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.

What’s Holding You/Me Back?

What’s stopping you from even so much as trying to reach your goal?

We’ve All Been There

Have you ever talked to a person who was adamant in saying that there was no chance that they would be able to accomplish a particular goal or do a particular thing? I have. In fact, I was once that person myself. I remember telling myself, back when I was in high school, that “It would be nearly impossible to become awesome at soccer” – I had only known that the sport existed for about a year. Back when I wanted to start my own webpage, something which seemed like an awesome thing to do, I would think to myself, how in the world am I going to learn html -I was a teenager at the time. Or, back when I started college, I would think to myself how in the world am I ever going to be able to afford to live without my parents right after I graduate. Even now, with my latest ambition, at the ripe old age of 24, I’ve thought to myself starting an online business is an unreachable dream for me, I just don’t know how.

The lesson that I’ve learned from my past is that if I want it enough and can convince myself to repeatedly dedicate effort, I’ll get there – I’ve reached all those previous goals except the one about starting an online business. The problem was deciding to try and debating whether or not it was even a good idea to attempt reaching the goal given the looming uncertainty. That was then. Now that I’ve grown up and learned a little bit more, I know that if I’m to set out for a goal, uncertainty is not really something that gets to me; all I think about is the win, and the next task. But there’s one thing, applicable to this, that I remember my dad telling me as a kid and an almost-adult: He said “You’re afraid of success.”

Afraid of success? That. Makes. No. Sense. At the time, what my dad had told me made completely no sense at all to my being. I wanted success, I wanted to win; surely I was not afraid of success – how dare he say that to me.

For awhile, I brushed the idea aside as I didn’t understand it and blamed my misunderstanding of the idea on my dads, then offensive, matter-of-fact delivery of advice. No big deal, I know that when I finally do choose a goal, I’m all in. Yeah – yeah right, boy was I wrong.

It’s rare that a goal is all roses. Success requires change, and change has both positive and negative consequences.

Fear of Success: What will happen if you succeed?

Take A Long Hard Look

One day I decided to take a long hard look at my past accomplishments and try and figure out why they weren’t as amazing as I would’ve liked to have remembered. I tried to pick apart why I got medals in soccer for state games but never went on to play in college. I tried to figure out why I had the highest GPA only one for one year during high school. I tried to figure out why I stopped at html and didn’t continue on to css and other languages. All I did was ask the question why. From there, I gave myself some time to think about the answers.

It’s not trendy to acknowledge the negatives that might eventuate from success. We’re supposed to assume that all change will be positive. But unless we can prepare ourselves for a realistic picture of success we will push it away from ourselves.

Overcoming Fear of Success to Achieve Your Goals

I wasn’t scared to succeed at all! I was, though, very afraid of the change that I’d have to go through in order to succeed as well as the change I’d have to live with after I succeeded; the time I would have to put in, the dedication I would need, the change in how other people saw me, the potential that I might not be able to hang out with friends when I wanted, the uncertainty of not going by-the-book, the potential for other goals to fall by the wayside, the idea that I wouldn’t be using my college degree for anything related to the field I studied in, the fear that I’d have no time to pursue the opposite sex, the thought that I’d begin to break old promises I’d made, the -well, there were a lot of rocks uncovered when I finally took the time to investigate my shortcomings.

So I learned that it’s not really a fear of succeeding, it’s a fear of what might happen when you do succeed: that is what “fear of success” is.

Success is also frightening because success carries chaos with it. We call success Light Chaos.  But in your world, you’re geared and conditioned to have no chaos at all.  It’s an outgrowth of adolescence where life is so absolutely, unbelievably chaotic that you try to stabilize it with the absolutes — the always’s [sic] and never’s, the black’s and white’s — of adolescence.

Working with Fear of Success

It’s an attachment to repeating patterns in your life – a fear of change. In other words, you could call it an addiction.

Missing Passion

Now we both understand what the fear of success is. But lets not short change ourselves, this is a bigger issue than I’d previously thought, and if you’re still reading this maybe you can relate. Have you ever been so ALMOST passionate about something? I have. I have ALMOST been the most passionate person I can imagine on a board with four wheels (skateboard). I have ALMOST been so passionate about – you get the idea.

