Flow Chart (an optimal experience tool)

(photo by johnnyalive)

Before I describe how to make your own flow chart, let me first talk about why I wanted to make a tool for myself.

At work, when I’m stuck on a task that’s slightly more mundane than I would like, or if I’m on a task that’s just a little too difficult for me to wrap my little to-do list around, I would tend to neglect and neglect the the task until it absolutely HAD to be done. And if it absolutely HAS to be done, then I’m more likely to do it. When the task is/was over or underwhelming, my mind, body, and soul naturally decided that it wasn’t in my best interest to tackle it. Putting off tasks until they’re soo ripe (the last minute) that they’re almost rotton (late), isn’t a very nice feeling when you know you could have performed better if you had started and continued to do the task until it was finished in the first place.

This was a problem because, regardless of what the task was, if it was assigned to me, then that meant it needed to be completed one way or another. I write little journal snips in my evernote pretty frequently at work, and I found out that when things don’t go well at work (when I don’t feel I’ve performed my best at work) , it makes me feel anxious and nervous at the same time. This is because work provides the only income for my family and when work is in any kind of jeopardy, then that means my income is in jeopardy, which means my family and livelihood are also in jeopardy. I also noticed that when work is going well, then everything else feels like it’s going well too (even if it’s not). From all that, I determined that it’s in my best interest to 1) figure out a way to not rely on work (2nd source of income maybe) so much, and/or 2) keep work out of jeopardy. Aiming for item 2, I needed to figure out a way to consistently do my best. If, at the end of the day, I know I did my best, then how anyone else interprets my best is hardly of any consequence to how I feel about what I did. I also know that if I’m not doing something I want to do, I probably won’t be performing my best. Put all that together and I’m in dire need of a format that is enjoyable and lets me perform at my best.

Now, fast forward to today (or, a couple weeks ago actually). I think I’ve figured out a way to make those mundane or really difficult tasks not only do-able but enjoyable at the same time, thus presenting an opportunity to perform better than I would’ve previously.

A solution revealed itself to me shortly after I’d read the book of Flow – I discovered the book while reading this article. If you follow my twitter, you might’ve noticed a few brain dumps where I had some aha moments while I was working towards a solution.

(available on the cheap from amazon)

The book of flow states that “The optimal state of inner experience is one in which there is order in consciousness.”

I don’t want to derail this post into a book review too much so I’ll just say that the book is very good and I recommend it to anyone who is intrigued by the phrases on the cover. If you get excited when you read the text on the cover that says “The Psychology of Optimal Experience”, then that book is definitely a must read for you.

In a nutshell, being in flow is like being “in the zone” when you’re playing a sport or an instrument. It’s like when you get addicted to world of warcraft and don’t notice the time, and your life, flying right by you. It’s definitely one of those things which makes you feel awesome if what you were in flow doing has anything to do with your personal ambitions. You probably see the results of flow a lot in sports and competitions.

(photo by *Kicki*)

Now, what are the components of flow? Fortunately there are a few sites that talk about flow and other ideas related to it., and there’s even a wikipedia article (linked in the quote) which break the book down flow to a nice component view for us.

Components of flow

Csíkszentmihályi identifies the following nine factors as accompanying an experience of flow:[3][4]
1. Clear goals (expectations and rules are discernible and goals are attainable and align appropriately with one’s skill set and abilities). Moreover, the challenge level and skill level should both be high.[2]
2. Concentrating and focusing, a high degree of concentration on a limited field of attention (a person engaged in the activity will have the opportunity to focus and to delve deeply into it).
3. A loss of the feeling of self-consciousness, the merging of action and awareness.
4. Distorted sense of time, one’s subjective experience of time is altered.
5. Direct and immediate feedback (successes and failures in the course of the activity are apparent, so that behavior can be adjusted as needed).
6. Balance between ability level and challenge (the activity is neither too easy nor too difficult).
7. A sense of personal control over the situation or activity.
8. The activity is intrinsically rewarding, so there is an effortlessness of action.
9. People become absorbed in their activity, and focus of awareness is narrowed down to the activity itself, action awareness merging.
Not all are needed for flow to be experienced.

-Flow (psychology)

When I set out to create a tool which would help me reach flow on command, it was my aim to meet all the aforementioned “components” or criteria. I assumed that if I could meet all of those criteria then I would have created a useful tool which could help me achieve flow. And, since it’s a tool, I could pretty much use it whenever I felt the need.

