Today we welcome Orin Davis to the podcast. Orin Davis earned the first doctorate in positive psychology, and is a self-actualization engineer who enables people to do and be their best. As the Principal Investigator of the Quality of Life Laboratory, he conducts research on flow, creativity, hypnosis, and mentoring. Dr. Davis consults for companies from startups to multinationals on hiring strategies, culture, innovation, and employee well-being. He is the author of Team Flow: The psychology of optimal collaboration.
In this episode, I talk to Orin Davis about the new science of flow. A lot of people are familiar with the concept of flow, but according to Dr. Davis, the experience of it is not very common. We discuss Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s work and how Dr. Davis is expanding the research of flow by studying it at a group level. He talks about how we can increase the chances of experiencing flow for both individuals and teams. We also touch on the topics of microflow, hypnosis, absorption, positive psychology, and self-actualization.
Website: https://qllab.org/
Twitter: @DrOrinDavis
Topics
02:11 Orin’s dissertation
03:18 What is the flow experience?
09:01 Neuroscience of flow
11:57 Team flow
18:53 The whole team needs to be in flow
20:32 Flow is rare
22:07 How to increase flow
28:42 Democratizing flow
31:00 Microflow
35:14 How to spark team flow
36:43 Hypnosis and absorption
44:59 The autotelic personality
47:03 Modern-day positive psychology
51:44 Know thyself
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