I’ve been reading Daniel H. Pinks new book called Drive – The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us and I am really enjoying it and I’ll be sharing a few thoughts in future blogs.
One section of the book includes Strategies For Awakening Your Motivation and one of them offers the following concept about Flow from pages 153 – 154.
The following thoughts on Flow remind me of my franchisee days back in the early 90’s with Tony Robbins where I was facilitating Tony’s The Power To Influence – The Sales Mastery Course.
The Power To Influence – The Sales Mastery Course included the idea of tracking your mood via a Mood Meter and you can find a copy of the Mood Meter at the end of this blog.
From Drive – The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us, by Daniel H. Pink – pages 153-154
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi did more than discover the concept of “flow”. He also introduced an ingenious new technique to measure it. Csikszentmihalyi and his University of Chicago team equipped participants in their research studies with electronic pagers. Then they paged people at random intervals (approximately eight times a day) for a week, asking them to describe their mental state at that moment. Compared with previous methods, these real-time reports proved far more honest and revealing.
You can use Csikszentmihalyi’s methodological innovation in your own quest for mastery by giving yourself a “flow test.” Set a reminder on your computer or mobile phone to go off at forty random times in a week. Each time your device beeps, write down what you’re doing, how you’re feeling, and whether you’re in a “flow.” Record your observations, look at the patterns, and consider the following questions:
• Which moments produced feelings of “flow”? Where were you? What were you working on? Who were you with?
• Are certain times of day more flow-friendly than others? How could you restructure your day based on your findings?
• How might you increase the number of optimal experiences and reduce the moments when you felt disengaged or distracted?
• If you’re having doubts about your job or career, what does this exercise tell you about your true source of intrinsic motivation?
International Values and Behavioral Analyst, Business Coach, Speaker and Author
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