What is Flow?
Caught Up in the Moments
Flow is a state of losing ourselves in what we’re doing. It’s a pleasant, rewarding, possibly euphoric experience.
The goal and activity could be anything that holds your focus over time:
Writing a screenplay about that college road trip
Improving your tennis backhand or your Italian
Rebuilding a broken team
Getting that photo, sketch, or poem that captures the crazy essence of your cat
Finding a way to slow the progression of Alzheimer’s disease
Planning a smash hit family reunion
Whatever brings you to flow, it will not just speak to you. It will engage you easily, naturally, and repeatedly. You may lose track of time or feel like you could—and even want to—go on with this activity indefinitely.
Not Special—Until it Is
Usually we don’t experience flow while marching (dragging?) through an everyday work project or life chore. But what if that activity has come to represent a flow state for you?
Maybe you wash the dishes in a mindful state of focused attention on the sensory experience of warm, fragrant, sudsy water and find your inner artist, playful child, or sensuous hedonist blissfully interested. There you are, in flow at the kitchen sink.
Perhaps the mundane goal of that work project doesn’t do anything for you, but it’s a great excuse to meet some new people, build your network, and spread the word about a passionate idea you have for changing how people work in this office. With a personal fascination pulling you forward, your experience of the project has shifted to enthusiastic flow.
Try it On
Put yourself in each of these stories for a moment:
I won’t just finish this report for work, I’ll redesign it in the process, because I just had this idea…and now I’m lost in the work, losing track of time, pursuing my idea, playing with the possibilities. The weekly report is flow today.
Cleaning out the garage is not my happy place. But now that my daughter has joined me, we’re starting to plan bike trips we could take in the spring. We have so much fun debating destinations, planning our gear, and retelling funny stories from past trips, that we almost forget we’re chucking out broken toys and sweeping cobwebs.
I gave myself the challenge of running a half marathon. I’m pleased with my goal but mostly it feels like work. Then one breezy day, I hit that feeling of flow. The act of running, the feel of my body in motion, in the world, is all I need. The activity itself has become the reward.
Even if none of these examples has sounded like flow fodder to you—that’s fine and normal—you may recognize the experience of losing yourself in work or play when the situation hits just the right buttons for you.
The Flow Buttons
Flow is feeling immersed in working--or playing--toward a goal that’s deeply engaging. That immersion comes when certain Goldilocks conditions are met:
Your activity or goal naturally appeal to or fascinate you.
The objective feels under your control, even if the outcome isn’t.
The idea for a new report format may flop. The bike trips might not happen, or they could disappoint. Your daughter may wander off today and leave you alone again with your garage chores. But while you’re in the flow state, your activity will be engaging and come from a place of inner confidence.
It feels like the things you’re aiming for are achievable: the garage is no longer overwhelming, and those bike trips won’t be easy but they’re going to be fun. Your experience of natural confidence about these things is what matters here, not how it works out in the end.
You can easily tell how you’re doing with your goal, and it’s a just-right kind of challenge for you: not too hard, not too easy.
In flow, your target and your progress are easy for you to measure, objectively or subjectively, however it matters to you. This goal-seeking energy and the momentum you notice are your natural propellants. You want more, you expect more, you keep going.
You’ll stay in flow when it’s not so easy for you that you lose that engine of self-challenge. You’ll stay in flow when it’s not so difficult, unpleasant, or overwhelming that you shift from energized flow to an excess of frustration, doubt, or exhaustion.
If the goal or your progress are too much or too little, if the activity itself is distasteful or burdensome, you will be kicked out of flow.
Work and play in flow state will not be effortless, and it might not feel especially natural to you, at least at times. But you will not need to work much at staying engaged. The flow state takes care of that. You want to stay in flow.
Have you experienced flow today? This week? This year?
You might go back there now and remember how it felt. Could that pull you forward toward your next flow moment?