Flow and Deliberate Practice
Today we honor men and women who sacrificed themselves in defense of their country. The ‘Memorial Day’ inspires us to search and find the best in ourselves and in one another, the flame of potential, And once found, fight with courage and discipline to keep it alive.
Toastmasters is one such platform where you can experiment with some of the fundamental ideas that you have learnt from your favorite stories. Two such ideas that I wandered on to and would like to share with you today are the idea of the “flow” and “Deliberate Practice”. If you are already practicing these principles please share your experiences and help others discover it as well. I will attempt to summarize the basics I gathered and hope that it will be useful to you in your Toastmaster journey and growth in general.
Flow in this context was first coined by a researcher, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi in 1990 at University of Chicago. Why you should care for Flow is that it is a state in which your best performances happen, it is also when you experience most happiness. You can access this state by engaging in something which is at the right level of difficulty to challenge your brain. If it’s too hard, you may give up too soon, if it’s too easy, you may get bored and give up. It might take some experiments for you to find out the right band for you. This is where you are just outside your comfort zone but not too far from it. Once you get there and practice this is where you grow better, you grow the fastest.
How can you practice Flow ? You guessed it right, we have Toastmasters. So next time when you look at your Pathways project and you think it’s too easy or too boring or repetitive, think again. What can you do to challenge yourself just enough that it puts you in the state where you become magical? It won’t happen overnight, I am working on it as well. However from firsthand experience on several occasions I found it was worth practicing every time. Pathways is your friend. And also while writing this message, I got into ‘Flow’, my tiredness disappeared, motivation came back.
The core concept of the second principle, the Deliberate Practice (Andre Erricson et. al)is to bring intention to every practice session (more on this in the next letter). It’s considered the most effective strategy to learn anything where practice matters. So while you are trying to calibrate the difficulty level for your next project, always go with intention. What’s the one thing you are trying to work on in that project? I know, all our projects have goals. You can add your own goals as well.
Only 700 out of about 2600 of our members have completed at least one Pathways level. If you think you have completed a level and have not gotten the credit, please connect with your VPE and if needed anyone in the district team for help.
Another core component of your practice is your audience. A club needs a healthy membership to function for everybody. And specifically ‘you’ need a well attended meeting to be in the right environment to push yourselves and hone your craft. Therefore getting new members is a shared responsibility for everyone including you. What can you do to help your club get new members? I have a simple ask that you can experiment with. Reach out to past members of your club. And let them know that together we can create a club that can be more valuable for everyone.
If you are a past member, still getting this email, I want to personally tell you. District-101 misses you. I hope that you are doing amazing wherever you are. And we would be thrilled to have you back.
Finally, {{First Name}}, I want you to know that your achievements make me proud. That’s why, do check out how your club is doing on the DCP goals. If you find that your actions will make a difference for your club, I know that you will act.
If you read this far, thank you. I wish you the very best of your Toastmasters experience. If there is any way I can help please do not hesitate to reach out.
Looking forward to hearing the stories of your flow states, your deliberate practice and your extraordinary success.
Books where I re-encountered the concepts I shared earlier:
