and refine your own style. Enjoy craftsmanship for its own sake.

Also, once you’ve become good at triggering the flow state, the experience of flow will become a reward within itself.

9. Focus of awareness is narrowed down to the activity itself.
As soon as you notice your mind start to wander, use that as a trigger to remind yourself to refocus on your work. Your mind, by nature, needs to be occupied with something. The closer attention you pay to your chosen task, the less energy you’ll need to spend to keep your mind from wandering.

There will always be interruptions

This structured, focused, short-burst style of working is different than the free form style most people use by default. Colleagues, partners, and roommates may naturally assume that a given moment is as good (or bad) as any other to interrupt you.

How you manage people who are likely to interrupt you depends on your relationship to them. If you have an open, casual relationship with the person, then you can mention to them what you’re trying out before you go into a session. If the person interrupting you is somewhat unfamiliar (a colleague from another department, for example), you can point to your timer and ask if you can get back to them in whatever time it says. The timer is great for this; it makes the process look important and formalized. If the person is someone who regularly wants your time, you can better manage this by actively engaging with them in those 12 minute breaks. It’s a good a excuse to get up and walk around, and that person will feel less need to seek you out during your focused sessions.

Visual cues such as headphones and earplugs, are useful as well. And if you really can’t bear to shut down IM, then at least change your status to busy.

The pay-off

None of applications of the 9 components is difficult within itself, and each can be added to your routine individually. But even though the system is relatively simple, the pay off is substantial. You’ll produce better quality work, in the same or less time, and you’ll enjoy the process more.

This reminded me of my favorite section of the book that the Citizenship test is based on, the “How Britain is Governed” chapter. Here are some gems:

“The United Kingdom constitution is an unwritten constitution.”
“Britain has a constitutional monarchy.”
“The Queen is Head of State of the United Kindgom.”
“There would be a constitutional crisis if the monarch ever spoke out publicly either for or against government policy.”

So that’s why the Queen rarely speaks. Because the unwritten constitution would be in crisis if the Head of State expressed her opinion! Reminds me of the people encouraging Americans to forfeit their civil liberties and right to privacy in order to preserve their freedoms.

I would need to know a lot more about the diversity within the field, and the relative talent available, before I could offer a useful opinion, but the dynamics of the whole thing seemed very familiar. Then I realized: it’s the same dynamic as a high school dance.

If you’ve since blocked these experiences out, let me take you back there a moment. The DJ’s spinning “White Lines,” you’re goofing around in a circle with your friends, showing off that you know all the words (though you have only the most abstract idea of what they might mean). Then “Careless Whisper” comes on. Some people are secretly excited, because it’s an excuse to get closer to what (or whom) they were after all along. Other people dread these moments, because of the ball of nerves and fear that strikes the pit of their stomach, but feel they ought to take part anyway. Whatever their reaction, the code of conduct is the same. Girls are meant to make themselves as appealing as possible, and wait to be asked. Boys are meant to ask, and if they are turned down, keeping asking around until someone says ‘yes’.

Tantek comments, “One of the biggest complaints I hear/read is, why aren’t people inviting me to speak?..But the biggest response to those that are waiting for invites is – why are you being so passive?”. For me, at least, it’s because I didn’t know we were meant to keep asking until someone said yes! Isn’t it pushy or rude or inappropriate or something? Apparently it isn’t, but if you didn’t know what the code of conduct was, I think your assumption might be influenced by the way you were expected to behave in those socially formative years.

I never made it to prom. I figured out that living rooms were much more fun to have dance sessions in, because you chose the tunes, you could jump on the couch, and you didn’t have to wear stupid shoes. If conference rosters are the new homecoming courts, Meri’s and Tara’s parties are looking like a lot more fun!

The psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi called this state flow, and spent years studying the phenomenon. Flow has also been described as ‘a highly productive state of concentration’ in Peopleware : Productive Projects and Teams, and as a ‘Zen-like state of total oneness with the activity and the situation‘ in Wikipedia.

Why Flow Should Matter to You

Peopleware suggests that flow is essential to writing great software. Certainly, nose-to-the-grindstone style of churning out code can produce copious amounts of mediocre results. But to truly let the stroke of genius in, you need to be tapping into the Zen of the matter.

Csikszentmihaly goes even further, arguing that “it is the full involvement of flow, rather than happiness, that makes for an excellent life.” This is a particularly interesting assertion in light of the recent studies that suggest that we aren’t very good at predicting what will make us happy anyway.

Entering this flow state can be a skill, not a fluke.

The Two Ways

There are two complementary ways to increase the frequency of flow in your daily work.

The first is training your ability to concentrate. Attention is key to your experience of life; how much you get out of any activity is directly related to how much attention you pay to it in the moment. For example, you can eat an amazing meal, but if you haven’t noticed the flavors and textures, it will have gone before you remembered to enjoy it. Similarly, if you only half-watch a movie, you will miss the themes, plot twists and character development that make it interesting. In the same way, doing your work while in autopilot blocks out opportunities for novel approaches and elegant solutions to present themselves to you. Genius will only come while you are fully engaged with what you are doing.

Your ability to concentrate can be trained, just as your body can. It is a slow, incremental process, and just like with physical training, the real gains are made through consistency rather than occasional bursts. You can build your powers of concentration using many activities, but it is often helpful to start with one that is unrelated to your day job. This is because the presence of agendas and goals other than simply training your mind can detract from your focus and hinder your progess.

A particularly good concentration-boosting technique is the practice of active meditation. I personally like Acem meditation, because it is non-religious and focuses on the development of the mind, rather than “mood-seeking”, or the pursuit of bliss.

