Eventually, Csikszentmihalyi began to notice common patterns in flow experience. Most flow experiences occur, for example, during situations that are “goal-oriented and bounded by rules.” In fact, most activities that lend themselves to flow are designed to maximally engage our attention and expand our competence—like athletics or intense work. “They have rules that require the learning of skills,” he writes in Flow, his 1990 book on the subject. “They set up goals, they provide feedback, they make control possible.”
