In the Flow
Back when I was working as a registered nurse in Singapore, I was assigned to mentor a new Filipino nurse who had just joined our ward. After three months of guiding her, I called her in one afternoon and said, “I need to submit a report to the Education Department.
Do you have anything to ask or share before I send it in?” She hesitated for a moment and then said, almost shyly: “Yes… I noticed something. The Singaporean nurses here they’re always in a hurry. They work fast, they eat fast, they walk fast… even talk fast. Why?” I laughed, but inside, a little part of me bristled.
Was she criticizing us? Was she saying we weren’t doing things properly? But later that night, her words kept circling in my mind like a persistent echo.
The next day was my day off, but instead of staying home, I decided to go back to the hospital this time, not as a nurse but as an observer.
I quietly settled into the visitors’ area overlooking the ward and simply watched.
For hours, I sat there, letting the rhythm of the ward unfold before me. I saw nurses walking briskly down the corridors, charts in hand, eyes fixed ahead. I watched colleagues skip lunch to “finish up just one more task.” I heard clipped conversations, medical jargon flying back and forth like arrows.
There was no wasted motion, no pauses, no space to breathe. And suddenly, I understood what she meant. She was right. We were always in a hurry. We were so obsessed with getting things done that we had stopped seeing. We spoke endlessly about “holistic nursing care,” but in practice, we were chasing efficiency ticking boxes, completing tasks and somewhere along the way, we had forgotten we were dealing with people, not just patients.
That’s when I began thinking about flow that rare state where you become so completely absorbed in what you’re doing that everything else disappears. Flow happens when challenges are high and personal skills are stretched to their limit. Your attention narrows to a clear goal. You feel deeply involved, fully concentrated, completely absorbed.
Every action gives you immediate feedback, and you move effortlessly from one task to the next. Flow can be powerful. It makes us efficient. It drives mastery. It can even make a boring job exciting when challenges and skills are perfectly balanced. But there’s a danger too. You can become trapped in it. So caught up in “doing” that you stop seeing. You forget the bigger picture the human connections, the purpose behind the work, the meaning that gives it all value.
Stepping Outside the Current The hardest part about being in the flow is that you don’t realize you’re in it until you step outside of it. That day, sitting in the visitors’ area, I saw myself through a stranger’s eyes. It was uncomfortable, even frightening. Because self-awareness forces you to confront truths you might have been avoiding. And once you see, you cannot unsee. Many people choose not to step back for this very reason.
Because change demands courage, and courage can be exhausting. But if we never pause to observe ourselves, we risk losing touch with what really matters. What I Learned That young Filipino nurse gave me an unexpected gift a mirror. I learned that efficiency without presence can make us lose sight of the humanity at the heart of our work.
Nursing is not just about skillfully managing tasks it’s about being with people — listening, comforting, noticing. Flow can be a beautiful thing, but sometimes, to truly care, we must step out of it.
A Question for Us to consider : All In our constant rush to do, have we forgotten how to be?
For hours, I sat there, letting the rhythm of the ward unfold before me. I saw nurses walking briskly down the corridors, charts in hand, eyes fixed ahead. I watched colleagues skip lunch to “finish up just one more task.” I heard clipped conversations, medical jargon flying back and forth like arrows.
There was no wasted motion, no pauses, no space to breathe. And suddenly, I understood what she meant. She was right. We were always in a hurry. We were so obsessed with getting things done that we had stopped seeing. We spoke endlessly about “holistic nursing care,” but in practice, we were chasing efficiency ticking boxes, completing tasks and somewhere along the way, we had forgotten we were dealing with people, not just patients.
That’s when I began thinking about flow that rare state where you become so completely absorbed in what you’re doing that everything else disappears. Flow happens when challenges are high and personal skills are stretched to their limit. Your attention narrows to a clear goal. You feel deeply involved, fully concentrated, completely absorbed.
Every action gives you immediate feedback, and you move effortlessly from one task to the next. Flow can be powerful. It makes us efficient. It drives mastery. It can even make a boring job exciting when challenges and skills are perfectly balanced. But there’s a danger too. You can become trapped in it. So caught up in “doing” that you stop seeing. You forget the bigger picture the human connections, the purpose behind the work, the meaning that gives it all value.
Stepping Outside the Current The hardest part about being in the flow is that you don’t realize you’re in it until you step outside of it. That day, sitting in the visitors’ area, I saw myself through a stranger’s eyes. It was uncomfortable, even frightening. Because self-awareness forces you to confront truths you might have been avoiding. And once you see, you cannot unsee. Many people choose not to step back for this very reason.
Because change demands courage, and courage can be exhausting. But if we never pause to observe ourselves, we risk losing touch with what really matters. What I Learned That young Filipino nurse gave me an unexpected gift a mirror. I learned that efficiency without presence can make us lose sight of the humanity at the heart of our work.
Nursing is not just about skillfully managing tasks it’s about being with people — listening, comforting, noticing. Flow can be a beautiful thing, but sometimes, to truly care, we must step out of it.
A Question for Us to consider : All In our constant rush to do, have we forgotten how to be?
