Flow & Ecstasy

Writing can really string you up. You’re writing… it’s good… or wait… is it any good?

Shit. You’re stopped.

Or… this is fantastic… I love it… what should happen next?

Shit. You’re stopped.

Or you’re stopped before you really get started. Either it feels too hard, so you quit, or it feels “dangerous” so you never start.

But sometimes, what you’re writing becomes more real than your surroundings. The chair you are sitting on, the coffee cup half-full, the kids watching tv in the other room can all melt away, and instead, you are in your story. You’re conversing with fictional characters of your own creation, in a world that couldn’t possibly fit within the walls of your writing room.

You are in flow. Flow is a phenomenon observed and defined by psychologist Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi. (You’ve probably heard of him, and perhaps not learned to spell or pronounce his name: Mi-HI Chitz-en-Mi HI.) Flow is a state of being in which the work you are doing is so intense and immersive, you can forget that you actually exist – corporeally. You might lose track of time, forget to eat, and let those aforementioned children watch way too much TV, as you write away, ecstatically.

Flow is why many of us would be happy to write whether or not we get paid. It is what makes life fulfilling, the secret to happiness. Writing is not the only way to find flow, people achieve it in all sorts of works, and walks of life. Csikszentmihalyi interviewed hundreds of creators to get firsthand descriptions of what flow is. This is how one poet described it.

“It’s like opening a door floating in the middle of nowhere and all you have to do is go and turn the handle and open it to let yourself sink into it. You can’t particularly force yourself into it, you have to just float. If there’s any gravitational pull, it’s from the outside world trying to keep you from getting in to flow.”

Ted Talk 2004

What is Flow?

For now, let us understand that flow is awesome. It is for your brain what sex is for your body. Ecstasy.

Ecstasy is from the Greek to “stand to the side,” or to be removed from oneself, or one’s everyday existence. Mental ecstasy is the state of flow – a forgetting of all that is around you and experiencing a spontaneous flow of work.

How to Get in to Flow

So, is there a secret, easy, backdoor to flow? If flow is like mental sex, is there a mental red light district where we can hack a tawdry fling with flow? Is there a password or secret code that can open that door in the imaginary sky?

One reason we choose distraction instead of writing is because it can feel akin to flow. Watching TV or a sports game, cooking or even cleaning can feel like flow. It can help us escape our anxieties however briefly. But as good as flow feels, not achieving flow can be torturous.

Writers Wanna Write

You can see from the model above, that FLOW happens when you are at a high challenge level and high skill level compared to your everyday life.

• FLOW is at a very high level of both skill and challenge.
• If your skill level is slightly lower, but the challenge is still engaging you are in a state of AROUSAL.
• By contrast if your skill is higher than needed, and challenge level is low, you might be in a state of CONTROL.
• Lower challenge = RELAXATION.
• A lower challenge, and not using your available skills = BOREDOM or worse, APATHY.
• WORRY and ANXIETY occur when challenges outpace skill. Learning is required.
• It is easiest to enter FLOW from AROUSAL, by learning or mastering a new skill or subskill. This could even be accidental, and thereby thrill you.
• You can also enter from CONTROL, by raising the bar, upping the challenge.
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The next time you want to merge with your work, and enjoy that exhilarating day of flow, consider where you are in relation to your skill and challenge level. Are you biting off more than you can chew? Are you phoning it in, fearing the greater challenge? Are you keeping yourself in the ANXIETY or WORRY zones unnecessarily? Perhaps you’re better than you think?

Allow yourself to believe in the possibilities and enter AROUSAL. Learn what you must from experimentation or from others and slip into FLOW. We’ll see you on the other side. (You naughty, naughty thing)