How to Find Flow and Unlock Creativity

I grew up in Europe and World War II caught me when I was between 7 and 10 years old I realized how few of the grown-ups that I knew were able to withstand the uh tragedies that the war visited on them how few of them could even resemble a normal contented satisfied happy life once their job their home their security was destroyed by the war so I became interested in understanding what contributed to a life that was worth living I tried as a teenager to read philosophy to get involved in art religion and many other ways that I could see as a possible answer to that question and finally I ended up encountering Psychology by chance actually I was at a ski Resort in Switzerland without any money to enjoy myself because this snow had melted and I didn't have money to go to a movie but I found that there was to be a presentation by someone in in the center of Sur it was about flying saucers and I thought well since I can't go to the movies at least I will go for free to listen to find Sausage the man who Ted that evening was very interesting instead of talking that little green man talk about how the psyche of the Europeans had been traumatized by the war they projecting flying saucers into the sky he talked about how the mandalas of ancient Hindu religion were kind of projected as a attempt to regain some sense of order after the chaos of War I started reading his books after that lecture and that was Carl Yung then I came to this country to study echology and I started trying to understand these roots of Happiness about 30% of the people surveyed in the United States since 1956 say that their life is very happy and that hasn't changed at all whereas personal income on a scale held constant for inflation has more than doubled almost tripled in that period but increases in material wellbeing don't seem to affect how happy people are I try to understand where in everyday life in our normal experience do we feel really happy I began to look at creative people artists and scientists trying to understand what made them essentially spending their lives doing things for which many of them didn't expect either fame or Fortune but which made their life meaningful one of the leading composers of American music back in the '70s describes how he feels when composing is going well he starts by describing it as an ecstatic State ecstasy became an analogy for a mental state where you feel that you're not doing your ordinary everyday routines so ecstasy is essentially a stepping into an alternative reality when we think about the civilizations that we look up to as having been Pinnacles of human achievement whether it's China Greece Hindu civilization the Mayas or Egyptians what we know about them is really about their ecstasies not about their everyday life we know the temples they build so people could come to experience a different reality we know about the circuses the Arenas the theaters a Greek Amphitheater is a place for Ecstasy but this man doesn't need to go to there he needs just a piece of paper where he can put down little marks he can imagine sounds that had not existed before in that particular combination once he gets to that point of beginning to create a new reality that is moment of ecstasy this is so intense and experience that it feels almost as if it didn't exist and that sounds like a kind of a romantic exaggeration but actually our nervous system is incapable of processing more than about 110 bits of information per second in order to hear me and understand what I'm saying you need to process about 60 bits per second that's why you can't understand more than two people talking to you when you are really involved in this completely engaging process of creating something new he doesn't have enough attention left over to monitor how his body feels or his problems at home he can't feel even that he's hungry or tired his body disappears his identity disappears from his Consciousness because he doesn't have enough attention to really do well something that requires a lot of concentration and at the same time to feel that he exists so existence temporarily suspended he says that his hand seems to be moving by itself this automatic spontaneous process that he's describing can only happen to someone who is very well trained and has developed technique you can't be creating anything with less than 10 years of technical knowledge immersion in a particular te whether it's mathematics or music it takes that long to begin to change something in a way that it's better than what was there before when that happens the music just flows out I call this type of experience the flow experience and it happens in different reals effortless spontaneous feeling that you get when you enter into this ecstatic State this PO describes it as opening a door that FL up in the sky very similar description to what Albert Einstein gave as to how he imagined the forces of Relativity Olympic skater the same essential description of the phenomenology of the inner state of the person you merge yourself with the music if you want a meaningful job and successful job you define success as something that helps others and at the same times makes you feel feel happy as you are working at it it's a kind of a passion that comes from doing the best and having flow while you are working establish a place of work where you can feel the joy of innovation be aware of their mission to society and work to their heart's content when we do studies we have done over 8,000 interviews of people from Dominican monks blind nuns Himalayan climbers to Navajo chards who enjoy their work and regardless of the culture regardless of Education or there are these seven conditions that seem to be there when a person is in FLA there's this Focus that once it becomes intense leaves a sense of ecstasy a sense of clarity you know exactly what you want to do from one moment to the other you get immediate feedback you know that what you need to do it's possible to do even though difficult and sense of time disappears you forget yourself you feel part of something larger and once those conditions are present what you're doing becomes worth doing for its own sake in our studies we represent the everyday life of people in this simple scheme we can measure this very precise the electronic pages that go off 10 times a day and whenever they go off you say what you're doing how you feel where you are what you're thinking about and two things that we measure is the amount of challenge people experience at that moment and the amount of skills they feel they have at that moment for each person we can establish a average level of Challenge and skill which will be different from that of anybody else if we know what that set point is we can predict fairly accurately when you will be in FL it will be when your challenges are higher than average and skills are higher than average you may be doing things so differently from other people but for everyone that flow channel will be when you're doing what you really like to do play the piano be with your best friend perhaps work housel is where most people learn from because that's where they are pushed beyond their comfort zone your skills are not quite as high as they should be but you can move into flow fairly easily by developing a little more skill control is also a good place to be because there you feel comfortable but not very excited it's not very challenging anymore and if you want to enter flow from control you have to increase challenge so those two are ideal and complementary areas from which flow is easy to go into the other combinations of challeng and SK become progressively less optimal relaxation is fine you still feel okay boredom begins to be very aversive apathy becomes very negative you don't feel that you're doing anything you don't use your skills there's no challenge unfortunately a lot of people's experience is an apathy the question we are trying to address is how to put more and more of everyday life in that flow channel that is the kind of challenge that we are trying to understand some of you obviously know that how to do that spontaneously without any advice but unfortunately a lot of people don't and that's what our mandate is to do okay everybody until next time ask questions don't accept the status quo and be curious [Music]