My list of Flow-inducing activities

Toward an understanding of why hard work brings enjoyment

I’m currently reading Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’ s book Flow, and wanted to reflect on a few of the activities that provide me with an experience of flow. If you have not read the book nor otherwise become familiar with flow, the concept is that an experience of enjoyment comes from being fully engaged in an activity. These activities have a few characteristics, including:

1. Tasks with a chance of completion
2. Ability to concentrate on the task
3. Clear goals
4. Immediate feedback
5. Ability to become so deeply involved that you forget about other parts of life
6. Sense of control
7. Concern for self disappears
8. Sense of time is altered

The following are just a few activities in which I have experienced something akin to the state of flow described in the book, with a brief exploration of the reasons that I enjoyed them.

Playing Table Tennis

This game requires so much concentration. The first time I watched The Matrix, my friend Drew and I thought that we, like Neo, were able to move faster than time (I was 13). So, we “invented” a game called AirBall where you played table tennis without the table. Now, my enjoyment comes from finding a suitable opponent. It seems to be most fun for when the outcome of the game is unknown, as both players have similar skills and either could win the match. This is a great illustration for me of the thin line between boredom and anxiety.

Doing yardwork

Mowing lawns was my first job. It was also my first, awkward adolescent experience of non-sport flow. It was weird: it was work, but it was fun. It was a game I tried to optimize. Each time I mowed, I tried to complete the lawn in less time with fewer strokes. And I paid extreme attention to detail, not leaving a blade untrimmed or a corner unedged. There was a very clear goal when mowing the lawn, and that made working toward that goal very satisfying.

Swimming

The level of coordination required by swimming offers, I think, a life-long challenge. In swimming, one must keep in sync the motions of all four limbs, the core, and the head for breathing purposes. Last year, I discovered the technique known as Total Immersion Swimming via a Tim Ferriss blog post. I watched some YouTube videos demonstrating the technique, and tried to haphazardly apply them a few times over the year. Then, in January, I decided to train for my first triathlon, so I got serious about swimming and joined the YMCA. I went to the pool three times a week and focused on learning this technique. Each time, I’d make a little bit of progress and be able to swim a little smoother and could do a few more laps than the previous time. Eventually, I worked my way up to 16 lengths of the pool, which was the 400m distance required for my sprint triathlon. This consistent progress and rapid feedback made the flow experience very satisfying.

Running

The hardest part of running for me is actually starting to run. For a while, this hurdle (pun intended) was too great for me to consistently overcome. I made three changes to overcome this. First, I laid out my clothes and shoes for my morning run the night before, reducing the friction in getting dressed. Second, I began all my runs with a walk, which was a much smaller mental burden to overcome, and acted as a mental gateway (and physical warm-up) for the more strenuous part. Finally, I began tracking my running performance with a GPS watch and heart rate monitor, and found an actionable metric for improvement (HR input / Speed output). Measuring and improving this metric gave me a tangible goal on which I could see daily progress.

Playing Ultimate

I particularly wanted to include Ultimate, a team sport, as an example of a shared flow state. I could describe the essence of play most naturally as “flow”. There’s no such such thing as a hole-in-one, a solo home run, or an unassisted goal. To succeed at Ultimate requires a team to be totally in-sync, thinking and acting like a flock of birds or school of fish. While those activities may come naturally to…birds and fish, they don’t to humans. When a team becomes fully engaged, that’s when the fun begins. Even in the recreational leagues games in which I usually play, we have bursts of connection and pure enjoyment.

Writing

Yep, I like doing this stuff. I’ve been writing since I was in elementary school, and had some great teachers who instilled good process and made grammar come second-nature to me. When writing on a computer, I have the benefit of over a decade honing typing mechanics (thank you, AOL chatrooms and AIM), so I don’t encounter physical coordination limitations to my writing process. Also, I frequently have the opportunity to write on topics in which I’m strongly interested and well-versed, such as human performance optimization, technology development and entrepreneurship, and my own personal experiences.

Rockclimbing

In the past year, I’ve twice solo climbed a feature known as Courthouse Rock in Red River Gorge, and both times, I would describe my experience as a flow state. While my rock climbing experience is neither novel (since rockclimbing was specifically mentioned as a flow activity in the book) nor frequent (I’ve only done this twice in 12 months), I wanted to reflect on the contrast of climbing with the hiking that always accompanies this climb. The hike to Courthouse Rock is along the Auxier Ridge trail in the Gorge, which is one of my favorite hikes on which to take first-timers to the area. In the past year, I’ve taken four or five such hiking trips, only adding the rock climb portion on a few special trips. The hiking portion no longer sufficiently challenges me, neither physically nor navigationally, so I don’t experience flow. However, the climb of Courthouse Rock adds a significant physical challenge, and hiking a trail that is new to me (one that requires some challenge to successfully navigate) can both yield flow experiences.

Non-flow activities

In contrast to the preceding activities, here are a few that fall outside the optimal flow region. Activities that are currently too difficult for me (on the Anxiety side of the curve) include Video game (Unity) and Mobile app (Android) software development, playing an unknown song on the guitar, and running a marathon. Some activities that once provided flow, but are now too easy (on the Boredom side of the curve) include juggling and playing some video games.

There’s lots I could add to this list, but I’m barely 70 pages into the book Flow, so I’ll get back to this topic later if there’s anything meaningful to add.