The problem with flow states
is that they're really good for things people already enjoy.
An athlete that gets in the zone, surfing… that's fun stuff,
how do you get into flow during your taxes? How do you get into flow cutting your grass?
You can't, it doesn't work that way. Ok, so what do you do?
So this technique is about how do we see the work itself differently.
So if we understand that all behaviors are spurred by desire to escape discomfort,
well, what do we do when the task itself is uncomfortable,
when we don't like doing that work?
And I searched and searched and I didn't find any techniques that I really like that really work,
some people like to use flow, you know, the work of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi,
and I'm sure, you know, flow very well but the problem with flow states is
that they're really good for things people already enjoy.
An athlete that gets in the zone, surfing…that's fun stuff,
how do you get into flow during your taxes? How do you get into flow cutting your grass?
You can't, it doesn't work that way. Ok, so what do you do?
This to me is magic.
So I worked with Dr. Ian Bogost, who is at Georgia Tech,
and he has this theory that he calls, “Play anything”.
And he believes that you can learn how to play a task,
but play doesn't have to be enjoyable, that the job of play is to divert our
attention, not distract, distraction is about
doing things you didn't plan to do, diversion is a refocusing of attention.
And so we can use, ”play”, under certain conditions
to help divert our attention during a task that we otherwise would not enjoy.
So he gives the example of cutting his grass. He hated cutting his grass.
And so he wanted to figure out how can I learn to play cutting my grass?
And he gives us two ways to do this. He says the first step is to add constraints.
So how quickly can I cut the grass? How can I cut the grass with the
least number of turns? Add constraints to the condition, like a sandbox.
Kids like playing in a sandbox not because the sand is everywhere,
but because it's only in the confines of this little box.
That's what makes that experience fun. The second thing that we can do
to learn how to play anything is to look for the variability.
So he advises us against what a lot of people preach,
which is using an extrinsic reward.
Add a spoon full of sugar, that's what Mary Poppins tells people.
Bogost doesn't like that, he thinks that's a really bad advice.
Because what we do when we add a spoon full of sugar and we do this a lot,
we say, “if I work out, I will give myself a smoothie”.
Not only are smoothies horrible for you, but that's another point,
the real point here is that if we only use extrinsic rewards,
we never learn to enjoy the task itself because it's only about the prize, the ribbon,
the treat that comes after the reward. And actually, studies find that
when people are given these extrinsic motivators, these extrinsic rewards,
they're less creative, they're less likely to stick with the task over the long term.
So he says instead of looking for the fun, the play outside,
look for it within the experience by focusing more intently,
not trying to take your mind off the task, but more focusing on the task itself by
looking at the variability. How do you do that?
So when Bogost wanted to learn how to play this activity of cutting his grass,
he learned everything he could about grass, as crazy as that sounds.
The different sword he could use, how he could cut it differently,
the fertilizer, he focused more intensely on it
so he could find the nuances, the beauty of that task,
and that's how he learned to play it. And you think that's crazy, how do you do that?
Think about all the stuff that people seem to love
that to you would be work. So making coffee to me is work
but I have a friend who is crazy, obsessed with making that perfect cappuccino.
Working on a car, you kidding me, to fix a car? You'd have to pay me to do that,
I wouldn't do that for free, and yet I have another friend who is a car buff,
who in his spare time loves the looking at the variability in the
constraints of fixing up his hot rod. My friend who loves crochet,
she loves it because the same exact principles, but to me, I mean, that would be work to crochet.
So it turns out it's not so crazy that we can actually by
adding the constraints and by looking for the variability,
we can learn to play anything.