To start out a flow chart, you must first write down exactly what your goal is. The goal needs to be something that is sufficiently challenging -that is, it’s something that you can accomplish but is neither too easy nor too difficult for your skill set. That satisfies components 1 and 6. Using the flow chart is intrinsically rewarding because you do have complete control over it. That satisfies 7 and 8. The flow chart provides as much feedback as you need – the feedback is the text you write on the paper, and you’re free to put whatever you want on there (I’ll describe this more later). That takes care of 5. After starting the flow chart, you’ll notice that you tend to forget all about the flow chart you had just started -at least this happens for the first few trials before you’ve adapted to the paper format as a tool. When this happens, you know it is working. You have a distorted sense of time, you lose the feeling of self-consciousness, you become completely absorbed in your activity, all because of your concentration and focus. That satisfies 2, 4, and 9. All the components of flow are satisfied.

Ok so how do you make a flow chart?

step 1. write down your goal/challenge – First identify the challenge (write it down), and determine whether or not you think you can achieve it with your skills. If you can, then go flow. If not, break it down into something that’s a challenge that you believe you have the skills to meet. It can’t be too easy and it can’t be too difficult.

step 2. write down and then DO the next task that’ll get you closer to completing your goal – This is pretty self explanatory. Just go along and do whatever it is which you set out to do. Of course, you might figure out that you set out to achieve something which is probably outside your skill set or just too daunting to handle, and in that case you would move on to step 3. If you completed your task, you would also move on to step 3.

step 3. repeat step 2 – If you got to step 3 because you felt stuck on a task that was too daunting for you, then in this step, you would typically cut out a small slice of the daunting task and tackle that. You could keep cutting it down until you get to a task that fits you better. If you got to step 3 because you completed and crossed out your previous task, then keep going. On to step 4.

Step 4. repeat step 2 again – keep going and going and … FLOW!

The purpose of this chart is to direct some flow into those tasks which are kind of difficult to start and to continue doing until you’re finished (like writing a research paper in college, or doing a science project in high school, or researching something in graduate school, or sitting behind an excel file at work, etc).

When you’re writing down the next task and the next task as you move along down your flow chart to achieve the challenge which you initially wrote down, you create a sort of backbone or compass for yourself. The flow chart would be to you what a long pole is to a tight rope walker.

” If the actual experience gets too far away from the Flow zone, the negative psychic entropy like anxiety and boredom will break player’s Flow experience. “ -Design Flow in Games

The flow chart puts some order and some direction to things so that your goals are clear and your focus is clear. Whenever you get to that point where you get side-tracked or thrown off your zone for a bit, the flow chart is right there for you to re-realize what your goal was, and from there you can adjust your next task to something that’ll bring you back into the flow zone. At any point in time you’re always and only focused on one single task. Here’s an example of a flow chart:

(click image for supersize)

This is so SIMPLE! It’s almost so simple that it seems kind of worthless to do, but before you start thinking in that direction, I’d recommend you try it out for yourself. I use this flow chart thing all the time at work. It definitely works for me, and I thought maybe, just maybe it would work for someone else.

Aside from the basic’s which I mentioned in steps 1-3, I also do these:

Set up a timer on my desktop. I press go and forget about the timer entirely until my flow session is broken. Once the flow is broken, I go back to see how long I’ve been in flow and I write down that number on the flow chart. This is beneficial to me because it lets me see how much time I burned and even challenge myself to beat my longest length of time.

Write down “incoming” distractions on the back of the paper, out of sight. I do this because I might think of something while I’m in the middle of flow, and if I give too much thought to that something, I’ll break my flow. Rather than break my flow, I’ll write down the idea on the back of the paper so that I can safely forget about it for now, until I’m finished doing what I’m doing.

Insert “flow breaks” in brackets if I get interrupted, so that I may resume where I left off. Sometimes I’ve gottah go to the bathroom, or have to run to get a printout, or have to go to the store. When these sorts of things happen, or when I’m interrupted from flow, I stop the timer and write in what interrupted me. Once I’m done with whatever that interruption was, I start the timer and go on to the next task!

