Finding Flow: thoughts on creativity #1

Consider juggling. The concept is simple. Keep the balls (or beanbags, or torches, or chainsaws) aloft. However, the game's simplicity allows for impressive creativity:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4776181634656145640

This performance was forwarded to me by a friend as an example of Flow, which is a concept proposed by psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. Flow is a mental state of operation in which the person is fully immersed in what he or she is doing, characterized by a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and success in the process of the activity (succinctly put by Wikipedia)

When I play basketball, I can get immersed in the game, meaning that I am completely present to what I am doing (not thinking about anything else). This state of basketball flow, while generally fun, is not exactly the type of flow that Csikszentmihalyi is talking about, because at any given point in the game I can be frustrated, embarrassed, in pain, etc.

There is another level of flow, often characterized as "the zone," where the immersion is so complete that the game feels easy. Sometimes I feel like I can hit any shot, or I can anticipate action before it happens.

I can only imagine what NBA players must feel like when they get to this level of Flow. Kobe Bryant recently described a quarter of a basketball game where he scored 30 points (a quarter is 12 minutes!) as feeling like a video game.

For Kobe-in-the-zone, basketball is effortless, automatic, and fun. I'm not saying that games should be effortless or automatic, but that mastering games can make playing them so. Kobe Bryant is by all accounts one of the hardest working players in the NBA.

If we look at juggling as fairly simple game, and basketball as a much more complex game (with competitive, collaborative, athletic variables added), we might look at professionals working in innovative fields as participants in games that are so complex that outsiders can barely make sense of them. Sure, we watch hospital and courtroom dramas on TV just as we watch basketball games, but these are dramatizations that are obviously simplified for the sake of comprehension and entertainment.

Successful professionals working in innovative fields operate with Flow because they know the rules of their game so well. Epistemic games unearth the rules of very complicated professions. By simulating the training that instills in professionals the ability to effectively participate in their fields, epistemic games empower students to be creative in ways that will matter for them, and for all of us who will be depending on them, in the real world.