Commentary Why is it harder to focus at work and get things done these days

To study this, he pinged individuals eight times a day via a pager and invited them to describe how they felt.

More than half were “in flow” while at work; fewer than 20 per cent reported a flow state when relaxing at home. Managers reported higher levels of flow than front-line workers.

Yet when asked whether they wished they were doing something else, those at work said yes more often than those at leisure. Csikszentmihalyi called this “the paradox of work”.

The apathy that is the enemy of flow, the “languishing” that Adam Grant has named as the “dominant emotion of 2021”, or the power of “CBA”, as my children used to call it, is strong for many people emerging from prolonged lockdown.

FLOW CAN BE INTERRUPTD FOR KNOWLEDGE WORKERS

In a paper in the recently published book, Positive Organizational Psychology Interventions, Matt Dubin, who studied under Csikszentmihalyi, identifies factors that may stem flow among knowledge-workers, including interruptions, “boss priorities” (as against setting your own schedule), lack of clarity and control, and a “suboptimal personal state”.

Share this post