Rico Medellin...works in a factory, on an assembly line...The task he has to perform on each unit that passes in front of his station should take forty-three seconds to perform-the same exact operation almost six hundred times in a working day. Most people would grow tired of such work very soon. But Rico has been at this job for over five years, and he still enjoys it. The reason is that he approaches his task the same way an Olympic athlete approaches his event: How can I beat my record? Like the runner who trains for years to shave a few seconds off his best performance on the track, Rico has trained himself to better his time on the assembly line. With the painstaking care of a surgeon, he has worked out a private routine for how to use his tools, how to do his moves. After five years, his best average for a day has been twenty-eight seconds per unit. He has not let on to others that he is ahead and lets his success pass unnoticed. It is enough to know that he can do it, because when he is working at top performance the experience is so enthralling that it is almost painful for him to slow down. Rico says. Its a whole lot better than watching T.V.. Rico knows that very soon he will reach the limit beyond which he will longer be able to improve his perfection at his job. So twice a week he takes evening courses in electronics. When he has his diploma he will seek a more complex job, one that presumably he will confront with the same enthusiasm he has shown so far. -Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, pg. 39 How to make a tedious, repetitive job very enjoyable. Example: Dish washing
Posted on: Sun, 27 Oct 2013 16:11:00 +0000
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