
And the rest of us? Kotler says athletes
do not have a monopoly on flow. Flow is
ubiquitous and can be accessed by any-one,
provided certain conditions are in
place first. We need the right mix of chal-lenge
and skills. We need to be pushing
ourselves to ever-increasing levels of per-formance.
And that push needs to be
driven by something that is intrinsically
motivating to us – it is in actively pursu-ing
things we love that we find the “best
possible version of ourselves.” The more
emotionally powerful the experience,
Kotler says, the more chance the details of
that experience get moved from our short-term
storage into long-term memory. Flow
increases our performance over time, re-sulting
in long-term successful mastery
rather than the short-term success.
THE 10,000-HOUR RULE
This brings us to the idea of practice. In
his book Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell pop-ularized
the 10,000-hour rule, whereby a
person can only achieve mastery of some-thing
by practicing for an accumulation
of 10,000 hours. However, new develop-ments
in neuroscience suggest otherwise.
In a recent TED Talk, neuroscientist Chris
Berka, CEO and co-founder at Advanced
Brain Monitoring, demonstrated how
neuroscience has led to a breakthrough
in learning, effectively cutting the 10,000
hours in half. Utilizing the latest neu-rotechnology,
Berka’s team mapped the
brains of experts in various fields, such as
scientists, marksmen and golfers, and used
the neural map of their brains to cut train-ing
time of novices.
CAN FLOW BE FOUND
AT WORK?
A 2013 McKinsey study finds that top
executives in “flow” are five times more
productive than out of it, which sug-gests
that flow can indeed be found in the
workplace. The McKinsey study discov-ered
that for peak performance to occur,
IQ and emotional intelligence (EQ) are
necessary. Meaning quotient (MQ) is
also required; MQ is described as involv-ing
high stakes, excitement, a challenge
and something the individual feels will
make a difference. The authors of the
study point out that when a business en-vironment’s
MQ is low, employees put
less energy into their work and are less
engaged, resulting in a substantial oppor-tunity
cost of lost productivity.
feature
WE NEED THE RIGHT MIX OF CHALLENGE AND SKILLS. WE
NEED TO BE PUSHING OURSELVES TO EVER-INCREASING
LEVELS OF PERFORMANCE. AND THAT PUSH NEEDS TO BE
DRIVEN BY SOMETHING THAT IS INTRINSICALLY MOTIVATING
TO US – IT IS IN ACTIVELY PURSUING THINGS WE LOVE THAT
WE FIND THE “BEST POSSIBLE VERSION OF OURSELVES.”
Ryan Heffernan
Photobac/Shutterstock
Steven Kotler, Director of
Research, Flow Genome Project
26 ❚ SEPTEMBER 2014 ❚ HR PROFESSIONAL