The Power of Flow

You are doing some work and then your phone pops with a notification, you check your phone and it’s a message from your loved one/best friend and you keep on chatting with them while doing your work. Such things happen every time for example you are eating food, watching television, and using the phone at the same time. We, humans, think that we are good at multitasking but is it true? Let us find out. According to psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, we should concentrate only on one thing at a time and develop a “Flow” in whatever you are doing.

What is Flow?

Think of the thing you enjoy and like to do the most whether it is painting, singing, etc. Because you love doing that thing you get completely immersed in it without having a second thought. Hours pass like minutes and you are still not bored of doing it. The experience itself is so enjoyable that you will do it even at great cost.

How does the flow develop?

The flow develops by concentrating on the task you love and pouring your soul into it to complete the task. But when you are multitasking you are unable to concentrate on one task which wastes your time and energy. When you are doing your favorite thing time flies by but when you are doing something in which you are least interested, time stops by. This is because you develop flow while doing your favorite tasks so do such tasks more often and focus on one task at a time.

Perks of Concentrating on a Single Task

• Concentrating on a single task helps you achieve flow more easily and it increases your productivity. While multitasking your productivity decreases by 60 percent even if you don’t feel like that.

• You’ll rarely make mistakes by focusing on a single task whereas you tend to make more mistakes while multitasking.

• You’ll feel calm while doing a single task whereas you get confused and stressed while doing multiple tasks at a time. You do so many things at a time and you need to control everything where you’ll tend to make mistakes.

• When you focus on a single task you are totally into the task which increases your creativity as you are not thinking of anything else at that time.

• Practicing this will always keep your mind focused on a place; you will live in the present moment without worrying about the past or future.

Strategies to maintain the flow

1. Choose a task that is neither difficult nor easy for you to do. If you are doing a task which you know very well you’ll get bored easily. If you are good at painting and start doing the painting of the same style you’ll get bored and try to look for something different. In the same way, having zero knowledge about something will also bore you. Suppose you are reading a book related to Zoology but you don’t know anything about it you’ll be bored. So choose tasks leveling up the difficulty step by step which will make you complete it. Try to slowly incorporate things into your life that seemed impossible.

2. Learn to concentrate on a single task. The greatest obstacles we face today are of technology which comes with so many distractions. Your phone is continuously popping notifications and you forget what you were doing. If you have to gather information on a topic and you are using Google you’ll probably end up searching for different stuff. Technology is great if you have control over it. We think that multitasking will save our time but scientific evidence shows the complete opposite of it. Switching between tasks wastes your energy and you are not able to focus on a single task. According to Csikszentmihalyi, in order to focus on a task, you need to be in a distraction free environment or to have control over what you are doing at every moment.

Ideas to keep yourself focused

1. Don’t look at the phone screen for the first hour when you wake up and before going to bed.

2. Turn off your phone while working or keep it on silent mode.

3. Train your mind to be in the present moment.

4. Whenever you get bored do meditation, go for a walk, painting or anything that fascinates you.

5. Work in a place where you don’t get distracted.

6. Give yourself a reward after completing a task.

Meditation is a way to train our mind to be in place and an exercise for our mental muscles. Meditation calms and soothes our minds. But when heard about meditation everyone has a question “What’s the right way to do it?” Just focus on your breath, God, or anything else. Thoughts are going to come so let them come and go. Apart from that have a goal or meaningful desire to accomplish as your goal will make you do things.

Conclusion:

Multitasking will waste your time and double your work so focus on a single task and be productive. Achieving flow in work helps you to concentrate and excel in work. Do small things each day that will take you out of your comfort and keep moving forward. Focus on the process, you will automatically get results. Many great people know the power of flow and they have poured their lives to achieve their goals. Focus on the things you love, create a flow in it, and keep growing.