The second way to increase the frequency of flow in your work is to engineer circumstances that allow flow to occur. Csikszentmihaly identified nine components of an experience of flow. Here is a list of them with suggested ways to integrate them into your daily work style, so that you can enter this state more often.

The Nine Components of Flow

1. Clear goals.

To enter the flow state, you need to define a short-term goal. If you’re working on a large multi-session project like a web app, decide your purpose for this single creative session. Be careful not to overqualify your purpose; your purpose should be “an arrow, not a container”. (- Steve Pavlina)

2. A high degree of concentration on a limited field of attention.

Concentration is absolutely key, and there are ways to make your workstation less distracting. Make things easier on yourself by removing everything extraneous from your field of attention – close down unnecessary applications, ban yourself from IM, email, and irrelevant sites for the duration of the session. It is easy, as soon as the mind starts to wander or a problem seems too messy to deal with, to switch gears and distract yourself with email or irrelevant tasks. This is exactly the moment when you should remind yourself to engage fully with your stated task. Don’t sabotage yourself!

3. A loss of self-consciousness, the merging of action and awareness.

This is Csikszentmihaly’s bit of Zen – there is no longer a distinction between you and your task. This merging comes gradually, as you learn to let yourself be fully absorbed. One way to leave your self-consciousness out of the equation is to convince yourself that no one will see the results anyway, thereby freeing up that mental energy for the task itself. A bit like dancing as if nobody’s watching, but with keystrokes.

4. Distorted sense of time.

Time is most people’s scarcest resource, so it should be carefully managed. This is one of the main benefits of flow – you get more out of the time you spend in flow, so you have the option of spending less time on your tasks. (Though you may find you enjoy it so much that you do it more often.)

The best way to lose awareness of time is to set apart a period of time specifically allotted to your predefined task, and to block out all distractions and interruptions as much as possible. Peopleware says it takes at least 15 (uninterrupted) minutes to enter a state of flow.

If there is one kickstart system to begin getting a taste of flow, it is The Power of 48 Minutes. Cheesy website, but an effective system. The idea is to work in 48 minute bursts, with 12 minute breaks in between. During the 48 minutes you are fully immersed in one task. If you start to get bored, you can race against the clock. After that burst, you get up, walk around, make a cup of tea, and check your email. Then, after what may seem like a decadently long break, you go back for Round 2.

This system requires a timer so that you don’t need to keep checking the clock. I’m using desktop widget called TimeLeft. It’s a little buggy to configure, but once you’ve got it set up, it’s useful and unintrusive.

5. Direct and immediate feedback; behaviour can be adjusted as needed.

This ties in well with a principle of agile programming – test early and often. In this way you can continually fine tune your work so that you don’t stray too far down the wrong path. Keeping an eye on the output will also give you a steady trickle of rewards, as you see the fruits of your labour.

6. Balance between ability level and challenge.

According to Csikszentmihaly, too high a challenge results in anxiety, whereas too low a challenge results in boredom. You can adjust the level of challenge within most tasks. If something is too easy, find a way too make it more efficient, more elegant, more innovative, or more automated. If a task is too hard, break it up into progressively smaller chunks until you find the right level of challenge.

One interesting side note to this is that perhaps, when we find ourselves arguing over minutae and getting downright pedantic, we should take it as a sign that we should ‘move on’ and add another level of complexity to our work.

7. A sense of personal control over the situation or activity.

It is worth the time to master your tools; they should enable you, not get in your way. Put in the time to find the right software for the job, to understand the core concepts, to learn the best practices, to mechanize the mundane. This way, when you’re in the flow state, you won’t be interrupted by looking up that shortcut, playing trial and error with something you should really know, or being distracted by a search for something trivial.

8. Intrinsically rewarding action, so there is an effortlessness of action.

Not everyone is lucky enough to pick and choose which projects he works on. Even on a hand-picked project, there will still be parts that one doesn’t enjoy doing. Keep in mind that even if you can’t choose what you do, you still have a degree of freedom in how you do it. Learn to develop and take pleasure in your own style. Enjoy craftsmanship for its own sake.

Also, once you’ve become good at triggering the flow state, the experience of flow will become a reward within itself.

9. Focus of awareness is narrowed down to the activity itself.

As soon as you notice your mind start to wander, use that as a trigger to remind yourself to refocus on your work. Your mind, by nature, needs to be occupied with something. The closer attention you pay to your chosen task, the less energy you’ll need to spend to keep your mind from wandering.

Dealing with external interruptions

This structured, focused, short-burst style of working is different than the free form style most people use by default. Colleagues, partners, and flatmates may naturally assume that a given moment is as good (or bad) as any other to interrupt you.

How you manage people who are likely to interrupt you depends on your relationship to them. If you have an open, casual relationship with the person, then you can mention to them what you’re trying out before you go into a session. If the person interrupting you is somewhat unfamiliar (a colleague from another department, for example), you can point to your timer and ask if you can get back to them in whatever time it says. The timer is great for this; it makes the process look important and formalized. If the person is someone who regularly wants your time, you can better manage this by actively engaging with them in those 12 minute breaks. It’s a good a excuse to get up and walk around, and that person will feel less need to seek you out during your focused sessions.

Visual cues such as headphones and earplugs are useful as well.

It’s as Simple as That

Clarifying your short-term goals, closing out likely distractions, letting go of your expectations of how people will react to your work, setting apart a period of time and letting a timer keep track of it, testing early and often, adjusting tasks to the right level of difficulty, mastering your tools, enjoying craftsmanship for its own sake, and training your mind to wander less. All of these are simple things within themselves, though perhaps a lot to keep track of at once. You can integrate these components into your work style all at once or bit by bit. The end result will be the same: a fuller, more satisfying engagement with your work, yielding higher quality results.