The concept of flow is attributed to Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, a psychologist who spent more than 50 years traveling the world to understand what powered creativity.
He found there were moments where people felt like their work was effortless and outside of time. A state of being where they felt in control because their skills were well matched to the challenge they hoped to best. He called this 'Flow'.
A key point he emphasized is that the task needs to be the right amount of hard to get in flow. You’ll get bored with a simple task before you’re done. And the frustration surrounding an unreasonable task or one not relevant to your skill set is a clear barrier to finding your flow.
So, given that you have a nice meaty task, how do you get in flow and stay there?
Some things that we found to be helpful:
🧠 Do a brain-dump of everything on your mind related to the task at hand.
⬆️ Prioritize the top 1-3 tasks that need looking into.
👯♀️ Pull in a partner for anything that's intimidating or extra tricky. If you're stuck for 30 min on the same thing, it's probably best to have a second set of eyes?
What have you found to be helpful for getting in flow on meaty tasks?