Creativity is generally addictive for a very good reason --
the sensation of being in a state of full concentration or hyper-concentration is both
pleasant and productive. The author Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi devotes three works to this
and related topics. He describes this state of "flow" as:
Over and over again, as people describe how it feels when
they thoroughly enjoy themselves, they mention eight distinct dimensions of experience.
These same aspects are reported by Hindu yogis and Japanese teenagers who race
motorcycles, by American surgeons and basketball players, by Australian sailors and Navajo
shepherds, by champion figure skaters and by chess masters. These are the characteristic
dimensions of the flow experience:
1. Clear goals: an objective is distinctly defined;
immediate feedback: one knows instantly how well one is doing.
2. The opportunities for acting decisively are relatively
high, and they are matched by one's perceived ability to act. In other words, personal
skills are well suited to given challenges.
3. Action and awareness merge; one-pointedness of mind.
4. Concentration on the task at hand; irrelevant stimuli
disappear from consciousness, worries and concerns are temporarily suspended.
5. A sense of potential control.
6. Loss of self-consciousness, transcendence of ego
boundaries, a sense of growth and of being part of some greater entity.
7. Altered sense of time, which usually seems to pass
faster.
8. Experience becomes autotelic: If several of the previous
conditions are present, what one does becomes autotelic, or worth doing for its own sake.
The Evolving Self - Mihaly
Csikszentmihalyi, 178-179
Think
about what Csikszentmihalyi has said to describe the flow state.
1. Can you think of any times in your own life what you have been
in a state of complete hyper-concentration?
2. What were those times?
3. What conditions existed in order for that state to occur?
One of the greatest barriers to restricting flow in
schools is time. See if you can structure experiences so that students have enough time to
create states of hyper-concentration so that they can really be productive and enjoy
learning. List some changes you might make or can make in setting up educational
experiences which promote white moments or flow experiences.
