Positive Psychology and its tools in people and time management

Briefing

This article aims to discuss the importance of Positive Psychology in people management, mainly using the precept of the state of flow (flow), created by Csikszentmihalyi in 1990.

A title of context, Positive Psychology emerged as a new area in 1998, proposed by Martin Seligman, with the aim of redirecting or focusing the interest of Psychology, stopping worrying only with the repair of damages to occupy with positive emotions, virtues and personal strengths.

Therefore, a science is born that studies and investigates a positive positive experience, such as positive characteristics and positive institutions. This article seeks to signal which experimental work experience, exhaustively studied by theorists of psychopathology of work, should not be investigated only in its dysfunctional aspects, products of an economic rationality that is conceived or a human being as an instrument of production. In this way, a proposal of Positive Psychology for the considerations about the fact that the experience is impregnated by the perception of the worker or about the meaning of his work becomes viable for the use of psychological and inappropriate use, include mental health and subjective well-being. In this sense, the numerous studies carried out by Csikszentmihalyi on the flow highlight a fundamental importance of the work for the quality of life of the people who use the way they are already in their lives. there are many conditions for this, as there are generally clear goals and performance rules. So, do not touch choosing and running the job again, as research on Positive Psychology is critical for you to think like work activities in flow-creating occupations.

Introduction

The illness of the working class has been the subject of research in the humanities, social sciences, and health for more than two decades. This concern does not only happen in Brazil, it also occurs on an international scale, as the damage caused to health by working conditions has consequences that go beyond professional life, involving both the worker and his family and society as a whole.

Thinking of the people in their work environment, of the suffering resulting from the working conditions imposed by the logic of the new capitalism, there is a growing pressure for high competitiveness, causing them, many times, to have to overcome their own limits. The consequences of all these processes are most noticeable through stress and occupational diseases that affect workers. It is noticed that psychology has shown itself, throughout its history, to be very important to help people in situations of psychological and mental suffering and, consequently, in the readaptation of these people to their work activities. However, psychology has been dealing with suffering and damage caused to health, becoming a science that is directed, almost exclusively, to psychopathological processes and their implications, focusing on damage repair processes within of a pathological model of human functioning.

In 1998, Martin Seligman, during his tenure under the presidency of the American Psychological Association (APA), launched Positive Psychology with the aim of redirecting the focus of interest in psychology, failing to investigate dysfunctional affective states, to occupy himself with positive emotions. , virtues and personal strengths , becoming a science that studies and investigates the subjective positive experience, the individual positive characteristics and the positive institutions.

Seligman's proposal was that psychology ceased to be a science and a healing profession and turned to the construction of positive qualities, dedicating itself to investigating positive affective states, happiness, resilience, optimism, gratitude, contentment, quality of life, satisfaction with life etc.

In the field of work, Positive Psychology can make a great contribution in seeking to investigate why some people are more resilient than others when faced with the setbacks of life, do not suffer from occupational diseases and are able to face adversity perceiving positive aspects that can lead to growth.

In this sense, following the methodology of a theoretical research, the objective of this work is to discuss the importance of Positive Psychology in the world of work, based on the concept of flow focused on the group of users on the social network Linkedin (www.dhirubhai.net) who act as people managers and for those who seek more information about flow applied in management. As Seligman and Csikszentmihalyi (2000) propose, psychology must have a concern far beyond health and illness, it must focus on education, work, love and human development.

Part I

According to Seligman and Csikszentmihalyi (2000), before World War II, psychology had three distinct missions: to cure mental illnesses, to make people's lives more productive and to identify and support exceptionally talented young people. After this great war, two economic events changed the face of psychology: the possibility of treating war veterans with psychological problems and the creation of the National Institute of Mental Diseases, in the United States, which, over time, began to give relevance to research aimed at the cause and cure of mental disorders.

So, psychology came up with the vision directed towards a dysfunctional model of the human being, always oriented towards diseases. In contrast, Positive Psychology turned to investigate the elements that constitute the optimal functioning of the human being, proposing a balance in relation to the previous approach, suggesting that, along with its defects, the qualities of people should also be explored.

