At school, I easily followed and understood better the teachers that explained concepts flowing naturally from one to the other. I loved my first math teacher who drew with arrows on the blackboard the sequence of thinking for all new topics.
Over the years, the formal and informal education built up the idea that acting and thinking in a structured way is a must in order to succeed. Structure facilitates both learning new things from others and sharing ideas with others. Told or untold, it seemed to me that being structured was a skill to be developed.
At home, as a child, a way of expressing structure was by having a tidy room with all the books aligned on the shelves and the tshirts ordered by color in the closet. All these details made my life easier. Slowly, being structured became part of my own structure.
As an adult, I can say that structure considerably improved my life. Entrepreneurship is an open field where resources and challenges flow from all directions, most of the time without any connection between them. Supply-chain is an area where structure and optimisation make the difference. High volumes of goods need to move without issues from faraway factories to the selves of stores all over the country. Building teams from scratch also requires a structured mindset.
Only with a structured vision could I choose what to learn and how to plan my continuous education. When I realized how unhappy I was at the only job I had ever had, at Amazon, in London, I made a plan on how to keep my motivation up until the end of my contract. I planned my learning path so that every week I would learn topics I was interested in.
By practicing it in all aspects of my life, structure became a habit. It improved my planning skills, the way I make time for all the activities in my life and my medium and long term goals.
But then another concept came to compete with structure: flow. I will use the meaning of flow as the natural way for things to happen, without too much planning and expectations, but starting from an intention.
Initially, I felt it was difficult for me to allow too many moments of flow in my life as this seemed to me there was a lack of control and obviously would have made me feel uncomfortable. But slowly I started to pay attention to the beauty and the richness of the flow moments, especially when nothing was at stake.
Few years ago, I decided to spend one month in South America. I invited one of my best friends to join and she proposed we should go to Patagonia for a trekking tour. Besides a few experiences from childhood, my hiking and trekking experience was zero. We planned most of the logistics things, but there was no plan about how days would happen.
We explored the Chilean and Argentinian natural parks for 8 or 9 days having all kinds of weather, using hiking equipment for the first time, getting to the top of a mountain or changing plans to admire the views more. At the end of every single day it felt like an entire adventure had enfolded for us. We were prepared for a scenario, but we were open to embrace the moment if it brought more joy. The back-up plan that we always had allowed me to enjoy the beauty of the moment and go with the flow.
As said before, structure and control don’t go well with flow. I could not give up to the first two, but there was a sweetness in allowing flow to happen that I simply could not ignore. So I started to create more opportunities to have a structure or a plan and also enjoy the flow, just as it happened during the trip to Patagonia.
At the dinners I organize, the uniqueness comes from the setup which includes a structure, an agenda and a closure. I prepare the questions in advance to build up for a certain narrative. I even have additional questions in mind to add depending on where the conversation goes. I always go prepared, I always use the structure as a guideline. What is new is that structure and prepared questions are my back-up. Whenever I feel there is a better question in the air or a more natural way to facilitate the conversation, I take it. If something goes unwell, I can always go back to the script, which is already a good one. But most of the time, the flow takes the conversation to a better place, powered by the beauty and the magic of the present moment. Something I could not anticipate.
Flowing in the structure is a concept that allows me to experience flow and not give up to my strengths. Maybe it’s not the same for everyone, but being well prepared creates the best setting for me to experience flow.
What is your experience with flow and structure?