What's Changing? - Flow

Please see below selected recent flow-related change.

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March 2023

We can create a life of flow, or as Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi called it, an "autotelic" life. He described four rules for creating the autotelic self: 1) Set goals to strive for, recognise challenges, and identify skills you need to reach your goals; 2) Become immersed in the activity; 3) Pay attention to what is happening rather than worrying about how you're doing; 4) Learn to enjoy immediate experience: This allows us to enjoy those small things that enrich our lives.

January 2023

For Buddhists, there is no “self” at all: a concept called anattā. The idea that we have some unified identity is more the result of illusion and conditioning than fact. That thing we call “me” is in such a state of flux that it cannot be grasped at all. You are, today, a very different person than who you were last year. Things in life are in a near constant swirl. Your beliefs, values, relationships, wealth, and health will come and they will go.

December 2022

When someone is in flow, dopamine, the “reward” hormone, courses through the brain, and areas that respond to it are more active. A recent idea in flow research recommends taking on challenges that ever-so-slightly exceed our skill-set, as these require extra attention. Moreover, this forces you to learn to be comfortable with being outmatched and a little uncomfortable. It can also involve delving into activities that truly drive us, and focus on them entirely when we do. We might then find ourselves entering into flow more often, which can in turn make us more productive and successful.

October 2022

Many people have experienced flow - that state of mind where we’re “in the zone” and able to perform tasks optimally with little conscious effort. In flow, time seems to pass differently, as deep-seated skills take over and run on autopilot. So how can one best take advantage of flow? Researchers now claim to have identified 22 “flow triggers” that can catalyse flow states and help people understand the intrinsic motivators that drive flow states.

June 2022

May 2022

Flow is described as a state of “effortless effort,” in which we feel as if we are being propelled through an activity - and everything else seems to disappear. Flow also refers to any moments of rapt attention and total absorption. Researchers now claim to have discovered 22 catalysts to help people quickly enter into a flow state. A few of these include distraction management, dopamine triggering, and concentration.

February 2022

Late psychologist Mihály Csíkszentmihályi’s research on flow started in the 1970s. He called it the “secret to happiness”. Flow is a state of “optimal experience” that each of us can incorporate into our everyday lives. One characterized by immense joy that makes a life worth living. In the years since, researchers have gained a vast store of knowledge about what it is like to be in flow and how experiencing it is important for our overall mental health and well-being. In short, we are completely absorbed in a highly rewarding activity – and not in our inner monologues – when we feel flow. People often say flow is like “being in the zone.” Psychologists Jeanne Nakamura and Csíkszentmihályi describe it as something more. When people feel flow, they are in a state of intense concentration. Their thoughts are focused on an experience rather than on themselves.

November 2021

Barbara Gail Montero, a philosophy professor who also endured the trials of training to become a ballet dancer, warned against the assumption that flow is effortless. “Perhaps flow draws us in because we generally dislike hard work,” she wrote in a critical article for Aeon in 2017. However, the concept's late founder Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi recognised that an individual or a team leader had to strive to improve: “The best moments are not passive, they aren’t relaxing at all: [but] when you’re stretching your body and mind to their limits, it makes life worth living.”

July 2021

Psyche launched a new film, a hand-painted contemplation on Heraclitus’ aphorism that no person can step in the same river twice, for the river is always in flux and so, too, is the person.

June 2021

The "profound power of the flow state" is described in a reflective piece by psychologist Harriet Gross, explaining why the natural rhythm of gardening helps her to disconnect from the imposed and stressful pace of modern-day life.

December 2020

According to Good Business: Leadership, Flow, and the Making of Meaning, by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, things have long been going wrong in the business world: corporate scandals have revealed some business leaders as frauds and many workers view their jobs as unpleasant. However, the business world doesn’t have to be this way; companies can be run by principled leaders and jobs can be fun and can foster flow: responsible organisations know employees aren’t cogs, and know that greater priorities outweigh this quarter’s bottom line.

June 2019

Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s influential, book-length, research on the nature of human consciousness, and the obstacles people put in its path, first appeared in 1990. Csikszentmihalyi cites trends in self-obsession, self-healing and the search for transcendence. People want to feel better about themselves and always have, he argues. The hardest obstacle is what goes on in your head. Attitude is everything. Yet, as Csikszentmihalyi stresses in his introduction, flow isn’t a guide to achieving happiness. It’s a description of how people attain flow – deep concentrated and pleasurable immersion in an activity – and the mental, emotional and physical methods they employed.

Pre 2018

The father of the concept of the "flow", Mihaly Czikszentmihalyi, outlined his latest thinking, arguing that what makes a life worth living is not money, but lasting satisfaction through activities that bring about a state of flow.

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