Flow states, also known as optimal experiences, are enjoyable and essential for personal growth, but what are they exactly? And are they always desirable?
I’m in a flow state right now, and I’m loving it.
It happens when I write, read, am immersed in a coaching conversation, play with my nephew, or swim. There are different ways to reach a flow state, all equally valid.
Flow states, also known as optimal experiences, make us get so lost in a task that we forget about ourselves, our doubts, fears and life challenges. We are one with our task, and everything else fades away.
Flow states are enjoyable, so the more often you have them in your life, the better your quality of life will be. As I explain below, they are also essential for personal growth and self-actualisation.
What is a flow state?
The concept of flow states was coined and popularised by the Hungarian-American psychologist with one of the most unpronounceable names in the history of psychology, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (pronounced “chicks-send-me-high”, as he used to tell his students as an easy way to remember it). He published the book Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience in 1990, and it became a best-seller.
Thanks to Csikszentmihalyi’s work, a flow state is now a reasonably well-known psychological concept. It refers to a mental state we all attain when we are focused on achieving a goal and are immersed in a task.
Flow states happen when the following conditions are met:
– We confront a task we know we have the chance to complete. It is not unsurmountable or too complex for our skill level. It shouldn’t be too easy, or it risks becoming boring.
– We must be able to concentrate on the task at hand.
– The task has clear goals and provides immediate feedback on how we are doing.
– The task gives us a sense of control over our actions. Its completion depends on us and our skills.
When we enter a flow state, we get involved profoundly but effortlessly in what we are doing. Our worries disappear, and the sense of time vanishes. We are so concentrated that it sometimes looks like time stops, but when we finish, we realise time has actually flown away. Seconds merge into minutes and minutes into hours, and before you realise it, the whole afternoon has gone.
We are unaware of ourselves when we are in flow, but our sense of self emerges stronger once the flow experience is over.
Flow states are full of paradoxes.
From flow to growth
Flow states exist in the fine line between boredom and anxiety.
The challenge we face and the skills required to overcome it have to be at the right level, or we risk falling into boredom (when we are overskilled for the task) or anxiety (when our perceived skill level isn’t good enough).
The chart below shows this.
This equilibrium rarely remains stable, which is good. This instability is the reason behind flow states, causing personal growth and increased complexity of tasks and us as persons.
When we undertake a task repeatedly, our skill level improves with practice, so we move to the right in the chart and out of the flow state channel. We are now bored because the task is too easy for us, so we increase the level of the challenge until we are again in the flow state channel.
We could also increase the level of the challenge, even if we aren’t sufficiently skilled yet. This will create anxiety at first, but we will be forced to improve our skill level to bring it into the flow state and avoid being anxious.
This is how we move inside the flow channel to the right and up in the chart. This is how we grow and self-actualise
Flow states are enjoyable, so we should aim to have them because they are enjoyable in and of themselves. They are also an essential engine of personal growth and self-actualisation.
How to get flow
Csikszentmihalyi tells us about different ways to reach flow states. We can get there by doing a task, by doing something with our bodies and our minds… all our parts have the potential to make us reach a flow state.
With our bodies, we can reach flow states by playing sports or exercising. There are some steps we should follow to ensure we get into a flow state:
– Set an overall goal and smaller sub-goals, such as running a marathon in under 3:30 hours or a kilometre in under 5 minutes.
– Find ways to measure progress toward those goals. Continuing with the running example, this would mean running 1, 5 or 10 km faster every week or running ever longer distances at a similar pace.
– Concentrate on what you are doing, be mindful, and focus on the finer details of your performance. How do you feel when running uphill? And when you run intervals?
– Develop the skills necessary to interact successfully with the opportunities present in your environment. What is your running technique like? How can you improve it?
– Keep raising the stakes if the activity becomes boring. Can you run the next marathon below 3 hours?
We can enter flow states with nearly everything: reading, playing games, conducting philosophical thinking, playing an instrument, building Excel sheets, drawing, writing, listening to music, meditating, analysing the stock market… the list is endless.
The process will be similar in all these activities: set goals, concentrate, look for feedback from the task itself, and just get better and better.
The more, the better?
Flow states sound like the best thing since slide bread, but are they? Is it true that the more, the better?
They are positive processes indeed. They are enjoyable, and they help us grow. The more often we enter flow states, the better our quality of life should be.
So the short answer to the question is yes, the more, the better, but with some caveats. Like in all aspects of life, moderation and balance are key. We can have too much of a good thing, and flow states are no exception.
I am unsure if we have physical limits on the number of flow hours we can reach daily, but we cannot be lost indefinitely in flow. Sometimes, we need to come out of it and carry on with the rest of our lives.
Also, could a flow state be addictive? I’m not sure, but I can imagine it being so—perhaps not the flow state itself but the activity that brings us so much joy and growth. We may like running, reading, or meditating so much that it becomes a central focus in our lives.
You may say, “There is nothing wrong with it as long as it is a healthy habit”.
And I’d reply, “Of course not, as long as you make a clear distinction between a habit and an obsession”.
I have been obsessed with running, and it was cool, but there were times when it wasn’t healthy or good for me. It was the only thing I thought about, and it hurt other aspects of my life.
So, by all means, keep bringing on the flow states and keep enjoying them, but please do yourself a favour and do not get hooked on the activities that bring them on.
