Notes on Flow

Flow is not about the end result. Preoccupation with result disrupts flow. Chess players achieve flow as do rock climbers. Purpose, a belief in the ability to achieve your aims alongside sufficient challenge. Outside considerations such as worries, status even self are not present once in flow. Happiness is not sought but is a biproduct. Zen buddhists speak of sweeping floors in such an engaged manner that a feeling of mastery delivers flow. When I began learning serious wood skills we often talked of being in this atate where every part of your consciosness is focussed on the task. What we made was irrelevant, it was, is all about the journey. Flow is focussed energy but has no bias for good or bad. In theory you could be in flow whilst engaged in vandalism. I think back at the makers I began with, they split off in to two groups. Some became diverted by results. This interest in design lead to unhappiness. Those who enjoyed process more than product are much happier people. Ritual. Repeated movements, religious or beaurocratic can deliver flow. Some find flow when reading novels. Some lack the skills of empathy and imagination to lose their sense of self and flow with the book. Flow can occur when skill matches the challenge at hand. You can not have flow withjout challenge or without skill. Any doing, cooking, cleaning, gardening. People get depressed when they can not find flow. Entropy begins, a sagging of energy, sometimes as you get older and can no longer be so athletic. Here you must learn new skills. You need the ability to be alone. No one can learn a skill like playing a musical instrument if they can not tolerate being on their own. They drop away, develope entropy, become average. Martial arts, playing instruments, drawing, painting. The notion of initial struggle is key to flow. Things that mimic struggle such as sports.
Flow is the state of the maker. The maker does. He is a doer. To get flow you must be doing. Drawing is doing yet elements of design are merely thinking about doing. There must be motion. Hand eye coordination is often important. Flow is not about the end rsult. It is about process. Designers are often too concerned with the product. Makers by necessity are concerned with getting there. But problem solving induces flow. It is forgetting all else to be focussed on the job in hand.