Martin Seligman at Ted describes the three forms of positive psychology that we can experience. The first is the classic sense of happiness, the second he calls flow and the last is fulfillment. He describes flow as what you experience when time stops and you are completely lost in a particular activity.

I always wanted a word for that, for flow. When I was developing software I always really loved that sense of “flow”, complete focus on solving a problem, creating the solution. You would surface from your work and wonder how it could be so late.

Today, I only really experience that while playing games. I think this is the magic of games, that they tap into this need for flow and allow us to get lost. They do this by providing such clarity around achieving our goal, constant learning, and the sense of momentum towards that goal that is immediately visible. This is wonderfully and humorously described by Daniel Cook in his presentation on “Rescue Princess 2.0″

Now I am in a role that focuses more on the meaningful aspects of happiness, working with people and ideas, influence and communication, littered with interruption and changing focuses, constantly working around what David calls “Rules that Suck” (RTS) - the typical life of any manager or executive decision maker.

My work life, and my home life as a parent, is no longer particularly filled with periods of flow: it does not lead me to learn what I need to succeed;  rarely do I get a sense of momentum towards defined short term goals; there is no visible scoring system; levels can take years to complete and perhaps worst of all there is no pause button.

Alan Kay at TED demonstrates some software they developed for the $100 laptop - demo starts at around 12:20. It allows children to create mathematical models and visualize them in the real world. If we can provide software that children can learn who to model the effects of gravity on a bouncing ball, then really modeling and visualizing the impact of say a price change on our business should be simple.

Alan Kay’s presentation at TED

Xcelsius allows you to build models in Excel, load them and dynamically visualize the information. So Excel and Xcelsius provides the modeling, now we just need to really really understand our business and create that library of working models.