Positive Psychology has been growing in the United States, in Europe, and is emerging in Brazil. This rapid expansion of the proposal launched by Seligman was facilitated by the fact that he is in charge of the presidency of the "American Psychological Association", making it possible to make several meetings with renowned researchers who were already investigating functional aspects of the human being, in order to understand why some people are happy, managing to express their full potential; and how groups, communities and society thrive, becoming positive, promoting strengths and virtues essential for the emergence of positive thoughts.

Positive Psychology has three pillars: the first concerns the study of positive emotions; the second refers to the study of positive traits, “mainly strengths and virtues, but also‘ skills ’, such as intelligence and athletic ability” (SELIGMAN, 2004, p.13); and the third is the study of positive institutions, such as a solid family, work, democracy, a broad institutional or cultural circle, from which strengths and virtues can arise that lead to positive thoughts.

The field of Positive Psychology, at the subjective level, starts from self-reports of how a person evaluates his life, thus investigating the subjective self-perceived experience about well-being. Positive emotions can be related to the past, future and present. Satisfaction, contentment, fulfillment, pride and serenity are emotions linked to the past; hope, optimism, faith and trust are linked to the future; and joy, ecstasy, enthusiasm, calm, pleasure, flow and happiness, refer to the present. At the individual level, Positive Psychology is interested in positive individual characteristics such as: vocation and ability to love, courage, ability in interpersonal relationships, aesthetic sensitivity, perseverance, ability to forgive, originality, spirituality, skills and wisdom. At the group level, it refers to civic virtues and institutions that guide individuals to be better citizens, such as: responsibility, education, altruism, civility, moderation, tolerance and ethical work.

PART II
SUBJECTIVE WELL-BEING: THE SCIENTIFIC STUDY OF HAPPINESS

The studies on happiness were intensified from 1970 onwards, and became known as subjective well-being. According to Diener, Psychological Abstracts, in 1973, indexed the term happiness, and the journal Social Indicators Research started to publish numerous articles on subjective well-being. Several terms have been used in studies on subjective well-being: happiness, positive affect, mood, mood and subjective assessment of quality of life.

Quality of life has two components: objective well-being (welfare) and subjective well-being (well-being). Objective well-being checks the resources that people have and that provide them with the satisfaction of basic needs of life and security. It consists of two subcomponents: economic well-being (salary and income) and socio-demographic well-being (housing, education, health, employment, leisure, transport, etc.).

Subjective well-being, another component of quality of life, is composed of four subcomponents: satisfaction with life (cognitive aspect), positive affect, negative affect (emotional aspect) and happiness (preponderance of positive affects over negative affects). Happiness is studied through self-reports of the subjective assessment of quality of life, constituting the way people perceive themselves emotionally.

According to Fredrickson (2001), when using the terms positive or negative to talk about emotions and affections, the objective is to relate them to the approach or distance of other people, which is one of the crucial points of studies on happiness. Several studies in the area of Positive Psychology, over years of research, have found that people who declare themselves happy are those who have a large circle of interpersonal relationships, which has led scholars to relate happiness with being in the presence of other people.

When a person has a high level of subjective well-being, he is experiencing life satisfaction, happiness, frequent positive emotions and negative emotions infrequently; just as someone with a low level of subjective well-being is not enjoying life or happiness, and is experiencing more negative emotions and fewer positive emotions.

In Seligmam's (2004) point of view, “positive emotion is important, not only because of the pleasant feeling it brings, but also because it causes a much better relationship with the world”. Positive emotions also have beneficial social consequences, causing people to behave cooperatively, leading to mutually rewarding social interactions, building and strengthening social bonds. Additionally, positive emotions play an important role in evolution, strengthening intellectual, physical and social resources, which are useful in adverse situations, providing a positive state of mind, bringing people together as they all like to be around happy people. However, as other authors point out, subjective well-being cannot be confused with mental health or psychological health, as a person who is delusional may feel happy or satisfied with his life, but it cannot be said that he has mental health. Thus, these scholars conclude that subjective well-being is not a sufficient condition for psychological well-being, and may not be essential for mental health; but it is undoubtedly a desirable condition for people.

The flow phenomenon, although quite old, has become a target of interest for Positive Psychologists to understand how it is capable of providing favorable circumstances to improve people's quality of life, as a way of acting intentionally for happiness would be to increase these moments. The feeling of well-being provided by the flow is due to the fact that the body and mind are working in harmony. According to Csikszentmihalyi, the condition for the flow experience is the balance between challenges and skills, with work being one of its main facilitators.

