Flow

Fortunately for me this week has turned out to be somewhat of a revelation as to what I was expecting. Monday morning, as usual, did not bring about the joy of a new day but more a dread of what was to come. The half term was not as productive as I had liked and I felt the control I had initially gained over A5 and A6 was now slipping away. A5 in particular was weighing on my mind as although I’d managed to get most of the site together, I didn’t understand a word of the errors coming up in validation checks and I hadn’t even tried setting up the feedback form. What made things worse was everyone else seemed to be flying along with the greatest of ease!So after reluctantly uploading as much of the website I had completed on Sunday I prepared for the worst…

After horrific driving conditions I finally arrived at college but the testing was already underway. This didn’t help in improving my mood and now gloomy vision of what was to come. However, during a quick talk with Steve most of the group took the trouble to review my site and provide some valuable feedback, thanks to those involved! I started to feel better about the situation and knew the only way to overcome the mountain of work before me was to just get on with it and that’s exactly what I did.

I have to say I think most of the problem was psychological because I felt I simply didn’t have the knowledge to overcome the problems I was facing. The challenge seemed far too high and working from home over the past two weeks had made me feel very isolated.

Csikszentmihalyi [a famous psychologist] shows exactly what was happening to me in the diagram below. At the beginning of the week I was definitely in the blue area, the challenges I was facing seemed far too high for the level of skill I had and this resulted in extreme anxiety. Yet as the day progressed and I gained knowledge and more skill from the support of those around me and I entered the flow channel! So, by the end of the day after a lot of hard work I felt fulfilled, re-focussed but completely exhausted!

Today usually would have been the day I was looking forward to but once again the dread crept in as I knew it was mock presentation day and more timed tasks were to come. Fortunately though I felt more confident in my abilities and knew with a bit of hard work I’d be back in the Flow! The timed task of the day presented sufficient challenge and after a focussed session of designing and acting on feedback the solution was finished [see below]. I was fairly happy with the design and I had been a lot more proactive in responding to feedback which was a definite improvement. In terms of the presentations a run-through over lunch proved to be very valuable and everything went significantly better than I’d anticipated. The rest of the afternoon has been spent collecting inspirational material as a personal treat for working so hard [sad I know]!

So all in all things are pretty damn good and all the hard work had paid off, Sam Ewing says it all;

"Hard work spotlights the character of people: some turn up their sleeves, some turn up their noses, and some don't turn up at all."

All I can say is I’m glad I turned up this week.