In his groundbreaking book Flow, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi offers intriguing insights about when we’re most likely to enter into a flow state: when the challenge of completing a task is roughly equal to our ability to do so, and we become totally immersed in the task. When our skills greatly exceed the demands of a task—such as when we do mindless data entry for several hours—we feel bored. When the demands of a task exceed our skills—such as when we’re unprepared to give a presentation—we feel anxious.
