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When 50% of your employees are quiet quitters, only 21% are engaged and 43% report being stressed the day before, it is no surprise why companies are looking for ways to engage employees. The challenge is that employees tend to be engaged when they have the right amount of work difficulty that they can handle, without stressing out. Neither boredom nor anxiety are positive experiences. But apparently, getting to this sweet spot is not as easy as it seems, especially in a global crisis where if you didn’t leave for another job, you or your coworkers may be quietly fired. Is it possible to help employees to have an optimal experience during work hours?
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi in his national bestseller book Flow, confirms that is possible. The optimal experience is also called a state of flow, and it is the ideal state where the person can find themselves enjoying their work, feeling productive, totally immersed in what they are doing, and performing at their best.
Usually, people find it easier to get into flow when doing something they enjoy and are good at, like making music, rock climbing, dancing, sailing, and chess. I remember finding flow when I am skating, reading, or writing. While companies and leaders should find ways to make this experience more achievable for their employees, employees can also look for ways to achieve flow by themselves.
Rules to achieve flow state
Mihaly explains that “Flow is not the same for everyone, even doing the same activities. How we feel at any given moment of a flow activity is strongly influenced by the objective conditions; some patterns are enjoyable, but whether (we enjoy) or not is ultimately up to us.”
The essential steps in this process to achieve an optimal experience are:
1) Set a goal, and as many subgoals as are realistically feasible, to make it more manageable. When the goals seem too big or complex, you may tend to procrastinate to avoid working on them. Many people may even get depressed or anxious, by the feeling of not being able to start, being too slow, and not being able to achieve their goal.
2) Find ways of measuring progress. By setting subgoals or milestones, just like you do in climbing, or dancing a choreography, achieving every step makes it easier to feel you are moving forward. If you are coding or writing a book, seeing how every step gets you closer to the end goal keeps you motivated instead of overwhelmed by the big project ahead.
3) Keep concentrating on what you are doing. You may get frustrated or anxious if instead of thinking about what you are doing, you keep thinking about the result, what other people will say or how much you still have pending. Just keep the focus on the now, your current task, to prevent your mind from wandering.
4) Develop the skills necessary to interact with the opportunities available. If the activity is too difficult, even divided into manageable parts, it will be hard to get into your optimal experience. You may get to the state of flow over time if you keep practicing, learn more about it, or ask for help. Don’t suffer for so long, just do what it takes to develop those skills.
5) Keep raising the stakes if the activity becomes boring. As we keep getting better at the activity we will need new challenges. Find ways or ask your supervisor to make it more complex. Be brave! Soon enough you will be enjoying it again.
By definition, flow can be achieved doing any type of activity, even cleaning or simply walking if you apply these rules. It is not going to be easy to transform your own tasks at work into a flow, but it is possible! Why not try it out?
