Flowing into 2020
Not me, but this looks like someone in the middle of a flow experience. Photo by Johannes Waibel on Unsplash
At this time of year, many of us reflect on the year that has passed and what we would like to achieve in the year ahead. Quite often we can approach the year with excitement and good intentions...to be hit by the reality of the grind. So how can we help ourselves and our teams to do better work in 2020 without burning out? Here are some thoughts...
I am a (very occasional) snowboarder and I am currently in the middle of the longest consecutive period that I have had on snow. What I am noticing is that I am starting to get better at snowboarding by virtue of spending a bit more time on the slopes. It is also because I have a metric for the runs that I choose - if I am not falling over, it's getting too easy. What I may have stumbled across is a crude way of matching my capability with the challenge that I am taking on.
Funnily enough, this concept - of matching the challenge with my capability is almost the exact definition of my word for the year...FLOW.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi coined the term "flow". Appropriately, it is a fluid term that is generally accepted to characterise a state where someone is "being completely involved in an activity for its own sake". It's a pretty cool experience. Csikszentmihalyi goes so far as to describe it as central to optimal experience for humans.
That seems like a pretty worthwhile pursuit to me! I'll go into a bit more detail on how next week, but let's get our heads around the concept and why it could help us all in 2020.
Csikszentmihalyi has studied flow and optimal experience for decades. What has come through his research over the years is the graph below that describes flow as happening when we engage on activities that are a combination of high challenge and high skill.
A conceptualisation of Flow as presented by Mikhail Csikszentmihalyi. This one came from Wikipedia.
For my own use in 2020, I have modified the dimensions to include Challenge (the same) and Capability (different).
In my mind, my capability is the product of my skill level and my capacity. This capacity could be my time, my energy, my resources. In snowboarding terms, my capacity is limited as I get more tired towards the end of the day or when I choose the wrong goggle lens and can't see as well as I'd like. In a work context, this seems important. So often, we assume that because we or our team have the skills to achieve the task that we will be able to achieve our goal. It is worth considering whether we also have sufficient capacity.
In 2019, I spent too much of my time in the top left (Anxiety / Arousal) and then heading to the bottom right (Relaxation / Boredom) to recover my energy. These are valid choices - when they are deliberate choices. I found myself there by default after I ran out of steam. There is a good chance that you and/or your team can relate.
It's often that we are running low on capacity and it's not that we lack the skills. To achieve what we want to this year, we might benefit from managing our capacity.
What this means for me is creating the space, the habits, and processes that allow me to have more capacity. It is getting sleep, exercising and spending as little time as possible on tasks that I am able to hand over to others. In your team, it is likely to mean some decisions about how you work together, what work you will prioritise and carving out time for regenerating energy (individually and collectively).
The reason to pursue flow with your team boils down to this:
To do more work, better work...with more ease.
So often, we assume that better and more work requires us to work harder. Most of our teams are working as hard as we can and that makes the idea of better work either unobtainable or unappealing (if it means more hours of harder work). Decoupling working harder and working better in our mind could free us to move towards an optimal experience in our teams.
Here are a couple of questions to consider as you and your team look towards 2020:
How much harder could you and your team work in 2020? For how long?
How much better could you and your team work in 2020?