Where did "Flow" come from?

[John Turner on TFS Slack channel]

We address flow at the individual level, highlight flow as a social construct, and identify its property for The Flow System. Examples for each are provided below from our forthcoming (soon) book, The Flow System: The Evolution of Agile and Lean Thinking in an Age of Complexity:

Individual Level:

“The concept of flow involves one’s experience of being totally engaged, the sense of “joy, creativity, the process of total involvement with life” (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990: xi). Flow, from a psychological perspective, relates to achieving happiness by having control of one’s life (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990). Within the context of the theory of optimal experience (or happiness), flow has been described as follows: “The state in which people are so involved in an activity that nothing else seems to matter; the experience itself is so enjoyable that people will do it even at great cost, for the sheer sake of doing it” (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990: 4).”

Social Construct:

“Flow is characterized as being associated with the “upswing, upwelling of life” (Smith and Lloyd, 2019: 3), as a product of “our actions and interactions with others” (Smith and Lloyd, 2019: 3). This description extends the activity of flow from being just an individual construct to a social construct. This upswing and upwelling of life occurs from the interactions with others, when structure and practice become unnoticed and all that is conscious is the act of doing.”

The Flow System:

“In The Flow System (TFS), providing customer value cannot be achieved without first interconnecting the concepts of complexity thinking, distributed leadership, and team science as an integrated organizational structure. TFS is contextual in that it is primarily conceptualized for complex, ambiguous, rapidly changing, disruptive environments rather than for dealing with the status quo. The concept of flow is an evolving process, as the components of complexity thinking, distributed leadership, and team science become more interconnected over time, flow becomes even more seamless, natural, and unnoticed. Flow as an evolving concept comes from constructal law, which states that everything that moves is a flow system and the system’s configuration must evolve in such a way that provides easier access to the currents of flow through it (Kosner, 2012). TFS is one such design for organizations to evolve while navigating, successfully, disruptive and complex environments.”