It turns out that the state of flow comes more naturally to some people. Some people are Autotelic  and this means that they have self-motivation and are internally driven. This quality of their personality makes them “gifted” when it comes to being able to achieve the state of flow. But others can achieve this state as well if they know what to do to achieve it.

How do you achieve it? There are certain factors that allow the state of flow, and they are…

1. The activity must have a clear set of goals. This gives direction and structure to the task and allows the person to feel some control.
2. The person must have confidence that they can do the task or activity. They have to know that they have the skills required or could reasonably stretch their capability to achieve the task. There is a balance between feeling like they can do it and not being too overloaded to take it on.
3. The task at must have immediate feedback that is clear and continuous, so the person can adjust their approach continuously to achieve the goal. This means working in the present moment.

How do you know if you are in the flow state? Here are the factors that go along with any experience of flow:

1. The goals are clear. The challenge level is high. The required skill level is high, but you are confident.
2. You concentrate on a very narrow field. Focused attention.
3. You are not self-conscious. You are taking action while being aware. Another way of saying this is that you are not being “micro-managed” and you don’t have a feeling that you are “being watched” during execution of the task. You are working on your own time schedule.
4. You lose track of time. You usually feel like time is moving faster or slower when in this state.
5. You are getting immediate feedback directly from the task or activity. This allows you to adjust your approach.
6. The activity is not too easy, but it is also not too difficult. It has a good balance between the two.
7. You are in control of the activity or situation.
8. You feel personally rewarded just for accomplishing the activity. You may feel like you learned or did something for yourself intrinsically and not because someone told you to do it.
9. You work tirelessly. You don’t respect personal health needs during your work toward the goal. You may forget to eat or drink for example.
10. You’re completely absorbed into the activity to where you can’t really see things outside of the activity. You may put unrelated other things into the context of the activity when you talk about them.

You may experience only some of them or maybe all of them. Either way, you know you are in that state when these items appear. It may take some self-awareness on your part in identifying what you feel.

An underlying theme about the state of flow is that a person who is intrinsically motivated will naturally feel it. This goes back to the concept of intrinsic motivation vs. extrinsic motivation that I wrote about in another post and I think that a good understanding of the two types is necessary in order to see how to obtain the state of flow.

What do you get by achieving this state of flow?

The payoff is huge!

People who can achieve the mental state of flow can experience intense feelings of joy and happiness! Now who wouldn’t want that?

1. Ultimate Power (book and abridged audio (1 CD)) – Tony Robbins
2. Awaken the Giant Within (book and audio (2 CDs)) – Tony Robbins
3. The Art of Exceptional Living (abridged audio (2 CDs)) – Jim Rohn
4. The Four Hour Work Week, Updated (book and audio (8 CDs)) – Timothy Ferris
5. Talent is Overrated (book and audio (1 CD)) – Geoff Colvin
6. The Genius in All of Us (book and ebook) – David Shenk
7. Dreamcrafting (book and ebook) - Paul Levesque, Art McNeil
8. The Idiot Factor (book) – Larry Winget
9. Why Not? (book) – Barry Nalebuff, Ian Ayres
10. Linchpin (book and ebook) – Seth Godin
11. Flow (book and ebook) - Mihály Csíkszentmihályi

The Tony Robbins and Jim Rohn books are extremely good at motivation and personal development and should not be missed. Read these if you don’t read anything else.

For pure motivation to become self-sufficient and leave the rat race, “The Four Hour Work Week” is an essential read and has lots of good resource links and tips.

Also for general motivation and just plain common sense delivered bluntly, “The Idiot Factor” is your best bet. Larry Winget writes several books in this style and I would recommend any of them.

The books “Talent is Overrated” and “The Genius in All of Us” are both about “deliberate practice”, a way of excelling and becoming an expert at anything you want to do. Read these and you will learn how to speed up your development process and make training programs for yourself that will boost you beyond others. They also give hope because nobody is “gifted” and it is never too late to change course and learn something new when you have these techniques in hand.

“Dreamcrafting” spells out the essential “macro-skills” that are needed by anyone to succeed and breakthrough some of the common barriers put up by themselves. I would say that this book is also an essential one because it is a backbone of many of the others. For example if you can’t master the “macro-skills” in this book, you won’t be able to implement any of the “Four Hour Work Week” items either.

“Why Not?” is a book about principled problem solving, and while not technically a development book, it does give you essential skills to use to solve common problems – and these are invaluable, so its on my list.

“Linchpin” is almost opposite of “The Four Hour Work Week” because it describes how to become invaluable at your current job. I see it as essential though because we can’t all go out a just quit our jobs right now in favor of a dream. This book will help you feel more secure in your job (if you implement the items in the book).

“Flow” shows the reader what it takes to be happy. Who wouldn’t want that? Basically, there are some conditions to achieve the “flow” state, and in that state one can feel happy and satisfied. Very much worth reading.

