28 Jan Coda to ‘How often do you get lost in your work?’

My first post of 2013 asked ‘How often do you get lost in your work?’. In this post I drew on the work of Milhály Csíkszentmihályi in explaining how the idea of finding ‘flow’ can help you develop your career. In his latest book Flourish, Martin Seligman–of Authentic Happiness fame–expounds a theory of well-being. Reading Flourish reminded me of a very useful and relevant tool that Seligman makes freely available.

One major component of well-being is being engaged and this, according to Seligman, is the same as being in flow. To help you explore how you can find flow in your work, I recommend you complete Seligman’s Values in Action questionnaire.

This will help you identify your signature competences and when you have your Values in Action report, ask yourself:

• ‘How often do I use my signature competences in my current job?’ in other words to what extent does your current job enable you to play to your strengths?
• ‘Can I shape my current job to enable me to make greater use of my signature competences?’ And if I can’t do this…
• ‘What do I have to do to find a new career role in which I can?’