Flow occurs when you are not explicitly thinking about what you’re doing; rather, your brain is in a special mode of activity in which procedures and operations are performed automatically without your having to exert conscious control. This is why practice and expertise are prerequisites for flow. Musicians who have learned their scales can play them without explicitly concentrating on them, based on motor memory. Indeed, they report that it feels as if their fingers “just know where to go” without their having to think about it. Basketball players, airplane pilots, computer programmers,
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