Part III:
SUBJECTIVE WELL-BEING AND WORK: POSSIBILITIES AND PARADOXES

The concept of flow, maximum experience, flow, experience of flow or psychic negentropy was proposed by Csikszentmihalyi (1999) to designate an intrinsic motivation that happens when someone proposes to face challenges. Its main characteristics are: the goals are clear and the feedback is immediate, the concentration is intense and focused on the moment, there is a fusion between action and awareness, a feeling of loss of reflexive awareness and control of your own actions, the notion of time is altered, and the activity is intrinsically rewarding in itself.

Flow is the way people refer to their mental state when their consciousness is harmoniously organized, and they want to continue the activity for the satisfaction they feel, because the challenges faced combine with the ability to face them, promoting gratification and increase your skills.

Thus, people who know their personal strengths can seek activities in which they are necessary and, with this, play an active role in raising their happiness levels, such as, for example, learning to transform occupations into activities that create flow, and thinking of ways to make relationships with parents, spouses, children, friends and work more enjoyable.

Activities that require concentration and increase skills are ideal for developing the self. For Csikszentmihalyi (1999), “self” corresponds to the content of consciousness that contains records of pleasurable, painful experiences, desires, actions taken, etc., representing the hierarchy of goals built up to then.

Flow-creating activities can determine people's standard of excellence in relation to the performance of their activities by comparing them with their previous performances, or even in relation to an external standard, when comparing themselves with another person. In this sense, it can be said that the incentive for achievement for each successful competition situation is strongly linked to the subjective well-being and the experience of flow.

So, the essential condition for personal development occurs when the person moves towards increasing complexity. On the other hand, Csikszentmihalyi (1999) adds that when someone cannot find a way to adapt their talents to what is expected of them, these people will walk in the opposite direction to that of complexity, having the feeling of lost time.

The figure below shows how a normal activity is able to grow in complexity over time. In situation A, skills are basic and if they are harmonious with the environment, they can provide average satisfaction. However, with the improvement of skills (B), marasmus arises, as there will be no more satisfaction in the task performed, being necessary to seek new opportunities or more complex situations (C), to return to the involvement at the beginning of the task. On the other hand, if the level of skills continues to rise, doldrums will arise again (D). Thus, for the continuation of satisfaction in the task being performed, it is crucial that the challenges to be faced are increasingly complex and are in balance with the capacity and skills to face them (E).

The flow does not occur all the time, it is common for people to feel stress, apathy, dullness and even episodes of despair. The next figure shows the results of research by Csikszentmihalyi (2004), over the last few decades, on the variation in the quality of the emotional experience at various times. The central point of the figure, represents the average index of challenges and skills and the closer to this point, the more normal the mood of the people, without positive or negative emotions. However, by moving away from this central point, moods will be modified according to the relationship between challenges and skills.

According to Csikszentmihalyi (1999), these eight emotions represent, within a huge range of other emotions, “a very useful compass to trace a path along the intricacies of emotional life”. But, the excellence of life is generated by the full involvement of experiencing flow, and not by happiness, because when the person is in a state of flow, his conscience is totally immersed in the activity that is taking place, causing him to lose his sense of reality. . So, it is essential that situations are created in which people's skills are covered by growing challenges, improving quality of life and increasing complexity.

Thus, in order to achieve a life of satisfaction, according to Csikszentmihalyi (1999), it is necessary to be able to have direct control of the experience, that is, the ability to obtain, instant by instant, pleasure with what one does, therefore, from all the virtues that can be learned, none is characterized as more useful, more essential to survival and better able to improve the quality of life than the ability to transform adversity into a challenge that generates satisfaction.

For Seligman (2004), perhaps flow, as conceived by Csikszentmihalyi (1992), represents the state that marks psychological growth, and “concentration, loss of consciousness and interruption of time are the way evolution has to deal with us. to say that we are accumulating psychological resources for the future. ”This occurs when people start looking for new challenges as those present in the activity are exhausted, consolidating their learning and experiences, finding ways to increase the complexity of their lives.

