Work/Life - A Happy Medium - Act II
May 16th, 2007 at 11:35am Rebecca Borden
The flip side of work/life debate begs the question: What is the relationship between fulfillment and workload? Personally, I readily confess that I am an uber-achiever. Always have been; wired that way. There have been times when I have been at my happiest when working really hard, which is why I really enjoy the work on “flow” by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (pronounced, as I understand it, chic-sent-mee-highly). He contructs the “Creative Personality” along 10 dimensions of complexity. Each statement embodies a contradiction. Taken as a whole, they are a great for seeing how we can reconcile the paradoxes within ourselves. Which ones resonate most with you?
[Adapted from Csikszentmihalyi (1996). "Creativity: Flow and the psychology of discovery and invention." Harper: New York. p. 51-76.]
1. Creative individuals have a great deal of physical energy, but they are also often quiet and at rest.
2. Creative individuals tend to be smart, yet also naive at the same time.
3. Creative individuals operate with playfulness and discipline; responsibility and irresponsibility.
4. Creative individuals alternate between imagination and fantasy at one end, and a rooted sense of reality on the other.
5. Creative people seem to harbor opposite tendencies on the continuum between extroversion and introversion.
6. Creative individuals are remarkably humble and proud at the same time.
7. Creative individuals, to a certain extent, escape rigid gender stereotyping.
8. Creative people are thought to be rebellious and independent, yet grounded in cultural traditions.
9. Most creative people are very passionate about their work, yet they can be extremely objective about it as well.
10. The openness and sensitivity of creative individuals often exposes them to suffering and pain yet also a great deal of enjoyment.
2 Comments
1. M. Ryan Taylor | May 18th, 2007 at 5:23 pm
I can see a lot of these contradictions in myself and yet I wonder . . . if you were to take any group of professionals and re-word these points slightly, wouldn’t most people see themselves in these words? Duality is part of human nature. In discussions of spirituality you’ll find this same type of conflict : justice vs. mercy, light vs. dark, yin vs. yang, etc. - I think this partially defines what it means to be human.
2. Amy Kweskin Duncan | May 20th, 2007 at 12:17 pm
Often I feel safest in the arts and culture sector because people “get” me. This duality that you point out is fostered and encouraged in the arts. But is it also sometimes our Achilles heal?