Flow state: how to manage motivation and overcome procrastination

When you are in a crisis of motivation, it is difficult to take on even routine tasks. We tell you how to manage motivation, maintain a state of flow and enjoy the process

Adult motivation

Motivation is divided into internal – when we set goals and enjoy achieving them, and external – the recognition of others.

Internal motivators are more effective than external ones. Self-reflection is more effective than public ratings. At the same time, external motivation acts faster. For example, imagine working on a project that you are not very interested in. If during the preparation of the project you win the competition, the motivation will skyrocket, but the effect will be short-lived. If you believe in the project from the very beginning and put maximum effort into it, then this belief will be your long-term internal motivation.

If you get used to relying only on external motivation, it will be much more difficult for you to return the internal one. With age, it is intrinsic motivation that becomes key for us, and development through coercion and evaluation does not work. For example, many employees in the company perceive mandatory educational training as another duty, and not an opportunity to learn new things.

The Five Principles of Adult Education

The science of adult learning is called andragogy. The principles of adult education were outlined by one of the founders of andragogy, Malcolm Knowles. Knowles believes that adults learn for the sake of solving specific life problems, and not for the sake of abstract assessments and abstract knowledge that will someday come in handy. That is why the theory of remuneration popular among managers does not work.

To learn something or teach someone, remember the five principles that influence the motivation of adults:

Flow theory is a way to make learning fun

If the process of work does not bring pleasure, a person loses purpose and motivation. American psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi noticed that people who experience joy from their current work are in a certain state. Csikszentmihalyi called it the flow state. This is the state when we are maximally passionate and involved in what we are doing. For example, they sat down to paint a picture and did not notice that two hours had already passed. Or when, during concentrated work, the internal dialogue stops: in a state of flow, it is directed in one direction – to what we are doing.

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi found out that you can enter the state of flow whenever you need to. Any activity can be streamed. To enter the stream, you need to mentally decompose it into three components.

Answer these questions to enter the state of flow

Expert of the Mastery of Learning course and author of the Lifelong Learning Lab project Renata Gizatulina believes that flow theory will help make the learning process fun. Most often, flow states awaken in the process of creativity, but they also manifest themselves in other activities. To create a state of flow, it is important to formulate clear goals and objectives – not too easy and not too difficult. If goals are not clear, we will experience frustration. The flow state is somewhere in between the two extremes of anxiety and boredom.

The task must be so difficult that our skills and experience are sufficient to complete it.

If we want to make the learning process fun, we need to set tasks that require a little more skill than we currently have. For example, we will not learn English if we read a book that is too easy. We need to take a book in which we understand only 70% of the text. It is always worth choosing a difficult, but feasible activity.

Procrastination is a stick in the wheel of motivation

If you learn to manage your motivation and enter into a state of flow, any task will become pleasant and feasible for you. But on the way to effective work, there is another very common obstacle – procrastination.

Productivity specialist and author of The Jedi Path and Jedi Techniques Maxim Dorofeev compares procrastination to pain. Pain is a useful signal that something is wrong with us. It’s the same with procrastination. If we constantly put off important and useful things for later, this is a signal.

One of the main causes of procrastination is fatigue. It should not be taken for laziness and ignored. These two states are similar: we lie down and do not want to do anything, but it is extremely dangerous to confuse them. If, in a state of fatigue, you say to yourself: “Pull yourself together, rag! Get out of your comfort zone!” – you will just kill yourself. We wake up, go to work, kill ourselves, and in the evening we want to find strength for self-development or English classes. To check if this is your case, try to study in the morning with a “fresh” head.

Another reason for procrastination is the “setting effect”, when due to an idea or the direction of a solution, you do not notice high-quality alternatives. If you feel like you’re procrastinating on a task, think about why you need it.

Perfectionism is also a field for the development of procrastination. The first commandment of a perfectionist-procrastinator: “It is better to do well, but never, than somehow, but today.” Maxim does not recommend “starting somehow” – remember about fatigue. If you are a tired person and start pushing yourself, at some point you will break.

Another reason for procrastination is false desires. They are also called underpants gnomes, based on the South Park episode about underpants gnomes. At night, the underpants dwarfs made their way to the boys’ rooms and stole underpants in order to earn money on them. But how exactly to do this, they did not think. Often we behave like underpants gnomes: for example, we sign up for fitness, expecting to get a profit. But is your decision exactly the best way to this profit? The trouble is that such decisions divert attention from what is more important. You may feel this subconsciously and turn on the procrastination defense mechanism. Test question for false desires: “Do butterflies move inside you when you think about this business?”

Not everything we do has to be pleasant. But if nothing causes such feelings in your life, this is an ambush and a direct path to burnout. Often, procrastination is not a bad thing at all. It’s just that someone inside is holding you back from unnecessary actions. Think about it.

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