Week 5

     This week was a pretty lousy one for my progress. I only got four lessons done despite my best efforts. Of course I take responsibility, I could have at least gotten a few more done while I was eating breakfast, or before bed. The big stressor of the week was the anatomy exam, and so I was too preoccupied to think about my less important goals. 

This week will be less busy, so I need to take this opportunity to catch up with my Spanish. To meet my end goal of completing half of the Duolingo Spanish tree I need to make up for my last few weeks of missed quotas. To start on this goal repair, this week I will do fifteen lessons. It's a lot, but if I break it up into seven days, that only comes out to a little over two lessons per day. 

According to the Nakamura, J reading, Experiencing flow causes a person to persist and return to an activity and foster growth in that activity. This state of flow comes about when a person engages in a task which is challenging, but not to the point of overwhelming a person's skills. The task then takes on the quality of being intrinsically rewarding. I would say that I most often enter flow when I am doing art work or writing. In both instances, I make amazing creative pieces and I lose all track of time and other responsibilities. When I am not in flow I create impressive piles of crumpled paper and a headache. In both of my creative occupations, flow occurs very regularly, which is probably why I return to them so often. In fact I think about them in every spare moment that I have throughout the day, almost to the point of obsession.

It seems to me that my new occupation has the potential to create a flow experience for me, but it simply hasn't been the last few weeks. The course isn't terribly challenging, but it keeps irritating me when I'm incorrect by a single word or letter and the system marks me wrong. Ideally I would prefer to be checked on my ability to get the correct meaning across since that is the purpose of language anyway. I think in order to get myself into a state of flow with this occupation, I need to devote a solid thirty minute block to it, rather than fitting it in during my five minute study breaks. That way I can give myself a chance to get into flow instead of being interrupted by having to get back to my homework right away.

As for my personality characteristics mentioned in the reading, I'd say that I definitely fit the autotelic archetype. I love setting goals, and doing projects. Idle time honestly makes me depressed and anxious, and it needs to be filled with something that gets my brain juices flowing. The flow state is a huge motivator for me when it comes to choosing occupations. Flow is the reason I love getting caught up in good engaging conversations, and the reason I love drawing. Flow is the reason that I don't mind trying my hand at difficult tasks. When you get in the groove with a monumental task, you can visualize your triumph in every move you make, and it's addictive.