flow

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi has discovered in his research that one of the simplest and most common forms of flow that people experience in their lives is reading a book—and, like other forms of flow, it is being choked off in our culture of constant distraction. I thought a lot about this. For many of us, reading a book is the deepest form of focus we

If one had to characterise the difference overall, is something like this. Experience is forever in motion, ramifying and unpredictable. In order for us to know anything at all, that thing must have enduring properties. If all things flow and one can never step into the same river twice– Heraclitus’s phrase is, I believe, a brilliant evocation of

All of us need to feel able to create some sense of newness in our lives. We need to feel ourselves in flow every day.

Many people do not believe that it takes a person approximately 10 seconds to switch contexts; the time is measured between the final command executed in the previous context and the first command issued in the new context. The hiatus is not noticed because the minds of the users are occupied; they are not aware of the passage of time. However,

If you accomplish everything on today’s clear-goals list, this means you’re one step closer to your high, hard goals, which means you’re on mission, which means your intrinsic drivers are doing their job. Cross an item off that list, get a little dopamine; cross another item off, get a little more dopamine. One little win at a time, that’s how this

Equally crucial, clear goals are an important flow trigger.12 The state requires focus, and clear goals tell us where and when to put our attention. When goals are clear, the mind doesn’t have to wonder about what to do or what to do next—it already knows. Thus, concentration tightens, motivation heightens, and extraneous information gets filtered

breaking down the amorphous task of “writing a paper” into small and clearly separated tasks, you can focus on one thing at a time, complete each in one go and move on to the next one (Chapter 3.1). A good structure enables flow, the state in which you get so completely immersed in your work that you lose track of time and can just keep on going as