This “fear of success” business can not only circumvent a possible end goal, but it can also dampen your desire for a goal you currently have; It doesn’t just stop you from starting, it can even prevent you from reaching a goal that you’ve managed to start and progress towards. Even though you have a goal clearly set in your mind, so much that you can see it now –you might even be working towards it now- there’s a likelihood that there are several road blocking fears preventing you from reaching a deep burning passion that you might otherwise be oblivious of. Do you really want to miss out on something so powerful that can drive you to your goals?

Without the knowledge of the potential for fears to hang out and camp your ambitions, you might brush your lack of drive off as something insignificant that’ll pass by the time you wake up in the morning, like a minor setback. No, unless you resolve these issues now, they will remain in you and will be on the lookout for opportunities to trip you up. If you understand that, you know that doing away with the fear of success is very important. So important, in fact, that it’s in your best interest to take a time out and resolve your fears after you finish reading this (or as soon as possible).

Don’t Let The Fear Hang Around

Fortunately, identifying the fear is to win half the battle. That process basically involves indentifying all the hidden ways that success (achieving that goal) could negatively impact you. That means taking out a pen and a pad, text editor, flow diagram or whatever, and listing out all the potential negatives that you hadn’t previously took the time to pull out of your subconscious.

Once you’ve unmasked the fears, don’t feel satisfied and let them sit there – no, the longer you wait to come to terms with your fears, the longer those fears will stick around. You have to make it a priority to not only identify the fear, but also come to terms with whatever the fear is.

Maybe for you, once the fear is identified, the solution is obvious. Maybe it’s only a matter of doing a “negative thought brainstorm” as I’d mentioned in this post. Maybe the negative effects resulting from reaching the goal outweigh the positive; in which case it might be in your best interest to do away with the goal altogether – but isn’t it better to know that now, rather than investing so much of your time and energy to something you’ll end up tossing anyway?

Maybe your fears are completely unjustified and you actually have nothing to fear. Here’s an example: If I show up for this award ceremony, I wont be able to watch that documentary tonight. So your fear is not being able to watch the documentary? Maybe you can reframe and redesign your view of how you see your end goal: If I show up for this award ceremony, I’ll only miss 5 minutes of the documentary. There’s a lot of things you can do to redesign how you see your goal. Putting the fear out there in the first place helps you gain a whole new perspective on the fear itself. Now it’s in your conscious thoughts and you can appropriately deal with it: I’ll make it to the ceremony, and skip the opening credits, and I’ll watch the entire documentary when I get home, I might even be early.

At the end of all this, the strategy here is to know to identify the fears –all of them- and then decide what, if anything, to do with the fears that stand between you and your goal. If you decide to dump the goal, so what. If you decide to pursue the goal, come to terms with all of the fears even if you have to do it more than once. Coming to terms with your fears can do wonders for your goals.

Control Your Thoughts; Place Head In Cloud

I wanted to take a moment to consider the strategies/things/ideas/tricks which led to more controlled thinking. “More controlled thinking.” I’m not sure exactly how to word it so lets just go with the idea of focusing and keeping our heads in the clouds.

Influencing What We Think About

So, what things can be done to further influence what we think about? That is the question. The reason behind finding out what an further influence what we think about is because what we primarily think about can determine how we feel and else effect the things that we do throughout the day and the decisions we make. I think we can all accept that as true without throwing around any counter-culture or mysticism or religion.

1. Predicting – Target Practice:

Goals:

Goals, by definition, are supposed to stand out. If I review my goals regularly or even semi regularly, the whole idea of reviewing the goal helps to remind myself to keep it a priority in my thoughts. Setting the goal in the first place is the first step. I already know to see the goal as if I’m already there, I can see the start and the end, and I know to work towards the goal automatically while feeling as if I’ve accomplished it already and am living the goal. It’s like the whole “monkey see, monkey do” thing; or maybe the “you are what you think about” or whatever phrase you can come up with.

Looking Back At The Future:

Previously I made a post about this where I said:

One day I sat down and starting writing a journal entry, documenting how my day went and how great a time I was having in my current position. The catch there is that all of this stuff had yet to actually happen. I wasn’t working for the type of company I was writing about, I didn’t do the types of things that I was writing about, and so on. But, I wrote that journal entry down as if I had just got home from the job that I wanted and had done all those things that day. Doing this created the feelings I wanted to feel, the images I wanted to see, and brought my goal closer to me.

