Flow

Psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi teaches people are happiest when they are in a state of flow – when so immersed in an activity they lose complete sense of time or knowledge of what’s going on around them.

As he puts it in an article for Wired magazine:

“Being completely involved in an activity for its own sake. The ego falls away. Time flies. Every action, movement, and thought follows inevitably from the previous one, like playing jazz. Your whole being is involved, and you’re using your skills to the utmost.”

The fact that our attention is so often fractured by a million notifications and alerts throughout the day is why many of us feel unsatisfied after a day of work, even if we truly enjoy what we do. 

I think that is why people burn out when managing a social media account. They feel like they can’t keep up with the never-ending 24/7 need for new content. No one likes feeling out of control.

Getting into a state of flow is the antidote. The flow state is how we can take back control of our experience of social media and stop letting it call the shots. 

We can plan ahead, schedule and evaluate our performance without feeling constantly behind. 

Hope*writers teaches that you need two different types of writing time. Time to write in the cracks, in small bursts, and longer chunks of time. These longer periods of time are where your brain can actually work through the major concepts you’re trying to convey. 

The same goes for creating social media posts. Sure, you can write and schedule one post quickly, but you also need to block off at least one chunk of time per week to work through strategy, dream up new post concepts and create dozens of them at once.

Knowing you have great posts to share for several weeks is so satisfying!