[TIM KASTELLE] My wife Nancy is a fantastic researcher.

She is a Professor in the School of Psychology here at The University of

Queensland.
Her domain is the neurospsychology of ageing and she has published more than 200
articles
and book chapters, and several books on topics related to that area.
Along with her colleague Professor Gerard Byrne, she invented the Geriatric Anxiety
Inventory, which has been translated into over 20 languages and is used widely
around
the world.
She is incredibly creative.
There’s a lot that goes into Nancy’s creativity as a researcher, but I think that a
big part
of it is this: I’ve never known anyone that’s better at getting into and
maintaining a state
of flow.
What’s flow?
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi was trying to figure out what made people happy, and he
found that
people that were happier had what he calls peak experiences more frequently than
others.
Flow is his word for the state that describes peoples’ peak experiences.
Here is how he describes it in his book Flow: The Psychology of Happiness:
“We have seen how people describe the common characteristics of optimal experience:
a sense
that one’s skills are adequate to cope with the challenges at hand, in a goal-
directed,
rule-bound action system that provides clear clues as to how well one is
performing.
Concentration is so intense that there is no attention left over to think about
anything
irrelevant, or to worry about problems.
Self-consciousness disappears, and the sense of time becomes distorted.
An activity that produces such experiences is so gratifying that people are willing
to
do it for its own sake, with little concern for what they will get out of it, even
when
it is difficult, or dangerous.”
That’s pretty close to a perfect description of Nancy when she’s writing.
Being in a state of flow leads to higher levels of creativity.
Any time we are undertaking activities that build or rely on skill, there is a
balance
between our skill in the task, and the level of challenge that we face.
When our current level of skill is roughly what we need to meet the challenge of a
task,
then we’re in the channel of Flow.
If our skill exceeds the challenge, we become bored.
If the challenge exceeds are ability, we become anxious.
Both of those states encourage us to quit.
To grow, when we’re outside of the Flow channel we need to either increase the
challenge
we face if we’re bored, or build our skills if we’re anxious.
That works at a personal level, but it turns out that similar principles can help
us design
more fulfilling and creative work for people.
Teresa Amabile from Harvard University and her husband Steven Kramer describe this
in
their book The Progress Principle: Using Small Wins to Ignite Joy, Engagement and
Creativity
at Work.
In this, they discuss a research project that caps off the research on creativity
that Amabile
has done over more than 30 years.
They look at what makes the most rewarding conditions for people to work in.
They say: “Conventional management wisdom is way off
track about employee psychology.
When we surveyed hundreds of managers around the world, ranging from CEOs to
project leaders,
about what motivates employees, we found startling results: 95 percent of these
leaders fundamentally
misunderstood the most important source of motivation.
Our research inside companies revealed that the best way to motivate people, day in
and
day out, is by facilitating progress—even small wins.
But the managers in our survey ranked “supporting progress” dead last as a work
motivator.”
Instead: “The secret is creating the conditions for
great inner work life— the conditions that foster positive emotions, strong
internal
motivation, and favorable perceptions of colleagues and the work itself.
Great inner work life is about the work, not the accoutrements.
It starts with giving people something meaningful to accomplish, like Google’s
mission “to
organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.”
It requires giving clear goals, autonomy, help, and resources—what people need to
make real progress in their daily work.
And it depends on showing respect for ideas and the people who create them.”
They’re describing a system with challenging goals, with regular, constant feedback
about
your progress towards those objectives, matched to the skills of the people
involved.
They’re describing building a state of Flow at work.
Over the years, I’ve learned a lot from Nancy.
One of the biggest things I’ve learned is the importance of Flow.