It works just like that. You write a review, journal entry, whatever, just as if you had just achieved your goal. You’re writing about how great it feels to have done this and that, and you’re getting into as much detail as you’d like. This little review might take up a couple of pages because it’s very enjoyable to succeed and feel like a winner, so have fun with this one.

2. Morning Prep:

When you wake up for the day, do you normally think about what you’d like to do during that day? Maybe you write out a to-do list, maybe you just visualize your goals or something along those lines. This is a good way to get our thoughts pointing in the right direction right off the bat. If you do NOT do this and start out the day anyway, you might miss a large portion of time where your subconscious could be helping move your focus to your goals.

It’s like when you never notice a certain type of car driving down the road very often until you start to look for it; you’re focus wasn’t there, so your subconscious never helped you notice it.

If you’re the to-do list type, and you get your daily focus from a list, it’s important to remember to do the right things, not everything. For instance, if you see yourself doing 50 items on your to-do list, and none of those items are bringing you any closer to your goals, then you might have just wasted your time. On the other hand, if you do three things today and all three of those things pushed you closer to your goal, you might gather that you’re using your time wisely.

3. Controlling Your Thoughts:

Feelings Check:

If you feel bad, a negative thought probably slipped by your tracking system. One you realize how you feel, you can take a time-out and feed yourself some healthy thoughts and bring your feeling back up to feeling positive. There are lots of ways that you could do this. You might try affirmations, meditation, or even just plain old fashion good music. If you’ve got an army of positive thinkers nearby (lucky you), you could use them. If you’re into NLP and have some positive anchors setup, you could use that.

Nip Negative Thoughts In The Bud

Just the moment when you have a negative thought, you all it out and refute it. Here’s a brief example. Negative thought: I can’t win — reaction: I can and will win – pushing farther: [take a moment to feel like you have already won and you’re living out your goal right now].

Negative Thought Brainstorm

A good opportunity to do this is when you check and notice that your feeling compass is pointing in the wrong direction. Think up all your negative thoughts again and write them down as you remember them. After you’ve written them down, just underneath them, write the adjusted positive thought you would like. This works, and is suggested, because it’s easier to manage big, ugly, shadowy negative thoughts when you put a clear face on them (text). Writing them down unmasks all the shadows and makes the thought more manageable so that you can immediately fix it. This process is like breaking an addictive negative though. Here’s how I usually writ it out:

negative thought: I’m afraid that I wont finish updating the drawings on Monday and I’ll be fired for not completing them in the time allotted.

positive replacement: I will finish the drawings on Monday. I’ve already done most of the hard work anyways, which was identifying what needed to be fixed.

4. Reflecting

Daily reflections help a lot. They help me remember the thoughts that I accepted consciously or blindly throughout the day and remind me where and how those thoughts led me. From there I an change how those past thoughts influence my future ones.

For this part, you could type out on a personal blog, write out a private journal entry, talk to your spouse about the day, chat about the day with a few people from your elite mind group, but the focus should really be reviewing your day, re-discovering all the things that went right, redefining and fixing all the things that went wrong, learning for the future, and feeling thankful for the opportunity. Yah know, all that great kind of stuff.

Physical Activity Is Not Where It’s At

In my experience, actions in and of themselves do not really help push my positive thoughts much. However, positive and negative thoughts do occur during and around actions at those glancing moments where I’m not completely focused on what I’m doing. If you have reached a state where you can consistently and constantly focus on the present action, you are a Zen master. Focusing on the physical activity at hand, without being distracted, is a pleasurable or painful experience and most of us have at least experienced it and know this.

It’s like when someone kicks you in the knee; the before, after, and surrounding thoughts that are reactions to the moment mean nothing in the face of the present where you felt the shock/pain to your knee. In the scheme of positive thinking, though, I can’t say that I’ve ever had a single isolated physical action in and of itself that’s pushed my thinking towards or away from a positive or negative outlook. Physical activity seems like something of a discovery process that we do, and that’s about it.

As I mentioned, where thought comes into play is before and around and after the physical action. Those thoughts are like re-actions that one might choose to have when looking through their own looking glass.