When you are really involved in this completely engaging process of creating something new – as this man does – he doesn’t have enough attention left over to monitor how his body feels or his problems at home. Because the composer is concentrating so hard on his music, he is using all his available bandwidth and there’s none left over to monitor his sense of self: Listening to someone speak takes up about 60 bits of neurological ‘bandwidth’, which explains why we can’t listen to more than one person at a time. Apparently our nervous system can only process about 110 bits of information per second. This sounds like a mystical experience, yet Csikszentmihalyi offers a scientific explanation. I just sit there watching it in a state of awe and wonderment. My hand seems devoid of myself, and I have nothing to do with what is happening. I have experienced this time and time again. You are in an ecstatic state to such a point that you feel as though you almost don’t exist. Intrinsic motivation – whatever produces flow becomes its own reward.Įarly in the talk, Csikszentmihalyi presents us with the following description by a leading composer, of his experience while composing music:.Timelessness – thoroughly focused on the present, our sin to pass by in minutes.A sense of serenity – no worries about oneself, and a feeling of growing beyond the boundaries of the ego.Knowing that the activity is doable – that skills are adequate to the task.Great inner clarity – knowing what needs to be done, and how well we are doing.A sense of ecstasy – of being outside everyday reality.Completely involved in what we are doing – focused, concentrated.In one of the slides in his TED presentation, Csikszentmihalyi outlines the main characteristics of flow, which you may relate to from your own experience: Flow can occur during any complex and difficult task, but you won’t be surprised to learn it is often experienced by people engaged in creative work, when it is called creative flow. Flow is his answer to the question ‘What makes human beings happy?’ – ‘An almost automatic, effortless, yet highly focused state of consciousness’ that we can experience when devoting ourselves to a meaningful challenge. In this video of his TED talk, he explains the concept of flow for which he is famous.
One of my favourite writers on creativity is the psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi.
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