Flow: Between Boredom and Frustration

The late psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi pioneered the concept of flow to define the state of pleasurable absorption in a mentally challenging and meaningful task. Learning demands concentration and has the potential to be quite meaningful, both of which are needed to produce the flow state.

But more often, learning produces the opposite: boredom and frustration. Boredom fuels our desire to escape — think of constantly glancing at the schoolroom clock as you wait for the bell to signal a lecture is finally over. Frustration occurs when there is no progress, despite effort; it happens when we’re working hard but feel completely stuck.

Flow matters because we’ll only do the work of learning if the joys of learning consistently exceed the pain.

A learning project may have high extrinsic rewards (better job, health, or relationship), or even delayed intrinsic rewards (satisfaction, pride, a new hobby). But if its moment-to-moment experience is highly negative, it will be difficult to sustain in the face of alluring, low-cost alternatives like games or social media.

In contrast, if the experience of learning is pleasurable (or at least not too unpleasant), you’ll be able to sustain it much longer. This is the secret behind tools like Duolingo, which is a much more enjoyable tool to learn languages than…