Flow Facilitator Spotlight: Autonomy

How competition may be getting in the way of your flow.

This is the first in a series exploring the 21 +/- conditions that researchers have identified as helping to facilitate a state of flow. The list of conditions is certainly not exhaustive! I'd love to hear from you if you've found other ways to set yourself up for optimal experiences - please share your thoughts in the comments!

I'm not very competitive. I mean, I used to be - in school, I loved being the first to finish a test, the first to hand in an assignment, the first to cross the finish line. On my own or with a team, coming in top of the charts was one of my favourite things. And I still like to win - the BOOM of going out first in a card game, or the satisfaction of sinking the winning toss in a game of cornhole - but the degree to which I take these things seriously has dramatically declined over the years. I still like the game or the activity itself, just not the push. If I'm not in the running, I'll relax, look around, and see what else I can take from the experience. In other words, competition no longer motivates me. In fact, I have found that sometimes, injecting an element of competition into an activity actually de-motivates me. and discourages me from participating at all.

That's me, thrilled to be a trophy winner with the rest of the B Girls Basketball Team. Photo: Manachaban School Yearbook.

It's a feeling that's replicated throughout modern life. On the heels of the Covid-19 pandemic, it could be seen in phenomena like the Great Resignation and "quiet quitting", both - in part - responses to relentless social pressures to maximize performance, productivity, and consumption. The most evocative of these was the Chinese idea of tang ping, or "lying flat": taking a break from relentless work (in China, the 996 concept, or working 9:00 am to 9:00 pm six days a week, appears to be widespread). The tang ping movement took off among young people during 2021 as a backlash to increasing pressure to work even harder and outperform their peers, and it was so widespread that it resulted in an admonition from President Xi Jinping.

More recently and in concert with rapidly changing and unpredictable global events, these movements have evolved beyond quiet quitting to conscious quitting, resent-eeism (not simply disengagement, but rather active resentment of the employer), and just plain languishing. There are many reasons for these phenomena: some have to do with a mismatch between personal values and the work, "capitalism fatigue" and the unrelenting competition associated with it, and ultimately, a feeling of a lack of control. It's no coincidence that so much of this has come on the heels of Covid 19, a time when every one of us was compelled to cede at least some measure of control and autonomy over our daily lives.

Autonomy: a powerful facilitator of flow

Autonomy, as a facilitator of flow, is a powerful antidote to languishing. Autonomy is the freedom to determine our own actions and behaviours. Beyond simply having control, it is about meaningful self-direction.

Autonomy is about meaningful self-direction.

A big part of flow, you'll recall, is about finding the correct balance between challenge and skill, and it requires clear goals and focused attention. Without autonomy, creating these conditions is very hard to achieve. With autonomy, however...

• ...you can alter the degree of challenge in the task you're undertaking, such that it juuuuuust outpaces your skill;

• ...your sense of control helps you to feel less anxious and more likely to engage rather than simply comply.

The most important element of autonomy, however, is meaning: when you choose to do what's important to you, you're more likely to be intrinsically motivated, more likely to sustain your attention, more likely to engage in actions that align with your values, for a higher emotional reward.

Which brings me back to competition. For me these days, injecting competition into an activity elicits an immediate, "You're not the boss of me!" response. It takes the control and unpredictability away from me, and alters the goal - thereby almost always blocking my access to flow. For others, however, competition may be the very thing that sets them up for flow: quick decision-making, pattern recognition, risk, and immediate feedback are all elements that can be injected into a task via competition, opening up opportunities for flow.

Competition and autonomy are dynamic and subjective variables in the flow equation, and I encourage you to play with them as you develop your own personal recipe for flow.

We did it in grade 7 too. Don't sleep on my piano socks ;-)

Does competition help you? Hinder? In what circumstances? Does it matter who you're competing against? Does the context matter, i.e., professional competition versus leisure? What about performance versus mastery? I'd love to hear from you - let me know your experiences of competition, autonomy, and flow in the comments!

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REFERENCES:

Czikszentmihalyi, M. (1990). Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience.

Mayr, U., Wozniak, D., Davidson, C., Kuhn, D., & Harbaugh, W. T. (2012). Competitiveness across the lifespan: the fiesty fifties. Psychology and Aging 2012.

doi: 10.1037/a0025655