Chad Smith: Flow

I recently just finished up a rough draft of a long poem I had been working on with the title “Bébé qui lutte avec des diables”. I would have actually had this post done sooner if I hadn’t been so obsessed with making the poem work right (oh and the LOST series finale also took the wind out of my writing sails). I’m not sure if it’s perfect yet but I’m setting it down for a few days and will pick it up later and hopefully have a fresh perspective.

According to my computer’s translator, Bébé qui lutte avec des diables is French for “Baby who battles with devils”. I don’t know French so I guess that’s right. I don’t know how to pronounce it either. I just know it by seeing it and haven’t tried to say the poem’s title out loud very often yet.

Another name I don’t know how to pronounce and mostly just see in writing is Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. I don’t have to spell much of it either now that search engines fill in what you’re looking for once you start typing Mihaly. I first heard of Csikszentmihalyi’s work in a great class I took in college called the Psychology of Creativity. It was a class on how to beef up one’s creativity. I bought his book, “Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience” a few years ago and hope to finish reading it some day.

Csikszentmihalyi is a psychology professor who coined the phrase “flow” to label that moment of being in the zone, bliss, or ecstasy when one is fully immersed in what he or she is doing. That state where you are concentrating entirely on what you are doing and time seems to fly by. Inspiration hits and you are feeling totally on fire and creative. Csikszentmihalyi believes that experiencing this optimal experience brings people true happiness and enhances quality of life.

I am a flow junkie. If I can get to that state while doing something creative then I am totally in heaven. It keeps me coming back to the creative process again and again. After that class on creativity and learning that getting lost in creating ones art was called flow, I started to notice when my own moments occurred.

The first time I really said, “Hey I was just experiencing flow” was when I was doing some digital video editing using the program Final Cut Pro on the computer for an editing class I was taking. I was so engrossed with putting my video project together that I didn’t notice 10 hours had just vanished and the school’s computer lab was closing for the night. Flow has hit me quite a bit while working on video projects. So much so that I had thought that I was going to change my major to video production (I didn’t).

I have experienced flow while drawing and working on art projects. I often get lost in my work when doing illustration or graphics on the computer as well. I hate to admit this of course but even during my day job I have experienced moments of total focus and creative bliss.

Gosh, this is starting to sound a tad naughty.

Until about a month ago I hadn’t really had a flow experience while writing. I was working on a poem, everything was coming together, I was in the zone, focused and it hit me, “Oh my gosh! People experience flow while writing poetry?” I am even more hooked now on writing poetry!

The question then is how in the world do we get into the flow and how do we stay there?

Unfortunately it seems like with what I have read (haven’t finished the book like I said) and studied so far, Csikszentmihalyi takes a Yoda sort of Zen stance when asked how one achieves flow. You won’t know how to get there but you’ll know when you have arrived. I guess that keeps the magic of a muse intact. He suggests paying attention and take note of your surroundings when you discover you have been in the flow. What were you doing to get there? Csikszentmihalyi says that the task that you are taking on has to be challenging, but not too challenging and you have to have the proper amount of skill to complete the task.

It goes back to the old standbys: What time of day do you do your best writing? Do you have a quiet place where you can go and be free from distractions? Are you well rested? Many writers have all kinds of rituals that they perform or things the put in place to get the writing flowing.

I have noticed a lot of creative ideas come to me while washing the dishes or mowing the lawn. I think Csikszentmihalyi was talking about this being a form of flow but I can’t find the exact passage for it now that I want to write about it (of course). Something about the repetition of mundane tasks, getting the brain and body into a rhythm that it can do automatically and not think about while your mind is freed up to wander to and think about creative things. My wife sometimes gets annoyed with how long washing the dishes takes me. Lots of ideas come to me and I have to stop and write them down. Once again my day job’s repetition is great for getting out of my head and thinking of more important things.

Music also helps me get my flow on. I listen to head phones all day at work and I find instrumental music, jazz and lately electronic dance music has been getting me into a trance like creative state. I think there is something to the repetition and the beats.

So had you heard of flow? Maybe you have experienced it but hadn’t heard of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi? I was hoping to give you a bit of an introduction and give you a springboard to do your own investigating. What methods do you use to get into the flow and bring the muse forth?

While looking up info on the nets to help with writing this post, I found quite a few blog posts that covered this subject much better than I. There is a ton of stuff out there if you are interested in investigating flow and creativity further. Here are a few good links that I looked at:

There are lots of videos of Csikszentmihalyi speaking. This TED talk was pretty good:
http://www.ted.com/talks/mihaly_csikszentmihalyi_on_flow.html

An article by Csikszentmihalyi in Psychology Today on finding flow:
http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/199707/finding-flow

An article on the benefits of boredom:
http://www.naturallifemagazine.com/lifelearning/boredom.htm

Especially interesting to me are these links on poetry and flow:
http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/5907

http://magmapoetry.com/archive/magma-34/articles/poetry-in-practice-creative-flow/

These last two links are on creativity:
http://www.buzzle.com/articles/being-creative-the-right-brainleft-brain-myth-and-flow.html

http://blog.iso50.com/2010/02/10/overcoming-creative-block/