For Snyder and Lopez (2009), workers are engaged in their work when their tasks are considered special and there is a good balance between the activities that are demanded with their skills and personality. For these authors, this engaged involvement corresponds to the concept of flow proposed by Csikszentmihalyi, as the relationship between skills and challenges is present in this conception of work.

The next figure shows the eight combinations of challenges and skills, with the gathering of some characteristics of activity and emotion related to it.

The flow experience happens in situations where you do what you like, being different for each person. In the control channel are work or driving a car, such situations are capable of producing everything from flow, to anxiety, apathy or dullness, because what determines these emotions is the relationship between challenges and skills.

There are countless situations that promote relaxation, such as: resting, eating, seeing friends, sunbathing, listening to music, leisure, etc. It is possible to be happy in situations of passive pleasure, without any kind of fulfillment, as these situations are very pleasant and deserve to be experienced, but it is a very ephemeral happiness, as it depends on favorable external circumstances. Thus, for this author, when other factors are balanced, a life full of complex flow activities is more worth living than a life of passive entertainment consumption. Myers (1993) mentioned that people should look for work and leisure that use their skills, that are within the flow zone.

Marasmus is usually associated with maintenance activities, such as cleaning, cooking, shopping etc., but, on the other hand, "it is the most frequent state of mind at work". Apathy is an intolerable situation and arises when there is nothing to do and, to avoid it, people resort to forms of passive leisure, such as watching television.

It is important to make a reservation here. The job description made by Csikszentmihalyi (1992) is based on contemporary capitalist logic and refers, for the most part, to the work activities carried out by knowledge workers.

According to Antunes (1999), there is currently a significant heterogeneity of work marked by precarious work, which can be noticed with the increase in subcontracted, partial, temporary, outsourced work, etc. According to the author, the most brutal transformation is the expansion of structural unemployment. This immense contingent of flexible - and unprotected - workers is orbiting around a small layer composed of elite workers. They are the so-called knowledge workers, responsible for the competitive differential of organizations, these individuals are prepared, from an early age, to develop the qualifications required by the market.

Understanding the position made by Antunes (1999), it is clear that we are facing a possible paradox: if the work needs to be structured, offer goals and challenges in order to generate satisfaction, then only a small portion of workers would be able to experience the flow experience.

It is observed that the work has assumed a distinctive feature over the last decades to the point of establishing itself, at present, as a “high class sport” or “high achievement”, reinforcing the findings made by Antunes about the crisis that we face in the world of work.

Such 'sport' tends to become less of a popular pastime and more of a competitive, elitist activity, with a lot of money involved. The small part of the working population does it hard and efficiently, while the other part stands aside because they cannot keep up with the high pace of production.

This is undoubtedly an issue that deserves to be considered when proposing to relate the experience of flow with work activities. However, it must be kept in mind that this is something that Positive Psychology has not yet proposed to investigate and that, in a specific way, is considered in this work.

Csikszentmihalyi (2004) does not fail to contemplate the crisis in the world of work by highlighting the discontent of people with the same, stating that “although people feel satisfied when they are able to do a good job, most tasks do not address their needs for accomplishment ”. Indeed, in general, in the history of man with work, employers have always been more concerned with getting workers to the maximum of their capacity and possibility than adapting a function to their potential. Especially now, when bargaining power is lost in the face of the employment crisis. But, work will always be a great paradox, because while most people dream of retirement, on the other hand, 80% declare that they would continue to work even if they did not depend on salary to guarantee their survival and that of their family.

Having understood the function of work as a stabilizer of identity, one can understand that the experience of flow depends on many variables to occur, and does not depend, purely and simply, on the existence or not of a job in the life of the subject. The possibilities of occurrence of flow at work also depend on the challenge and support received, as well as on opportunities to learn, to use the maximum of personal capacity, to interact and to contribute to the collective good. If these conditions are not present at work, it will be a source of alienation and doldrums. For Csikszentmihalyi (2004) "working with joy in the heart while responding to the needs of society is a more than perfect description of how flow works at work".

According to this author, three situations determine the motivation of the worker in relation to the work experience: the first situation will depend on the conditions of the workplace; the second refers to the values that work represents for the community; and, the last condition concerns the worker's judgment about the contribution of their work, regardless of what other people may think. 

