Flow and Strength

According to several books I've read recently, it's easier to experience "flow"--to get totally absorbed in what you are doing--if you apply your strengths.  You are far more likely to totally get into an activity, to get lost in it, to lose track of time, to forget about everything else around you, if the activity makes you apply your best talents at the highest possible level.

As an example, I'll bring up again my son Mackenzie's You Tube video about the Green Bay Packers.

link to Mackenzie's YouTube video

We know some of Mackenzie's top strengths because he (like everyone else in the family) took a web based survey that was designed to reveal his top strengths.  The survey was developed by Marcus Buckingham and Donald Clifton of the Gallup organization (the same company that does polls for national elections).  Buckingham and Clifton analyzed thousands of successful people to identify the types of strengths that led to their success.  They created a list of 34 basic strengths, and designed a survey which identifies an individual's top 5 strengths.  We were able to access the survey with a user code we found in the book Now, Discover Your Strengths

Mackenzie's top 5 strengths identified by this survey, and how they present themselves in this video, are as follows  (Correction from 4/4/2011; based on further research, these are his "Talents"--his preferences--and they only become "Strengths" when they are combined with "Skills" and "Knowledge", which he has obviously done):

1. Self Assurance--You have to be pretty confident to make all these assertions as a 14 year old.  But this confidence adds power to his argument.
2. Communication--He gets his point across
3. Competitive--He loves analyzing college football talent because he compares himself to others and thinks that his predictions often are more accurate than most professionals.  Further, the subject matter is all about competition:  who's the BEST quaterback?  the second best?  third?  etc.
4. Analytical--Mackenzie loves to analyze the plusses and minuses of hundreds of players and how they might fit in with the offensive or defensive needs of various teams
5. Woo--According to the "Strengths Finder" survey, woo is the ability to easily approach strangers, to mix with others without hesitation.  This strength perhaps isn't challenged much in this video, but it does show in the way he talks to the audience.