Flow

Individuals across various occupations vary in their attitudes toward their work. Some view their work as a job, an unfulfilling but necessary way to make money. Others view their work as a career, an opportunity to advance from one position to a better position. The rest—those who view their work as a calling, a fulfilling and socially useful activity—report the highest satisfaction with their work and with their lives (Dik & Duffy, 2012; Wrzesniewski & Dutton, 2001; Wrzesniewski et al., 1997).

This finding would not surprise Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi [chick-SENT-me-hi] (1990, 1999). He observed that our quality of life increases when we are purposefully engaged. Between the anxiety of being overwhelmed and stressed, and the apathy of being underwhelmed and bored, lies a zone in which we experience flow. When was the last time you experienced flow? Perhaps you can recall being in a zoned-out flow state while texting or playing a video game. If so, then perhaps you can sympathize with the two Northwest Airlines pilots who in 2009 were so focused on their laptops that they missed their control tower’s messages. The pilots flew 150 miles past their Minneapolis destination—and lost their jobs.

Csikszentmihalyi formulated the flow concept after studying artists who spent hour after hour painting or sculpting with focused concentration. Immersed in a project, they worked as if nothing else mattered, and then, when finished, they promptly forgot about it. The artists seemed driven less by external rewards—money, praise, promotion—than by the intrinsic rewards of creating their art. Nearly 200 other studies confirm that intrinsic motivation enhances performance (Cerasoli et al., 2014).

Csikszentmihalyi studied dancers, chess players, surgeons, writers, parents, mountain climbers, sailors, and farmers. His research included Australians, North Americans, Koreans, Japanese, and Italians. Participants ranged in age from the teen years to the golden years. A clear principle emerged: It’s exhilarating to flow with an activity that fully engages our skills (Fong et al., 2015). Flow experiences boost our sense of self-esteem, competence, and well-being. Idleness may sound like bliss, but purposeful work enriches our lives. Busy people are happier (Hsee et al., 2010; Robinson & Martin, 2008). One research team interrupted people on about a quarter-million occasions (using a phone app), and found people’s minds wandering 47 percent of the time. They were, on average, happier when their mind was not wandering (Killingsworth & Gilbert, 2010).

Finding Your Own Flow, and Matching Interests to Work

Want to identify your own path to flow? You can start by pinpointing your strengths and the types of work that may prove satisfying and successful. Marcus Buckingham and Donald Clifton (2001) suggested asking yourself four questions.

  1. What activities give me pleasure? Bringing order out of chaos? Playing host? Helping others? Challenging sloppy thinking?
  2. What activities leave me wondering, “When can I do this again?” rather than, “When will this be over?”
  3. What sorts of challenges do I relish? And which do I dread?
  4. What sorts of tasks do I learn easily? And which do I struggle with?

You may find your skills engaged and time flying when teaching or selling or writing or cleaning or consoling or creating or repairing. If an activity feels good, if it comes easily, if you look forward to it, then look deeper. You’ll see your strengths at work (Buckingham, 2007). For a free (requires registration) assessment of your own strengths, take the “Brief Strengths Test” at www.AuthenticHappiness.sas.upenn.edu.

This is an image of a boy reading his smartphone with several other boys and girls sitting around a table reading books.

Life disrupted Playing and socializing online are ever-present sources of distraction. It takes energy to resist checking our phones, and time to refocus mental concentration after each disruption. Such frequent interruptions disrupt flow, so it’s a good idea to instead schedule regular breaks for checking our handheld devices.

The U.S. Department of Labor also offers a career interest questionnaire through its Occupational Information Network (O*NET). At MyNextMove.org/explore/ip you will need about 10 minutes to respond to 60 items, indicating how much you would like or dislike activities ranging from building kitchen cabinets to playing a musical instrument. You will then receive feedback on how strongly your responses reflect six interest types (Holland, 1996):

Finally, depending on how much training you are willing to complete, you will be shown occupations that fit your interest pattern (selected from a national database of 900+ occupations).

“ Find a job you love, and you’ll never work another day of your life.”

Facebook hiring video, 2016

Do what you love and you will love what you do. A career counseling science aims, first, to assess people’s differing values, personalities, and, especially, interests, which are remarkably stable (Dik & Rottinghaus, 2013). (Your job may change, but your interests today will likely still be your interests in 10 years.) Second, it aims to alert people to well-matched vocations—vocations with a good person-environment fit. One study assessed 400,000 high school students’ interests and then followed them over time. The take-home finding: “Interests uniquely predict academic and career success over and above cognitive ability and personality” (Rounds & Su, 2014). Sixty other studies confirm the point both for students in school and workers on the job: Interests predict both performance and persistence (Nye et al., 2012). Lack of job fit can fuel frustration, resulting in unproductive and even hostile work behavior (Harold et al., 2016). One fee-based online service, jobzology.com, was developed by I/O psychologists to implement career counseling science. First, it assesses people’s interests, values, personalities, and workplace culture preferences. It then suggests occupations and connects them to job listings.