Keep a flowstorm (brainstorm) space open for little doodles or writings related to the flow session. On my sheet of paper, I draw a line about 2/3rds down the page all the way across. Below the line I can scribble down anything that’s related to my challenge. It has to be on topic, if it’s not on topic it might break my flow.

Throw on the noise cancelling headphones. My headphones are basically a “do not disturb” sign for my coworkers. It’s harder to interrupt a person who has headphones on. And I think it’s pretty widely accepted that if a person has headphones on, they probably are focusing on something. Sometimes though, a coworker will have something important to tell me and they know they can just tap me on the shoulder. Even still, being broken from a flow session feels just like someone waking you up while you’re in the middle of an awesome dream; no matter how important it was for that person to wake you up, it’s still leaves a bad taste in your mouth.

I work at a desk and I typically am in front of a computer most of the time. I’ve tried to do the flow chart thing on the computer, but it really doesn’t size up to using paper as a flow chart for me. The paper format just feels much more simple, real, and makes me feel more accomplished. With paper, I get sort of a material trophy (the flow chart) to hang up on the wall. I get to look back at the paper and say “yeah, I did that … for 5 hours straight” and feel proud. This sort of feedback makes me feel very nice and I couldn’t manage to get that same feeling from a text file on the computer for whatever reason. I also get feedback from the number of tasks I’ve crossed out on the flow chart as well as the length of time that I was in flow. A smooth hour of flow is good on the soul.

Of course, mileage may vary so try it out in whatever style or format works best for you!

comments are open for this post. feel free to share your thoughts.

Keep Moving Forward

So Many Problems! – Computers

“Why did the computer turn off,” I asked myself. I’d only stepped into the bathroom for a second. After a good four hours of work at my day job, I was ready to get to reading and blogging. After pressing the start button on my tall black custom computer case, my screens started to flicker slightly, as they usually do when they figure out that I’m turning the computer on again, but this time nothing came up after the monitors turned on.

For a second I thought maybe something is unplugged, but when I finally decided to get down on the floor and tune my eyes to the components which I’d suspected, a horrible –HORRIBLE, I TELL YOU- stench took hold of my nostrils.

I had no idea what it was but I guessed it might be my mother board. A broken mother board would mean a lot of screws would have to be messed with to get this computer back in working order, not to mention a visit to the local computer store, and a nice gash into my bank account.

As it turns out, the problem was … well, the problem was my power supply. The power supply was smoking and filling my small apartment with an atrocious smell. After checking the rest of the components on the motherboard, I was confident that nothing else had been fried because of the bad psu (that’s short for power supply unit).

After a nice long visit to Fry’s electronics, I ended up with a new keyboard/mouse combo, and a new expensive power supply. In about no time, after disassembling the old and assembling the new, I was ready to press the power button again.

Unfortunately nothing happened on my screen after pressing the power supply, but all the computers components were on and running. The fans were spinning, everything seemed to be working, but nothing was coming up on the screen! What in the world could be the problem here?

Well, turns out that my big fat video card no longer wanted to be in it’s assigned space anymore –or, rather, wanted to move around a bit. After moving the video card around a few different slots and then finally back to it’s original assigned slot (it was a pci-e slot), I’d press the power button and my boot screen would show up! Hurray! But there’s more.

The boot screen would show up for about 5 seconds and then I’d get the infamous blue screen of death. What could be the problem now!?

So I googled around a bit, and found a few answers as to what the problem could be: apparently, windows vista is known to occasionally have an issue with nvidia video cards. But, the issue is so subtle, you wouldn’t know how to fix it unless someone had told you. In fact, it’s so … it’s not even worth mentioning. All that matters is that I did the fix, arrived at my boot screen again, and encountered a NEW “blue screen of death”.

This time, the blue screen said I have a memory problem. O really?

I was ready to give up a long time ago. But I persisted.

Having values of “forever” for some goals isn’t a matter of motivation.  Motivation is the urge to seek positive feedback.  Persistence is the ability to continue forward in the complete absence of any.

http://www.scotthyoung.com/blog/2008/07/09/how-to-measure-your-degree-of-persistence/

Memory problems. Ok, I’ve got four dimms (sticks) of ram in this thing, totaling eight gigabytes, so I’ll just take them all out and stick them all back in one by one until I find the problem. Well, I did that. One by one they all proved to be working.

