Do you achieve flow at work?

What percentage of time do you experience flow at work? (Choose closest that apply)

  • Almost never.

  • Infrequently. Less than 1% of the time.

  • Rarely. Between 1% and 5% of the time.

  • Not often. Between 6% and 10% of the time.

  • I'm familiar with flow. Between 11% and 20% of the time.

  • I'm flow rich. I achieve flow more than 21% of the time at work.

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Men_in_Boxes

Men_in_Boxes

Banned
At work, how often to you achieve the flow state?

Psychological Flow captures the positive mental state of being completely absorbed, focused, and involved in your activities at a certain point in time, as well as deriving enjoyment from being engaged in that activity.

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Less and less. I think it's because I don't like my job anymore. Focusing at all is becoming really hard, let alone achieving flow
 
This is a topic I think a lot about. Somewhat rare for me at work, but when I'm drawing/painting it's nearly 100% of the time. Reeeeeaaally depends on what I'm doing at work. No 2 days are alike really.
 
I work out of a sense of fear. With a kid, mortgage, and now pets to take care of, I do whatever needs to be done to keep the checks coming in.

Doesn't make me to happy or proud to admit that, but I suspect I'm not terribly alone in it.

Thus, I flow when I'm on my own time, and I have no one to answer to but myself.
 
I'm a software developer, with a lot of autonomy (or so I think), I try to optimise for this state. It's why and when I love software development
 
Basically all the time. I don't jave set hours, so when I get out of the "flow" I go do something else. Gym, walk outside, game etc. Usually do an hour of good productive work, then do something else, then come back for an hour or so.
 
I listen to music on headphones often, and one of the ways I can tell I've achieved flow is when even the music drops completely into the background. Like, I'm not processing the melody or anything.
 
I'd say less and less. The more my company keeps growing, the more time I have to spend on meetings. Having to stop whatever I'm doing to attend a meeting really kills any flow.
 
I'm an artist! I'm always on the flow… listening to music.

unless I'm designing for a client!!! Then that becomes stressful.
 
I'm a teacher and get into the flow quite often. From preparing materials to teaching.

Sometimes it's a problem when teaching though as I lose track of time.
 
Tams said:
I'm a teacher and get into the flow quite often. From preparing materials to teaching.

Sometimes it's a problem when teaching though as I lose track of time.
Click to expand...
What has more impact on your flow state? The students or the subject matter your passionate about?
 
I thought we called it "being in the zone".
Anyway, not really at my current job that isn't challenging enough, but that's why I'm changing.
 
Tieno said:
What has more impact on your flow state? The students or the subject matter your passionate about?
Click to expand...
Both vary. I teach a lot of students, who are all their own people, and my interest in different topics varies.

To really get into the flow I need at least a decently behaved class and a decently interesting topic (for me).

If you're pushing me for a answer though; I'd say the students. If they are doing well, then it goes very smoothly, even with content that I at least find dull. But a lot of the work is trying to make nothing dull.
 
I put flow rich as right now work is very interesting. But in general, it really depends on the projects I'm working on.

I can get lost for hours in Excel but sadly that's only a small portion of what I do.
 
Yes, though it varies. Being a programmer is akin to puzzle-solving, so if I'm working in a language I enjoy, on a part of a codebase that presents an engaging problem, and without someone else's bugs and bad design impeding me, then flow is relatively easy to achieve.

It helps that my PC is configured very specifically for this - between a good ergo keyboard and numerous linux customizations designed to avoid context-switching (ex. needing to reach for the mouse), it's very much a built-for-purpose programming setup.

Unfortunately, my work currently centers around the Godot game engine, which I have gradually come to hate due to questionable design and implementation decisions that are too numerous to list here.

Those snags are killer for causing frustration, stress and anxiety through various means, so the frequency of flow more or less depends on "are you writing GDScript or a Rust module today?", with the latter being a significantly better experience by virtue of getting me further away from the busted stuff and closer toward an ecosystem that goes out of its way to assist the user instead of fighting them.

When the flow does happen though, that sense of getting shit done and getting it done optimally is a great feeling.
 
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yuuup working in health care so I really make an effort to achieve flow state since the work is challenging and the stakes are high
 
Karonoth said:
I'd say less and less. The more my company keeps growing, the more time I have to spend on meetings. Having to stop whatever I'm doing to attend a meeting really kills any flow.
Click to expand...
100% agree. It takes me about a half hour to hit the flow zone. If I have a three-hour block with no interruptions, I'm in the zone for those 2.5 hours. Break it up with a couple meetings and those three hours mean zero flow.
 
Used to. Now I am at a point of decision making, meetings, etc. Once in a while I will tear a process or project apart - which I love - but it's becoming rare to get in a flow. Miss the days of working hard, crunching, and having constant pressure. Under lesser circumstances, I bore quickly but still enjoy what I do - just less. I get my flow jam outside of work mostly.
 
Men_in_Boxes said:
At work, how often to you achieve the flow state?

Psychological Flow captures the positive mental state of being completely absorbed, focused, and involved in your activities at a certain point in time, as well as deriving enjoyment from being engaged in that activity.

501210_Thumb_400.jpg


Flow-Mihaly-Csikszentmihalyi-Mbaknol-e1397985855789.jpg.webp


giphy+%283%29.gif
Click to expand...

It is hard to achieve at the beginning, for me, but after some warm-up, it can last all day.
 
Tams said:
I'm a teacher and get into the flow quite often. From preparing materials to teaching.

Sometimes it's a problem when teaching though as I lose track of time.
Click to expand...
When my conference period was at the end of the day my flow was non-existent, I would often marathon the day and would just zone out the last period. That was only once about 12 years ago.
This year is the first year where we don't have so many meetings due to sub shortages. That would kill my flow more than anything as I needed to plan for a half-day sub and most of them that we would hire would sit on their phone or sleep.
 
It depends. If i'm working on drainage/water stuff it bores me to tears. If i0m working on a structure i can get quite absorbed to the point of not paying attention to anyone.
 
Karonoth said:
I'd say less and less. The more my company keeps growing, the more time I have to spend on meetings. Having to stop whatever I'm doing to attend a meeting really kills any flow.
Click to expand...
Preach.

Useless meetings are the worst. And during the height of the pandemic, it feels like the number of meetings almost quadrupled for me. One of the reasons: what would have been a simple, quick face-to-face chat or a phone call from a coworker during non-Covid times now became a scheduled 30-minute meeting.

This is why I work with people in my division to jam as many meetings as possible during a particular day/time of the week. (For example, try to have all meetings on Mondays so that the rest of the work week can be spent... you know, getting actual work done 😂)
 
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