The Flow

This concept comes from a book by the same name, “The Flow”, by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, from 1990. He is a Hungarian psychology professor with a famously unpronounceable name, who emigrated to the US at the age of 22 and taught at the University of Chicago, Lake Forest College and Claremont Graduate College. His work focused on the study of happiness and creativity, and he is best known for this concept of flow, which he describes as a “state in which people are so involved in an activity that nothing else matters. The ego falls away. Time flies. Every action, movement, and thought follows inevitably from the previous one, like playing jazz.”
The key drivers of flow are skill level and challenge level. A mismatch between those two drivers will not result in flow, and both have to be high in order to drive a person to perform at their highest level. I really like the analogy to jazz, which is quite appropriate.
This concept is quite helpful for discussions on team dynamics as well. Are the right team members assigned to the right tasks, so that their skill level and experience match what’s expected to them? If not, you’ll get apathy, boredom or anxiety.
There is a wonderful Ted Talk video of Csikszentmihalyi on “The Flow”- worth watching.