After reinstalling the last stick of ram, guess what happened. The computer booted up into Windows 7 like nothing was ever wrong with it. This whole scene took five hours.

Cue today’s topic:

Keep Moving Forward

That’s my favorite quote at the moment. If you’re into animated films, “Keep Moving Forward” is part of a quote from Walt Disney, made popular by the animated movie called Meet The Robinsons. This movie tells a very entertaining story about persistence.

Here’s a clip from the film:

That’s not all. Just yesterday, I read a great post called Keep Showing Up. I watched the videos posted there (one of TED, one from Letterman) and enjoyed my stay at Joyful Days (cool blog). The topic there is on the same target as the topic of this post. But I can’t help but think what would’ve happened if the whole idea of persistence wasn’t fresh in my subconscious mind from what I’d read. Would I have given up on my computer? Who knows, but I do know that I’m glad I didn’t and I’m glad I read that post.

I’ve said this on a previous blog, and it still holds true today so I’ll say it again. “We have all had a problem at one time or another that kept us from getting from point A (current situation) to point B (goal). Of course we took some time to address that and figure out a solution. But why, even with our awesome plan, did we never reach that goal? I’ll tell you why. It’s because you gave up.”

You will fail many times but if you allow that to stop you from trying, you will miss out on the amazing feeling of success once you reach new heights with your accomplishments. Failure is a stepping stone to success.

http://zenhabits.net/2008/05/a-letter-to-my-son-on-starting-out-in-life/

Imagine what would happen if the people in this world who have accomplished great things would have just given up! No more light bulb. No cars. No space travel. No pretty white apple laptops. No civil rights. No freedom. You get the picture?

The difference between a person who reaches their amazing goals, and a person who doesn’t, is persistence. You do want to reach your amazing goals right? Me too.

When life throws you a blue screen of death, keep moving forward.

More videos please! Ok, coming right up:

Ready For Death – Unstoppable Passion

Today, I saw a monarch butterfly. There were two lifeless leaves next to the butterfly – the butterfly, which seemed to be slightly wedged beneath the foot of a small plastic chair meant for a child, was dead. The two leaves were a pale brown. The butterfly was a vibrant and alluring color. Various shades of strong orange and deep blacks were spread across it. As I stood there for a moment, looking at the thing, I thought how sad it must be. How awful, for something so full of beauty and life to meet its end so bluntly, like an emotionless cause and effect, and in a way that doesn’t seem beautiful at all. How stifling. But butterflies aren’t the only thing that can die.

Have you ever seen a person die? Do you remember the moment where life seemed to be stolen, or taken back, from the person? Can you imagine witnessing such a moment, feeling that sharp stab to your chest, breaking your entire concept of life as you normally see it, bringing an abrupt awareness to what death is? Let me share my experience with you.

I watched a person die. It made me realize how short this seemingly lengthy series of events, which we call life, really is. Watching that person die, gasping and reaching out and even fighting for life, bore new unexpected feelings into my being. I watched … as those around stood there, just watching … with a sympathetic gaze; we could not help this person though we all wanted to. Death that day was not graceful, was not gentle, was not sudden or sympathetic. After the person had died, I reacted with the feeling that life was being stolen, robbed, taken from this person. I felt more angry than sad that this was happening. This was unfair. That feeling stood next to me for quite awhile, holding my hand, justifying my held back tears and muffled emotion. How awful, for a human being full of life and consciousness to meet their end so bluntly, like an emotionless cause and effect, and in a way that is not beautiful but is painful and teeming with agony.

We are similar to the butterfly that I saw today. The control over when and how we’re born and die is pretty much out of our hands.

I’ve learned some things from the event in the hospital. I have learned is that we should not expect to live for any self-predetermined amount of time. Every good and bad person, every one loved and hated, every religious and non-religious, every man woman and child should expect to die an agonizing and painful death at any moment.

The pain of dying will hurt for a time. You may scream, cry, kick, squirm, and shake. Accept that it will hurt a lot; know that it will not last forever and will pass. Get comfortable with the understanding of the pain involved in death; embrace it, accept it, expect it so that you will not fear it. The pain will not last forever, but our natural course is to live and then die.

