Summer of Inspiration: Artist Date Week 3
After weeks of rain, we were hit by a severe heatwave that was utterly unbearable. People were handing out water due to the severity of this heatwave, and the general public was urged to stay indoors. As someone who is all too familiar with tropical heat, I found it extremely uncomfortable and decided to stay in for the majority of the heatwave.
Thus, this week's artist date is a stay-at-home edition.
During my trip to the City of Angels, I bought a mini puzzle from Universal Studios Hollywood. My favorite kinds of puzzles are those that are cut so specifically that each piece clicks into place. It is the most satisfying feeling when the pieces snap into one another. When you're done, you're able to lift the entire puzzle in one piece without it crumbling in your hands.
The Mario Kart puzzle I bought had 266 pieces, making it perfect for completing in an afternoon.
I completed it in roughly 2 hours, a total of two Stephanie Soo videos on YouTube. Side note: I'm finally all caught up on the Wang Lee Hom scandal, so if anyone wants to chat, hit me up.
One of my favorite hobbies is the kind that I can fully zone in on while listening to an engaging story. Whether it's painting by numbers, doing puzzles, coloring, or sewing, as long as I can tune into a juicy story while in a flow state, I'm in a relaxed state of mind.
Flow state, as defined by Wikipedia, "is the mental state in which a person performing some activity is fully immersed in a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and enjoyment in the process of the activity." It's a feeling that I often crave outside of work, as it comes with the satisfaction of doing something entirely for my enjoyment and nothing else. It has no reward other than being locked into a process so deeply that you lose all sense of time. As someone who is still fighting the need to maximize every hour of every day, this is the rare moment when I'm able to dissolve into an activity.
In Stolen Focus: Why You Can't Pay Attention by Johann Hari, flow state is described as "the deepest form of focus and attention that we know of."
According to Hari, the flow state can only truly exist based on the following conditions:
1) You choose to focus on one thing.
2) You have to be doing something meaningful to you.
3) It will help if you are doing something that is at the edge of your abilities, but not beyond them.
Hari describes reading as one of the deepest forms of focus we can experience due to the time dedicated to it. "You dedicate many hours of your life, coolly, calmly, to one topic, and allow it to marinate in your mind. This is the medium through which most of the deepest advances in human thought over the past four hundred years have been figured out and explained."
As someone who has grown too accustomed to multitasking, I've found that activities where my hands are busy allow me to focus even deeper on a podcast or audio story. It keeps me engaged in a way that I find difficult if I were to just sit there. Perhaps it's the way we have conditioned ourselves to juggle multiple activities at once, but I'm also considering the importance of allowing our brains to fully focus on one activity at a time.
Will I stop listening to podcasts while doing a puzzle? Most likely not.
However, I have started experimenting with reading and writing in silence, which allows my thoughts to glide through my mind with depth. It also helps to silence all notifications that may distract me. After many years of writing for work, I am so happy to revive the flow state in my writing that's on a personal level. This blog has been a great source of inspiration and motivation. By doing something purely out of enjoyment, it takes the pressure out of the need to market or capitalize on it, which turns a hobby into a job.
We need to normalize doing things for the fun of it!
What activities put you into a state of flow? Are there hobbies that you do purely for fun? Please let me know, I would love to hear about them!
