⚡️Flow Lever 5: Bring In More Enjoyment
Experience More Flow: Make it an Autotelic Experience
*This is part of a series on how to design flow experiences to propel your creative work.
🌊 Flow springs from intrinsic motivation.
Lots of productivity “gurus” and motivational speakers out there like to tell you to just keep grinding it out, push through the pain, or just build more “discipline.”
While hard work and sustained effort are indeed keys to creative success, what these gurus are advising is NOT the best way to approach getting creative work done.
🛑 DON’T focus on making yourself “more disciplined” or forcing things.
Besides, you know that when pretty much anything is forced upon you — even when the forcing comes from yourself — your creative brain just rebels and derails.
You can’t overpower your creative brain — you have to learn to harness it, partner with it, and create conditions that ATTRACT its attention.
And there is nothing the creative brain enjoys more than when it thinks something is fun, enjoyable, or stimulating.
👍 Get creative and figure out how to make everything that you want or need to do more enjoyable, more fun…more stimulating for your creative brain. 🧠
You don’t get into Flow when you hate what you are doing.
If you hate what you’re doing, it takes longer to do it — and thus you spend more time doing things you dislike…which makes you want to quit. Which sucks because your big ideas deserve to get out into the world.
You want to design your goals, tasks, and next steps to get as close to an “autotelic experience” as possible.
′Autotelic′ is a word composed of two Greek roots: auto (self), and telos (goal).
An autotelic experience is one you do for its own sake because to experience it is the main goal.
In other words, you enjoy the PROCESS of doing what you do.
Simply doing the activity is rewarding in and of itself — you don’t need to be rewarded after the fact. You simply enjoy painting, writing, playing, building, creating…doing.
✅ Ask Yourself: “Is this something I actually “WANT” to do?”
- If not — how could I make this less something I feel I “should” or “have to” do and more something I “want” to do?
- How could I make the process of working on this more fun or enjoyable?
- How could I turn this into a “game?”
- What would it take for me to do this simply for the sake of doing it — without the expectation of an external reward or achievement of an outcome?
- What would it take for me to look forward to doing this?
- How does this connect with my values, vision, or purpose?
⚡️It usually is even worth it to sacrifice some efficiency for more enjoyment.
This feels weird for the productivity-obsessed.
In the long run, you’ll be more likely to stay consistent with what you’re doing and persist through challenging periods if you enjoy what you are doing more. And you’ll get better ideas along the way (positive emotions have been scientifically related to generating more ideas and ideas that are more creative).
In the short run, you’ll make it easier to drop into the Flow state.
Get creative and experiment with small or big tweaks.
👇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.