I’ve also learned about is the sadness of losing a friend or a family member. The one thought, more than anything else, which shakes the center of my being is Were they ready to die? If the answer to that question were a consistent YES, then I would miss the person but be happy for them, knowing that they were ready. If the answer were to be NO, the feelings that could arise from that, hurt deeper than anything I know. There is a great pain in knowing or even assuming that your loved one or your friend had life taken violently from them when they were not ready.

But this side of the life spectrum, you will never know for certain whether or not another person was ready for death. We know that death can hurt, but the pain you might see on someone’s face when they are dying is no indication of whether or not they were ready for death. I can be mentally ready to take a bullet in the arm, but if I hadn’t told you that before hand, the pain on my face wont tell you one way or the other; such is death. The person who I saw die was gasping for breath, choking and reaching their hands out for life, but even from that I can’t say whether or not that person was ready for death. You see, death is usually a painful endeavor which no one naturally wants to go through. It hurts, and our body reacts, but the bodies reaction to pain is all science and can’t tell us for a fact if one person or another was ready for death in the moment that they died.

Looking at someone’s life history also will not tell you if a person was ready for death when they died. Physical actions do not prepare you for death, nor will a history of physical actions determine whether or not someone was prepared for death. Preparing for death is something that happens in your mind initially and has the potential to give birth to actions from there. For any definite answer to the question of whether or not someone was ready for death, you’d have to dig around into that persons mind to find the answers.

Knowing that I can not know brings me comfort, as well as understanding. From that, I understand that we are independent beings and should, for our own well being, recognize that we are independent beings. If we fall for the idea that we were dependent on each other, having a loved one pass away would then mean that a part of you has died. Don’t fall for that idea. Although you may feel like a part of you has died when a loved one passed away, your level of understanding and your acknowledgement that we are separate beings will bring you comfort.

That is why you and I have to let go of each other. Though we’re all friends and family, we need to understand that we do not control each other and we are really separate beings –that is, your consciousness does not belong to someone else, and no one else’s consciousness belongs to you.

Once you have let go of the fear of death and the fear of others dying, you have done something great for yourself. You have prepared yourself for the inevitable. Now, you no longer run from death and no longer hide from it.

After all of the fear is gone for your own death and the death of others, what’s left? The answer is a beautiful series of precious moments which we call life where we influence one another. Accepting death brings a completely new flavor to life and the actions you take. Your goals, ambitions, life’s purpose, and future happenings should all take a moment to consider the idea that death is where they’re headed.

Take a look at your goals for a second, if you’ve got them handy. What are your goals? For any one of your goals, ask the question “Why?” and then ask yourself “Would I die for this goal?”. Would I die for this goal. That’s a big question and it’s also probably one of the most important ones you should ask yourself.

It’s important to factor death into your goals because whatever it is that you desire, do, think, or [you name it] is going to be the same thing you’re doing, thinking, or [you name it] when you die. Would you be ok with being caught dead doing what you’re doing, thinking what you’re thinking, or [you name it]?

Lets say your top-level goal is to become a millionaire. If that’s your goal, ask yourself why and then ask yourself if you would die for that goal. Are you really willing to die in pursuit of that goal specifically? This is an entirely personal question that you would have to answer for yourself.

Lets look at your goals from another perspective: If a doctor told you that you have one week to live, would would your goals be the same? If not, why then wouldn’t your goals look the same? The only difference between having one week to live, and expecting to live for ninety years, is time. So would your goals change because you don’t have enough time? Let me tell you right now that, on this side of life, you will never have “enough time”, ever; just think about it, you could die before you get to the end of this post.

The point is this: When aiming for a long distance goal, it’s in your best interest to consider whether or not the pursuit of said goal is something which you would die for. After all, you may never reach your goal, but you will have this moment, right now and nothing else.

Understanding that brings about a richer experience to life and your interactions with those around you. The words you say to others no longer leave your lips without pleasure but instead tingle your tongue. The moments you spend with others become colorful and vibrant like the butterfly. Listening to another persons experience is now an enjoyable intimacy to be savored. No longer tedious, are the things which you do; they are now soul enriching and bring a rewarding sense of purpose to your every movement.

Imagine what kind of amazing things you could do if you did things that you were willing to be caught dead doing – what would happen if you did things that you were willing to die for? You’d be a fearless warrior! In addition to that, if you will start to do what you will die for, you will start to see a frenzied increase of excessive passion for what you do in this life.

This sort of passion is the strongest I know.