Going With the Flow
Flow : The Psychology of Optimal Experience by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (pronounced mee-high chick-sent-mee-high, my friend David Rock told me that, and he is important because he wrote one of my top books The Brain at Work) is another book that stopped me in my tracks. Published in 1990, my copy is old, much dog eared and underlined. The author is more recently widely known as a pioneer in the Positive Psychology arena, and his early work outlined in Flow was required reading for coaches because it was solid research about what makes people feel good. Absent real problems like psychological damage, war or pestilence, people were coming to coaches with the objective of optimizing their existence and more specifically, their time at work. Csikszentmihalyi says that in his studies, when people reflected on their most positive experiences they seemed to share one if not all of these characteristics:
- “ the experience usually occurs when we confront tasks we have a chance of completing.”
- we must be able to concentrate on what we are doing.”
- The task has “clear goals and
- Provide immediate feedback
- There is deep but effortless involvement that shuts out the noise of everyday life
- We are able to exercise a sense of control over our actions
- Self consciousness disappears, but sense of self emerges more strongly after the experience is over
- The sense of time passing is altered; minutes can seem like hours, or hours can feel like minutes.” (Harper, 1991, pg. 49)
Csikszentmihalyi’s theory was that to achieve flow we needed to maintain the balance between the level of challenge of the activity, and our skill level – if the challenge is too low, we become bored, if it is too high we become overly anxious. Each individual needs to monitor their own challenge level to keep it optimal to stay engaged. 
This rang so true for me, and it was extremely useful in work with clients who were clearly bored, but judging themselves for it, thinking they had perfectly jobs and should be happy. Not so! To stay in Flow, it is critical to constantly be raising the bar. This is not totally true for everyone all the time, but for some people, some of the time, the model is extremely useful.
Habits Make All the Difference
The promise was books that rocked my coaching practice that are off the beaten path. OK, so maybe this one isn’t that original, and I must have stumbled on The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Steven Covey in Barnes and Noble because I can’t remember who recommended it. But I have to say that from the day I read this book, I changed some habits that utterly altered the trajectory of my life. I don’t think it is a coincidence that when I started doing what Covey said (and let’s be clear, not everything, just a few things made a huge difference) my business took off, my household became more orderly and calm and my quality of life shot up. I developed a reputation for being freakishly productive. I feel that almost every other “self-help” book that came after this one simply fleshed out some of the good ideas that were here in the first place.
In the section called Put First Things First, the 4 box quadrant probably made the biggest impact on me. The idea is that we all can put every single thing we do into one of the four quadrants.
| Urgent | Not Urgent | |
| Important | QUADRANT I crises, pressing problems, deadline-driven projects |
QUADRANT II prevention, Principle Centered activities, relationship building, recognizing and leveraging new opportunities, planning the future, recreation |
| Not important | QUADRANT III interruptions, some calls, some mail, some reports, some meetings, popular activities |
QUADRANT IV trivia, busy work, some mail, some phone calls time wasters, pleasant activities |
The ones who spend the bulk of their time doing things in the “important” quadrants are simply going to have a much higher life satisfaction quotient. This very concrete model gave me the courage to say no to things that did not fall into the Quadrants I or II. Today, I let people assume I am extremely busy (everybody does) and if pressed I will admit that I am no busier than anyone else, just extremely focused on what is most important to me and ferociously choosy about what I focus on. Don’t tell anyone.
Who Do You Aim To Please?
Throughout the course of our lives, we’re constantly trying to impress someone.
As kids, we want our parents to be proud of us. We want our friends to think we’re cool. We want our teachers to think we’re smart.
As we get older, we still want our parents to be proud of us. We still want our friends to think we’re cool. And now, instead of teachers, we want our colleagues and clients to think we’re smart.
Then, one day we wake up and realize we’re spending most of our waking hours trying to live up to someone else’s expectations. We’re spending more time trying to make everyone else happy than we are on meeting our own needs. We’re not necessarily unhappy, but we’re unfulfilled.
Depending on how we choose to look at it, that unfulfilled feeling can be a blessing or a curse. We can either let it spiral out of control into a deep depression or, hopefully, we can choose to use it as a wake up call.
To determine if your life needs a slight course correction, ask yourself the following questions:
“Whose life am I living?”
You only have one life to live, you might as well make it your own.
“Am I being selfish enough?”
You can’t take care of others if you’re not taking care of yourself.
To have any chance at spreading sustained happiness to others, it’s vital to make sure that YOU are happy. From time to time, do a check-in to make sure that YOUR needs are getting met so that YOU are able to continue to meet the many needs of all the important people in YOUR life.
Are You Embracing Technology?
A few weeks ago, I stumbled into an opportunity to reconnect with a former colleague, Laura Goodrich. For a number of years, Laura partnered with Blanchard as an Executive Coach. I hadn’t spoken with her in a couple years but we are connected through LinkedIn. I noticed that she had a book release coming up and decided to send her an e-mail to show my support.
To my surprise, an hour later my phone rang and it was Laura. By chance, she happened to be in town for a conference. This was kind of a big deal since we’re based on opposite sides of the country. The next morning, we were catching up in person over breakfast!
This chance encounter resulted only because of the incredible technologies we currently have at our disposal. I saw an update on LinkedIn, I sent an e-mail, which she received on her cell phone, and then she called me during a break while attending a conference. Think about that for a moment. How possible is it that this would have occurred say 10-15 short years ago? Not likely. How radically different will this scenario play out 10-15 short years from now? To borrow a quote from a friend, “It boggles the mind.”
Now, think about how you use technology in your professional and personal life. Would a scenario such as the one I’ve described be possible for you today through your use of technology? More to the point, do you embrace technology or do you let it intimidate you?
In her new book, Seeing Red Cars: Driving Yourself, Your Team, and Your Organization to a Positive Future, Laura recommends, “Become fluid with technology so you can continue to learn, connect, and remain relevant – and, in many cases, remain employed. Confidence and competence in technology is becoming much more of a requirement than an option.”
From the ever-expanding and always-enhancing software applications in the workplace, to LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, blogs (such as this one), cell phone apps, and the like, there are countless ways to utilize technology to stay connected and to get ahead, both personally and professionally. How are you embracing technology?
If you have a technology-related success story or strategy, we’d love to hear about it! Please share in the comment area below.
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