⚡️Flow Lever 4: Dial in the Right Level of Challenge. Fully Engage Your Skills.
Experience More Flow: Find the Right Challenge x Skill Balance
*This is part of a series on how to design flow experiences to propel your creative work.
⚖️The secret to Flow is to balance Challenge and Skill.
When an activity is challenging, and you are fully using your skills, you experience Flow — the state of optimal performance & creativity.
To better understand this Flow Lever, check out this chart:
⚡️If Skill is high and Challenge is low, you experience a sense of Boredom (circle #2 on the chart)
If you’re feeling bored with anything you’re doing related to your creative or entrepreneurial work, you need to find a way to boost the Challenge.
One cannot enjoy doing the same thing at the same level for long. You’ll grow either bored or frustrated.
💪 You can increase the Challenge level of any activity you do by experimenting with:
- Speed — going faster or slower
- Intensity — using a weightlifting analogy, this is the equivalent of adding more weight, making things heavier or harder to perform
- Quantity — doing more “reps” (i.e. instead of 3 you do 5)
- Complexity — adding additional layers to what you’re doing or combining activities (e.g. singing a song while painting; typing in sync with the beat of a song you are listening to while writing or organizing things)
- Novelty — doing something new or different; adding uncertainty, improvisation, or chance (think improv comedy or jazz groups that improvise)
For example, I may increase my Skills in guitar to a point where playing a certain jazz piece feels easy. To increase the Challenge I could increase the tempo (speed), I could try playing the same piece using chord voicings that are harder for my hands to perform (intensity), I could play the song while also singing a counter-melody (complexity), or I could experiment with a new effects pedals or right-hand technique (novelty).
🏀 Another idea for you to experiment with to increase the Challenge level: Make it a Game.
- Add a Timer — This simple technique does wonders. Use a timer like Toggl, your smartphone’s timer, a stopwatch, or even an analog visual timer to make what you’re doing feel more like a game where you need to “beat the clock.” The timer adds an element of urgency that helps focus your attention and find Flow.
- Make it a Competition — Either with yourself or with others. Tapping into your competitiveness can add a sense of Challenge that will sharpen your attention and engage your skills more fully.
- Create New Rules — Make up new rules for what you’re doing and make them fun (e.g. “every time I do X, then I do Y;” “I can’t play this note,” “If I do ABC, I must start over.”
Challenge is a necessary ingredient for Flow. It forces our attention to stay locked onto something.
There’s a reason extreme sports athletes experience so much Flow — the challenge level of what they are doing is so high, if their attention were to slip away, they’d get seriously injured. They’re completely absorbed in the task at hand.
✅ Ask Yourself: “Does this Challenge me?”
- Does this feel too easy or boring?
- Do I feel anxious or panicked about this?
- Am I operating close to, or on, the edge of my comfort zone?
- What could I experiment with to dial in the right level of Challenge? (e.g. speed, size, quantity, intensity, complexity, doing something new or different)
⚡️If Skill is low and Challenge is high, you experience Anxiety (circle #3 on the chart)
On the contrary, if you’re feeling high levels of anxiety, you need to build your skills.
These could be skills directly related to your craft or business, or skills like time management, decision-making, growth mindset, etc.
Whatever skills you need to develop, find a way to do so to better match the Challenges you will face.
✅ Ask Yourself: “Does this Fully Activate my Skills or Strengths?”
- How could I change the task to better use my skills or strengths?
- Do I have the right set of skills to be effective at this?
- What could I do to develop my skills?
*Last note:
My opinion is that it’s better to feel anxious and to focus on developing skills than it is to be bored & comfortable (and thus not growing).
Keep operating on that edge of discomfort — it will force and accelerate your skill development and keep increasing your creativity.
👇Experience more Flow when you put the Find Your Flow Checklist into action👇
👉Grab your free copy of the Find Your Flow Checklist.
⚡️Use this checklist before any creative work session to significantly increase your chances of getting into Flow.🤘
When you get the free checklist, you’ll also get a free mini-course via email diving deeper into each Flow element.
More About Coach Jeff
In my time spent in my Positive Psychology PhD program studying under the Flow master himself (Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi), from my own experiences bringing more Flow to my creative endeavors, and from coaching hundreds of clients across every creative domain, I’ve identified 6 specific “levers” that you can use to deliberately design your activities for more Flow.
I share them with you in my free Find Your Flow Checklist.
My name is Jeff Fajans (rhymes with “lions”) and I help creative entrepreneurs bring their biggest ideas to life and reach their next level of creative success.
I have a PhD in Positive Organizational Psychology from Claremont Graduate University, where I studied under Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, the world-renowned author of Flow. My research focused on how to help people learn, develop, and lead more effectively to better achieve creative goals.
I am also an avid music creator and guitar player. 🤘
Through my 1-on-1 coaching, 30-Day Creative Momentum Challenge community, internationally acclaimed digital courses, and speaking engagements, I’ve helped thousands of people from around the world connect with their purpose, clarify their creative vision, amplify their motivation, and create actionable strategies that make achieving their most meaningful goals inevitable.
These are people who are pursuing big goals like starting or leading a business (and scaling it to higher levels of innovation & growth), writing + filming a feature film (and it winning a Sundance award), building an app or product (and getting accepted into Y Combinator or getting VC funding), writing a book (and hitting the Amazon bestseller list) or even exploring a meaningful side hustle or passion project.