First, I’ll describe the two types of motivations, and how they occur in my life and yours every day.

Intrinsic motivation is motivation that comes from within. It is the so-called “self-motivation.” You may experience it when…

1. You feel like what you’ve done so far in learning a task, has succeeded because of the effort you have put into it.
2. You feel like the goal is obtainable, but not too easy.
3. You have a real interest in the topic you’re learning, and are not just doing it to get grades or a paycheck.

Extrinsic motivation comes from outside sources. It is more of a rewards-based motivation. You may experience it when…

1. You do a job only because you are getting paid for it or are getting graded on it.
2. You feel a “what’s in it for me” type of feeling or attitude toward a task or learning experience.
3. You are under threat of punishment if you do not do a job or do it well.

It is very important to note that almost all businesses subscribe to the model of extrinsic motivation, and if you’ve worked anywhere, you’ve come across it. When extrinsic motivation is applied to workers, they begin to work only because they have to and not because they want to. Been there? Experienced that before?

Good managers and leaders in companies can identify workers who have intrinsic motivation and those who do not. And, they can provide guidance without direction to those who have it,and by doing that they feed the motivation of the individual and get better work from him or her. For those who do not have intrinsic motivation, they can “turn them around” by allowing the worker to choose tasks and side-projects, and play a bigger role in determining his or her destiny.

Sadly though, the standard route that managers usually take is one of controlling the intrinsically motivated person and forcing more work on those who are not intrinsically motivated. These actions result in worsening of the situation for both types of workers.

• The intrinsically motivated person appears to a boss as a risk because they are outperforming the others and working in ways that the boss doesn’t understand. The solution in the boss’s mind is to control that. By doing that though, it takes away the motivation of the individual. In this case it should be more of a “not broke, don’t fix” situation.
• The unmotivated person appears to be unmotivated, lazy, or otherwise in need of correcting. The solution in the boss’s mind is to challenge the person more by giving more of the same kind of work. By doing that though, he feeds the problem and worsens the situation because the worker will now move directly to the overloaded state where he or she sees it as futile to try to complete the work.

So what is the answer? The answer is stated best in the book “Talent is Overrated” by Geoff Colvin. There is a fine line between what type of motivation works and what doesn’t and there is some complexity involved. Because I think you should read Mr. Colvin’s book, I’m not going to spoil it here by telling you much more about it. “Deliberate practice” is also discussed in his book and is its main focal point – why some succeed to a great degree and others to lesser extents.

Intrinsic and extrinsic motivation are at the core of many issues and they are worth understanding in more detail!

I’ve noticed this because I have worked with foreign cultures for years now and have adjusted my writing style in emails to foreign contacts in order to accommodate their limited understanding of my English language and grammar. How, you ask?

I regularly catch myself writing in a style that over-simplifies my message because I want to avoid the pain of having to restate it. When I do this, I secretly hope that my simplification will allow my message to be understood the first time by the foreign colleague I’m writing to because I don’t want to waste time and energy in explaining it again. But this degrades my writing to the point where I not only write this way in emails to others, but also to my home-country colleagues. I also speak in this way to them, and I’m finding that I am not saying what I mean to say and the meaning is getting lost. I’m not being understood!

My fix: My tactic will be to now write in a way where I use fully-formed English sentences and grammar. If I’m unclear about the clarity of my message, then I can run it through the online clarity checker at Infogineering, or proofread it. It may take some extra time, but this is a small price to pay for getting a clear message out, and preserving my writing and speaking styles!

For a 200 mile vacation trip on a highway with a 70 mph limit, for example…

… driving 80 mph, you would arrive in 150 minutes. $195 ticket + 2 points on license ($200 insurance increase).

… driving 75 mph, you would arrive in 160 minutes. $180 ticket + 1 point on license ($100 insurance increase).

… driving 73 mph, you would arrive in 164 minutes. No ticket. No points. No insurance increase.

… driving 70 mph, you would arrive in 171 minutes. No ticket. No points. No insurance increase. Obeying the law.

I’ll drive 73 mph (speeding, I know, but generally o.k.), get there 4 minutes later than those of you driving 75 mph and not risk getting a $180 ticket with higher annual insurance premiums of $100. Coincidentally, I’ll also save about 1.5 mpg in gas mileage, saving me $1.88 and allowing me to go 21 miles farther before filling up. Looking at it another way, that 4 minute savings of your time could cost you as much as $70.47 per minute and you’ll be stopping 21 miles sooner and spending more time than me filling up your gas tank! There is also an anxiety savings by driving slower because you will not have to worry about getting caught speeding by the police!

When you reduce the mileage from 200 miles to a more reasonable commute distance, the difference in time from speeding gets ridiculously small and the costs per mile get extremely large. Why risk driving too fast?