A feeling of control. When you’re flowing, you feel very in control of what’s happening.Exclusion of other information. In a state of flow, there’s no room for information unrelated to the activity at hand.Feeling like you’re on the right track adds intensity to your experience. Direct, immediate feedback. People need to get short-term feedback to reinforce their behavior.If they’re vague or unclear, your attention will fade. Csikszentmihalyi found that we get more enjoyment out of things when we have clear goals. Your whole being focuses on one thing, and you enter an extreme state of concentration. Focus and concentration. In a flow state, your focus is so centered that the world and your ego completely disappear.A challenge that makes you use all your skills. If the challenge demands the highest level of your skills, it’s very likely you’ll start to flow.That helped him reach a definition of some of the things that come up when you enter a state of flow. Here they are: The state of flow also goes by another name: “optimal experience”.Ĭsikszentmihalyi did a 12-year study with people all over the world. He discovered that, regardless of age, nationality, or conditions of life, almost everyone described optimal experience in a very similar way. The outcome of all this is harmony, balance, and most importantly, happiness. Basically, you want to be there doing what you’re doing. What it is, then, is a state where you focus all your attention on the task or activity at hand. You also have a deep motivation to go along with that attention. Your whole being is involved, and you’re using your skills to the utmost.” Every action, movement, and thought follows inevitably from the previous one, like playing jazz. Here’s how Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi described the state of flow: “ being completely involved in an acitivty for its own sake. A lot of people would call this “being in the zone,” in other words: full absorption in something and complete happiness while you’re doing it. The idea behind Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s theory is that people are much happier when they enter a state of “flow”. This happens when you do something that completely captures your attention. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and the concept of “flowing”

The psychology of optimal experience