Then, based on the situations that determine the way in which the work experience is lived by the worker, Csikszentmihalyi proposes that, in an ideal situation, the manager should pay attention to these factors, if he aims to command a lasting organization, where the workers are motivated to participate in this growth and want to invest in what they do. The three situations that must be present are:

1. The first is to maximize the attractiveness represented by the conditions of the workplace;

2. The second, finding ways to endow this work with meaning and value;

3. The third, by selecting and rewarding individuals who find satisfaction in this work, leaders are able to raise the morale of organisations as a whole in a positive direction.

Organizations have, in their leaders, the main task of making the people under their command work efficiently. If the potential of workers can be expressed in the performance of their work, the ideal will be achieved, because leading is much more encouraging than accomplishing.

Thus, it is essential that the reasons that make people want to work are known, because the manager who is able to provide a work environment that provides individuals with conditions to expand their potential to the maximum, will have committed workers, in addition to a pleasant working environment. However, if the latter recognizes that capabilities include not only talents, but also strengths and virtues, the implications of choosing and recreating work are clear.

FINAL CONSIDERATIONS

According to Chandrika (1998), when a person is happy with his work, he will probably be more satisfied with his life, especially if we pay attention to the role that work nowadays plays in the formation of the subject's identity. The benefits that work offers are important for well-being, especially: opportunities for interaction and social insertion, purpose and objectives, filling free time, challenges that can be faced with personal skills, status, in addition to income.

When the worker's expectations regarding his professional activity are fulfilled, he will experience well-being; and the greater the challenge and support at work, as well as the variety and opportunities to learn and put into practice, the greater the likelihood that this experienced person will flow. In this sense, diversification at work and manager support have been the sources of satisfaction most indicated by workers. However, when these two situations are not present, the reports point to alienation and apathy at work.

Csikszentmihalyi (2004), from an extensive study, with thousands of people, concluded that they often pass day after day without having contact with their emotions. For this reason, they oscillate between two extremes: most of the time they are immersed in the anxiety of professional pressures and social obligations and, when they can enjoy leisure time, they prefer passive boredom. In this sense, the discovery of flow is a fundamental experience, because if the person does not assume the direction of his life, he will be controlled by the outside world, thus serving other people's purposes. One cannot expect someone to help another to live; it is necessary to discover how to do this on your own, and in those moments, loneliness is extremely important for the person to understand that he must face challenges with tasks that require a high degree of skill and commitment. 

Work can be the main facilitator of flow because it means “everything that an organism does to prevent entropy from destroying it”, it is worth adding that it is “almost impossible to clarify whether greater job satisfaction makes people happier or if the willingness to be happy generates job satisfaction ”(SELIGMAN, 2004).

An important factor that relates work and flow refers to challenges, leading professionals to put their strengths and talents into action to compensate for the difficulties of the task. In some professions, the career plan means several levels that will be reached, over the years, with ever greater responsibilities, enabling an experience of continuous flow for many years.

However, the concern with an inexorable reality that surrounds us and points to the weakening of working relationships worldwide cannot be excluded from the Positive Psychology context. We must envision a future that strives for the well-being and satisfaction of workers and, in this sense, the discovery of flow has a great contribution to make. But, for this, it is essential to contextualize work today, understanding, criticizing and raising awareness among entrepreneurs, managers, work psychologists, etc., about the importance of reviewing the logic of work in contemporary capitalism and all the developments that it has been causing. On the other hand, we cannot fall into the trap of chronic disenchantment that prevents us from continuing to seek to generate conditions so that the worker can, alone and collectively, come to create and re-create through work, even though these conditions are far from ideal.

Among the concerns of Positive Psychology for the coming years are: to better understand the pillars that support it; how to increase the flow moments, an important concept to act intentionally to increase the happiness indexes; better understand emotions; and contribute to the improvement of world public policies. In short, the leaders and managers of the 21st century must be attentive and apply the concept in their teams and organizations in order to guarantee the empowerment of individuals in a lasting and prosperous way.

I hope you enjoyed this article. I'm glad to help you and your organization to implement the flow into your day by day work. Please, send me an e-mail or a direct message via Linkedin.

Fabiano Assis [ Positive Psychology Professional and Technology Sales Leader]

https://www.dhirubhai.net/in/fabianoassis/