Flow and Anti-Flow
I have written before how powerful psychological flow is to our productivity, since it is in this optimal state of bodily function that we are at our productive peak, and this often occurs when we are so into the task that we cannot stop until we finally complete it, done and dusted. It takes time and effort to enter this magical frame of body/mind, which often requires an effective ritual of warming up, like starting small and slow, and once we are in ‘flow’, our system naturally moves at top speed and will not stop until it reaches its destination (completion of the task). It goes without saying that ‘flow’ entails immobility in our rate of productivity, since when we are being maximally productive and are moving at top speed, our rate of productivity does not (cannot) rise anymore. In fact, when we reach peak productivity, we are often mentally and physically stationary as we are totally absorbed and obsessed with our task at hand. The opposite of ‘flow’, which we can call ‘anti-flow’, entails restlessness, and for those who have low bandwidth or short attention span it can take a mere shift in focus, let it be a small speck of distraction or some such, to disrupt our attention and break our optimal state of mind. There are good reasons why people who are easily distracted do not complete their tasks thoroughly and produce subpar work, whereas those who are laser-focussed are usually very good at what they do. ‘Anti-flow’, therefore, may be defined as the opposite of our productive peak, which can be caused by our inability to focus on the task at hand and our tendency to be distracted by other things. This may be one of the reasons why people do not recommend multi-tasking, since this involves shifting attention from one task to another, which in effect breaks our ‘flow’ and prevents us from reaching max productivity. All this being said, I have written about some of the benefits of multitasking, as I have argued that appropriate forms of multitasking can be used to enhance productivity, since being stuck in one task for a protracted and excessive period of time can cause lethargy and sluggishness, not to mention mental fatigue to one’s system if one does not somehow get out of the rut and move out quickly. In order to move out quickly, however, one would need to employ ‘anti-flow’ techniques to switch tasks and shift one’s attention to something else, and at the end of one’s productivity and interest in that particular task, one may revert attention to the original task and pursue one’s original line of inquiry. To take full advantage of the productivity afforded by multi-tasking, therefore, one needs to learn how to switch tasks effectively and to one’s advantage, which requires a mixture of ‘flow’ and ‘anti-flow’ techniques: clearly one needs to dive into one particular task in order to enter ‘flow’ where one can make something positive (if not spectacular) out of it, but when one meets one’s productivity’s end with the task, one would need to use ‘anti-flow’ to get out of the stale mode of unproductivity and switch to another task where one needs to similarly find ‘flow’ with that task, until one eventually exhausts one’s interest in it too, then one repeats the whole process again by switching to another task (perhaps the original one). It is easy to talk about ‘flow’ and how it enhances one’s productivity, concentration and focus, which is indeed proven by leading psychologists, but in practice ‘flow’, while optimal and effective, might not be a permanent state of mind but one which can come to exhaustion, just as a vehicle travelling at top speed can run out of fuel rather quickly. In order not to waste time and energy at the end of one’s ‘flow’, one needs to find ‘flow’ elsewhere in another task (i.e. multi-task), and here one needs to employ the very opposite of ‘flow’, namely ‘anti-flow’, to get out of one task and enter another. This is a complicated pattern of working that may be conceptualised as multiple ‘flows’, like multiple mini-roundabouts, and since one can only enter ‘flow’ one at a time just as one can only enter one roundabout at a time, one needs to use ‘anti-flow’ to undo and disentangle oneself from one ‘flow’ in order to get into another. As the Driving Manual states, ‘when dealing with multiple mini-roundabouts, treat each mini-roundabout separately’ at which all the various steps of manoeuvring are applied and repeated. Try it.
Originally published at http://keithtselinguist.wordpress.com on December 23, 2021.
