Isn’t it enthralling, that beauty often comes with the words like delicate, fragile, etc.
- like a beautiful flower that can’t resist the wind
- like a rainbow-coloured bubble suddenly burst in the air
- or, like the best piece of classical music, that easily ruin by … a cough in the audience
...
And for us human beings, isn’t it true that we (or at least men) often are most attractive when we’re working of focusing deeply and intensely on something?
Which is when, I believe, we’re in the so-called “Flow” state - “a state in which people are so involved in an activity that nothing else seems to matter, the experience is so enjoyable that people will continue to do it even at great cost, for the sheer sake of doing it”, according to 'The Father of Flow' - Mr Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi.
So, somewhat coincidentally, the Flow state is also … fragile
In fact, in “Stolen Focus” the author states that the more Mr Csikszentmihalyi studied flow states, the more he noticed that they are “extraordinarily fragile and easily disrupted”. Mr Csikszentmihalyi himself wrote that: “Many forces, both within ourselves and in the environment, stand in the way of Flow”.
In particular, in the late 1980s, Mr Csikszentmihalyi discovered that staring at a screen is one of the activities that on average provide the lowest amount of Flow.
Oh, it might be worth repeating one more time:
Staring at a screen is one of the activities that on average provide the lowest amount of Flow.
I believe that’s the main reason why Cal Newport, in “Deep Work”, claims that most of the office work are shallow.
And also why Naval Ravikant went even bolder by saying:
“No exceptions – all screen activities linked to less happiness, all non-screen activities linked to more happiness”
However, statistics show some warning data in the opposite direction. According to The Independent, the average 2023 screen time for users around the world aged 16 to 64 is 6 hours 37 minutes per day. More severely, an article in Manchester Evening News even claims that we (British) spend 75% of our waking hours glued to screens.
I’ve been pondering these stuff for a while.
And gradually, I’ve come to the point where I have to admit to myself that Alex (my laptop) – quite often has more control of my life (you know, the moment when you realize that he lets you see some random videos of crazy cats doing funny stuff, after few hours of wandering on Youtube already).
That’s why I’m trying to get back to pen and paper, and other stuff that doesn’t require me to look at the screen, as an effort to hopefully gain back some of the beautiful moments of Flow.
However, I can’t help but wonder:
If it’s that hard for me to do, how is that gonna be for my niece, my nephew – the generation that seems to look at the screen all day from their very beginning?
Will they be able to experience that delicate beauty of Flow?
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Source:
The Independent
Manchester Evening News
