Posts Tagged ‘flow’
Can we be goal-oriented and mindful at the same time?
Goals and mindfulness are two of the most powerful concepts in contemporary psychology.
No doubt, when we are pursuing a goal, we pay attention to what we are doing. But at a cost. We also neglect what is going on around us.
When we pursue a goal, we are often “in flow”. It’s wonderful! We are fully engaged with what we are doing.
Yet, the surest sign that we are “in flow” is that we run late for the next meeting. We remember our flow experiences as much for the anger they arouse in other people as the joy we experience when we are fully engrossed in what we are doing!
This post is a cerebral account. I am trying to understand the issues.
- How can I be goal-oriented and focused on what is going on around me?
- How can I pursue goals of the future yet be ‘fully present’.
Poets often solve our conundrums!
The poets have often already asked and answered what we want to know. Today I found a poem from Rainer Marie Rilke: A Walk and I hope it will help me understand how to be goal-oriented and mindful at the same time.
So often when an ideas in psychology is unsatisfactory, western ideas about time seem to be the root cause of the problem. Rilke’s poem recasts the ideas from temporal space to physical space and helps us imagine alternative ways of understanding the world.
Rilke suggests that that when we see a goal “on our horizon”, we draw it into our present. The present and future are merged and there is no difference between them.
When we look at the horizon we are energized to get up and walk. And motivated perhaps to ignore the glorious flowers right near us.
The world exists because we pay attention to it and it takes its form because of our attention!
Equally, another person standing right next to us is in another world because they are paying attention to different things. They are even on a different time plane because their future changes their present!
The future and the present are not two different places ~ nor is one better than the other
Rilke talks in the poem about the pleasure of dreams. He is not saying, though, that dreams are better than the present. He is saying the future and the present are one place. And whatever we believe about the future, changes the present. Our dreams change the present moment.
How the future can fix the present
Sometimes, in those moments when we don’t like the present moment, we could look again at our horizon.
When we don’t like the present, before we complain, maybe we could run an exercise of looking at three different horizons? If one of the versions of the present becomes more enjoyable ~ could we live from there?
Here is Rainer Marie Rilke’s poem, The Walk, translated by Robert Bly.
A Walk
My eyes already touch the sunny hill,
going far ahead of the road I have begun.
So we are grasped by what we cannot grasp;
it has inner light, even from a distance-
and charges us, even if we do not reach it,
into something else, which, hardly sensing it,
we already are; a gesture waves us on
answering our own wave…
but what we feel is the wind in our faces.
Translated by Robert Bly
Rainer Maria Rilke
PS What is the copyright on this poem and if someone wanted to by a copy, what would they buy? Is there an Amazon link I could add here?
#1 my career is a journey to find my people
A good performer jumps on stage, looks out at the audience, and thinks, “Here I am!”
A great performer jumps on stage, looks out at the audience, and thinks, “There you are!”
Steve Rapson from Art of the Solo Performer
contributed by DW from Connecticut, USA
and for #2 thru #1001 visit Music Thoughts
Complicated vs Complex
I am so chuffed to see my post on Complicatedness and Complexity take off – even if belatedly.
The difference between the complicated and complexity is important. We love the complex sound of music and are quickly tired of the repetitive noise of a jackhammer.
And complicatedness wears us out in seconds. Meetings which are run around the manager’s whim leave the rest of us to hang about like spare parts. Not knowing when our delayed flight will resume and not being able to call ahead to rearrange our transport and meetings renders us astonishingly irritable. Internet banking cluttered with advertising and instructions below the fold don’t allow flow.
The opposite of complicated is flow and we do know how to make flow.
#1 The task must allow us to act autonomously
All the information must be in front of us. We shouldn’t have to open dozens of files, folders and notebooks to find it. Nor should we have to ask anyone. Eveything we need should be in front of us and obvious.
#2 The task must give us feedback
As soon as we try the task, it should be clear whether we are doing the right thing.
#3 The task must allow learning.
A toddler persists in putting a square into a round hole until they achieve the insight, quite accidentily, that the shapes and holes match. We like to learn. We don’t mind at all.
But we must have time to learn. Don’t shout at us or time us our while we figure things out.
#4 We must be allowed to finish.
Once we get going, we want to get everything done. Please don’t interrupt. Wait!
We also know how to test flow
It’s easy! We take the group who is likely to do the task and we let them do it. We watch. We learn where we have misunderstood their skills, needs and working conditions, and we redesign!
Complicated – how I hate it!
But then I’ve always been a flow junkie!
- Image via Wikipedia
Flow
Until today, I’ve always asked people about ‘flow’, activities which we love so much that we lose track of time. Every one knows what these are, of course, because we run late and get into trouble!
You should try asking people! It usually takes no more than 5 minutes to get a young person’s eyes to light up with delight as they recall what they love doing.
But then ask how they will make a living and their eyes dull over as they contemplate what worries them most.
How can we find the place where our deep gladness and the world’s hunger meets?
In days gone by, to find that place, we used to join an organization. The transitions between the stages of our lives where quite abrupt. We went to school where we knew people. Then we went to university and college where we started again. Then we did the same when we went to work.
With each change, we could trust the organization to provide the place where our own passions and the world’s needs met.
That’s no longer the case. Our careers have become less a set of “steps in a staircase” and more a trumpet shape as we take our deep gladness and expand it like a daffodil in bloom to ever widening interaction with the world.
I used to think I was quite innovative about honing in so quickly and easily on our experience of flow – the activities that bring the light to our eyes – our deep gladness.
I’m glad I do that. But it is not enough.
I also have to ask
- Who did you talk to today?
- What did you do or say that gave you immense pleasure and that was also appreciated by the other person?
It’s around this frontier that we can build a portfolio for a successful career.
Can young people tell me about the place where their deep gladness and the world’s hunger meets?
I must ask them. What will be the points of recognition? What is the equivalent of losing track of time? What body language tells us that we have found this place?
Can anyone help me?
3 fresh ideas in management
Posted on: April 12, 2008
1 Flow
I love flow. I know some people who think it is great to be in flow, or in the zone, for half-an-hour a day. I am a flow junkie. I go for all 24 hours counting a good sleep as good flow.
2 Crossing the Rubicon
But there is something I love more.
That is the rush when you have a crystal clear idea that you know will work and that is, in that instant, so obvious.
What is the name for that?
I know Peter Gollwitzer, the psychologist calls it “crossing the rubicon” – moving from wish to intent.
3 Corporate anthropology
This corporate anthropologist, studies the use of mobile phones by poor people and travels around the world studying the way phones are used.
My questions to you?
Why don’t we study flow a lot more than we do?
Why don’t we study people at work they way this guy studies phones?
Why aren’t we interested in why and when work is blissful and fun?
Why are aren’t we interested in making jobs as enjoyable as Nokia tries to make its phones?
I could do spend all day trying to make work fun and never get tired of it!! Could you? Do you?
flowing motion 
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