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In flow, we are so focused on the task at hand that everything else falls away. Action and awareness merge. Time flies. Self vanishes. Performance goes through the roof.
From a quality-of-life perspective, psychologists have found that the people who have the most flow in their lives are the happiest people on earth.
Flow directly correlates to happiness at work and happiness at work directly correlates to success.
“Most people live in a very restricted circle of their potential being. They make use of a very small portion of their possible consciousness, and of their soul’s resources in general, much like a man who, out of his whole organism, should get into a habit of using and moving only his little finger.”
“During a peak experience,” Maslow explained, “the individual experiences an expansion of self, a sense of unity, and meaningfulness in life. The experience lingers in one’s consciousness and gives a sense of purpose, integration, self-determination and empathy.” These states, he concluded, were the hidden commonality among all high achievers, the source code of intrinsic motivation:
It was clear from talking to them, that what kept them motivated was the quality of the experience they felt when they were involved with the activity. The feeling didn’t come when they were relaxing, when they were taking drugs or alcohol, or when they were consuming the expensive privileges of wealth. Rather, it often involved painful, risky, difficult activities that stretched the person’s capacity and involved an element of novelty and discovery.
This means flow packs a double punch: it doesn’t just increase our decision-making abilities—it increases our creative decision-making abilities. Dramatically.
The dorsolateral prefrontal cortex is an area of the brain best known for self-monitoring and impulse control—both of which are important here. Self-monitoring is the voice of doubt and disparagement, that defeatist nag, our inner critic. Since flow is a fluid state—where problem solving is nearly automatic—second-guessing can only slow that process.
Human beings are hardwired for exploration, hardwired to push the envelope: dopamine is largely responsible for that wiring.
Consider the chain of events that takes us from pattern recognition through future prediction. Norepinephrine tightens focus (data acquisition); dopamine jacks pattern recognition (data processing); anandamide accelerates lateral thinking (widens the database searched by the pattern recognition system).
These activities are intrinsically motivating, autotelic experiences done for their own sake.
extreme athletes rely on risk to drive focus, the requisite first step toward producing flow.
The point is this: when the brain is charged with a clear goal, focus narrows considerably, the unimportant is disregarded, and the now is all that’s left.
“Ever since you were a little kid, you always have a dream about what you can accomplish. As soon as you get close to that dream, there’s another. There’s always a desire to keep learning, to keep evolving. Here’s the line. Let’s tickle it a bit. And then you figure out that’s not actually the line. The impossible is actually a little farther out, so let’s go over there and tickle it again. You do this for long enough and you just get used to it.”
Every time we have a creative insight and share it with the world, we come up against some very primal terrors: fear of failure, fear of the unknown, fear of social ridicule, fear of loss of resources (time, money, access, etc.). There’s significant risk involved in every step of this process.
All or nothing tends to be the kind of commitment flow demands—and it demands it of everyone. If you embark down this road, the requisite risk taking will continuously back you into uncomfortable corners. It’s almost ironic. How many self-help books have been written about living with passion and purpose (i.e., traveling the flow path); yet how few actually mention the dangers involved.
I can only do what truly inspires me. Otherwise, I have no power. This allows me to lock onto ideas that are authentically mine—so the dark side of flow, for all its torment, keeps me being exactly who I am.”
As a result, both his baseline for reality and his spectrum for possibility are a quantum leap forward from almost anything anyone born in the twentieth century can imagine.
Putting flow-prone kids into high-flow environments means a lot of flow. Arming them with advanced flow-hacking techniques means even more. All this flow makes the activity deeply rewarding, both fulfilling a child’s innate need for autonomy, mastery, and purpose and further increasing their sense of intrinsic motivation.
“A number of the innovative entrepreneurs also went to Montessori schools, where they learned to follow their curiosity. To paraphrase the famous Apple ad campaign, innovators not only learned early on to think different, they act different (and even talk different).”
To divine this secret, de Geus put twenty-seven corporations larger and longer lived than Shell under the microscope. He found a number of factors contribute to longevity, but one stood out far above the rest: the ability to learn faster. That was it—the secret to centuries of thriving. In an environment of turbulent change, as de Geus famously wrote: “The ability to learn faster than your competitors is the only sustainable competitive advantage.”
