Challenges by Genie Monday 04 April, 2011

One of the biggest challenges of working part time as a designer and switching over to art after that, is that my brain makes the switch VERY slowly. I have been finding it hard dealing with the constant interruptions of working life while trying to become a creative dreamer again.

The first steps that I have taken in my attempt to reach a deeper level of concentration was to switch off all the notification sounds on my Skype and Tweetdec, but my FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out) is unbelievably strong!

In the meantime my fix of "flow" is evading me. Flow is "the mental state of operation in which a person in an activity is fully immersed in a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and success in the process of the activity."

Check out this Ted Talk where Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi explains the concept of flow. You are likely to reach flow when your challenge and skills are higher than usual.

Is that not just the sweetest drug for creatives? Why else do we create but for this fleeting feeling of immersion and loss of physical reality? The only other instances that I can think of that has the same immersive effect are taking drugs and having sex, but neither of those are particularly productive or sustainable.

Unplugging for now folks. Let's see if I can get my fix.