Beyond Boredom and Anxiety: How Flow provides the framework for Self-Development.

Whenever you hear someone talking about flow state online, this is probably the concept of flow that you’re most familiar with:

“Flow state is achieved when the skills of the participant and the challenge they are presented with are at a perfect match”:

If your skills are too poor, the task is more likely to result in anxiety. If your skills are too great, the task is more likely to result in boredom. It is when a task stretches us to the upper limit of our ability, we are brought out of our comfort zone into a state of flow. 

While this is surely one of the most important tenets of the flow state experience, we can dive a little deeper into how we can utilize this to greater effect in our day to day. Flow state experience facilitate what Mihaly Czikszentmihalyi described as ‘increasing the complexity of self’. Let’s dive a little further into what this means and how we can use this to our advantage.

Skills Matching Ability

Imagine you are going for a new PR on the bench-press.

You’ve spent weeks preparing to increase how much weight you can push.

You prepare your mental to accomplish this record you’ve been aiming toward.

You go down to the bar, and although at a great effort, it is moving far easier than you expected.

“Did I … Do that? Could I do that?”

This is the return to a more complex self after a flow experience.

The Complexity of the Self

The loss of self-consciousness is another one of the characteristics of the flow state experience. The entirety of concentration is spent on the task at hand (because the challenge perceived demands it so), with all current abilities put forth toward the task. Once the flow experience has concluded, however, the individual returns to their sense of self once again, although slightly different. 

Looking back on the self after a flow experience, the complexity of the individual has increased. As our sense of self is paused to stretch our limits of our abilities, we return to our self a changed person: we have achieved something that previously was not an ability in our sense of self. You have become stronger, wiser, more resilient, possibly kinder and more understanding through the process.

Stages of Self-Complexity 

This process of increasing the complexity of the individual has two stages: differentiation and integration. The differentiation is how our sense of self has changed from how it was previously seen, differentiated from the previous self and those around you. You have achieved something you have never done before, and likely few around you have accomplished. 

The second stage of this process is the integration. Having done something new, stretching the concept of the self, you return with greater complexity than you were before. You can now also do this. It also integrates you into those around you, having greater-self esteem and confidence to return to the social structure. 

It is through this means that I consider flow the best model for self-development.

Skills and the self: How to leverage Self-Complexity 

While it’s good to know the theory, how do we practically use this theory to our advantage?

The flow theory states that this self-complexity is arrived at by matching skills and abilities, where either boredom or anxiety lay on either imbalance.

Like in weight-lifting, we won't grow any muscle or strength without progressive overload,  continuing to stretch the limits of our abilities.

What must also be considered here is the perception of the challenge and ability of any given moment. By virtue of understanding ourselves we can:

Like all skills, it takes effort and time to learn about ourselves and utilizing the flow framework. By continuing to add complexity to the sense of self, you open a gateway for infinite  self-development, to know yourself even better as you continue to grow :)

That’s all for today

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