Finding Flow
The what and how of achieving flow states.
I run most days, not to maintain my health, though that’s a great side benefit. I run because it’s the fastest, most reliable way I’ve found to get into a flow state. According to Wikipedia, “flow is the melting together of action and consciousness; the state of finding a balance between a skill and how challenging that task is.” When I run, the action of running —gate, arm swing, foot placement, breathing —melts with my consciousness such that I know what to do without thinking about it. And while my thoughts can drift on easy runs, where my skills and capabilities exceed the level of the challenge, that is not the case with harder runs, where all of my senses are fully engaged with the task of forward movement.
Generally speaking, flow states happen during difficult activities which require our full attention and where the limits of our skills and capabilities are tested. This is why easy and convenient activities as barriers to experiencing flow because the attention is only partially occupied and capabilities only partly exploited. This excessive attention and unused potential leads to boredom. But rather than look for more difficult, absorbing activities, rather than sit with the boredom, most of us turn to distraction to fill in the gaps of our attention, resulting in flow-like absorption: Easy Activity + Distraction = Flow-Like Absorption.
Here are some common expressions of this formula:
Shallow friendships + scrolling Instagram = flow-like absorption
Shitty job + binge drinking = flow-like absorption
Unhappy relationship/sex life + pornography = flow-like absorption
This is a good time to introduce numbness. Numbness is fake flow, and tends to arise when easy activities are alloyed with distraction. Note, sometimes the distraction, like social media scrolling, is the activity. But numbness and flow are qualitatively different. Flow cultivates presence and focus. Flow leaves us feeling energized and alive. Numbness does the opposite, making us feel disconnected, distracted, tired, and dissatisfied with life. The only similarity between the two states is they both fully occupy our attentions.
I feel sorry for people who don’t regularly experience flow, for those who confuse numbness with flow, who idealize ease, comfort, and convenience. These people are like sailboats perpetually sailing at half mast.
There’s nothing magical about running for experiencing flow. I’ve just found that it’s easy for me run hard and be fully absorbed by that difficulty. I’ve also found that swimming, climbing, skiing, surfing, yoga, dancing, and making music —activities that incorporate mind, body, and spirit —also reliably get people into flow. But it bears repeating that getting into flow is less about the activity itself, and more about the intensity that activity is approached with. Sometimes, the activity can be fairly inactive. For example, hard conversations are often good for inducing flow because we need every single one of our wits to get through them. In short, you don’t need to go for a run to find flow, but if you’re not regularly experiencing flow or not experiencing it as much as you’d like, you probably need to find stuff that’s more difficult than the stuff you’re doing now. Now go get it!