November 1, 2025 • 21 mins
You know that feeling when time disappears, your focus sharpens, and everything just clicks? That’s what we often call ‘flow state’ - a powerful experience of total immersion where effort feels effortless. In today’s bonus episode, we uncover what flow really is, how it works, and why finding it might just change how you think about focus and fulfilment.
We explore:
• What the flow state actually is
• The history and psychology behind the concept
• What it feels like, and how to know you’ve reached it
• Why some people find it easier to access than others
• What’s happening in your brain during flow
• Practical ways to find it in your own life
Listen now!
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Follow the podcast on Instagram: @thatpsychologypodcast
For business: psychologyofyour20s@gmail.com
The Psychology of your 20s is not a substitute for professional mental health help. If you are struggling, distressed or require personalised advice, please reach out to your doctor or a licensed psychologist.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hello everybody, and welcome back to the Psychology of Your Twenties,
the podcast where we talk through some of the big
life changes and transitions of our twenties and what they
mean for our psychology.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
Hello everybody, welcome back to this show. Welcome back to
the podcast. New listeners, our listeners, wherever you are in
the world, it is so great to have you here.
Back for another episode as we of course break down
the psychology of our twenties. Today, we've got another one
of our bonus episodes. These like kind of shorter coffee
(00:46):
break style chats are when we take one psychological concept,
one word that gets thrown around a lot, and really
just unpack what it actually means. Normally, like we don't
like they don't really have enough content for like a
whole forty minute episode, but I still really want to
deep dive into them, and I still feel like there's
(01:06):
a lot in the topic and in the conversation that
we can learn from. So today is one of those episodes,
and what we're talking about is something that I think
we've probably all experienced, maybe not always recognized. It's also
one of my favorite things to talk about in general.
We're going to explore. This concept of flow states that
(01:30):
sweet spot where you are so immersed in what you're
doing that you just lose all sense of time. You
forget to check your phone, you forget you're even you
for a little while, you are just so totally in it.
Maybe you have gotten this when you're doing something creative.
(01:52):
I know for me, when I'm painting, when I'm doing sodoko,
I always get into a flow state. But maybe when
you're dancing, sketching, or maybe it's when you're just with
your best friend and suddenly hours fly by in a
matter of minutes. It's so rare. It's this magical zone
of effortless engagement that I think we could all benefit
(02:13):
from experiencing a little bit more so. The term flow
was first introduced by the Hungarian American psychologist Mihai chick
sent me Haii in the nineteen seventies. In his words,
the best moments in our lives are not the passive, receptive,
relaxing times. The best moments usually occur when a person's
body or mind is stretched to its limits in a
(02:37):
voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult and worthwhile that is
also enjoyable. He first identified this feeling by looking at
some of the most talented and exceptional people in the world, athletes,
ballet dancers, entrepreneurs, authors, scientists, and identifying this thing that
(02:57):
kind of linked them all together. Something they all had
in common was that when they were doing the thing
that they loved and that they were the best at.
Although they described it differently, they all had this feeling
of flow that they said told them almost made them
feel like even if they never found success, they were
(03:19):
on the right path. They wanted to chase this feeling
to accept me High actually outlined the eight main characteristics
of flow that he identified in all these different cases.
See if you kind of align with any of these,
See if these have been your experience. The first was
intense focus and concentration. Whatever you are doing, you are
(03:43):
completely absorbed. The second is merging of action and awareness.
You stop thinking about what you're doing, you just do it. Third,
loss of self consciousness. You forget to be self critical.
Even if you have the loudest inner critic when you're
in a state of flow, they are nowhere to be seen. Fourth,
(04:06):
a sense of control. You feel capable, balanced between challenge
and skill. Fifth is a distorted sense of time. The
hours literally feel like minutes. You look up, it's like
you started at two, it's eight pm. Sixth, there is
clear goals and feedback. You know what you're doing and
you can see how you're doing. Seventh is a sense
(04:29):
of effortlessness. You're working hard, but it doesn't feel hard.
You don't feel like you're becoming exhausted. An eight is
something called an autotelic experience, meaning that you are doing
this thing for its own sake, not for a reward,
not for an audience. If nobody ever acknowledged what you
(04:50):
were doing, you would still do it every single day
if you could. Even though Cheeks sent me high Yee
gave it a modern label, the experience of flow, it's
actually not modern at all. Throughout history, people have described
something strikingly similar. For example, ancient Greek philosophers talked about eudaemonia,
(05:11):
a state of human flourishing that came from deep engagement
with meaningful activity. Artists during the Renaissance describe divine inspiration
right this trancelike creative state where their art seemed to
come from something above them or around them, rather than
from them. Writers Virginia Wolfe, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Elizabeth Gilbert.
(05:34):
They write about like this rapture of creativity, the sense
of like losing themselves in thought and creation. It's an
outer body experience. And even in Eastern philosophies, Buddhism, Taoism,
there's this idea of wouweih, which is effortless action, the
act of doing without forcing, of being so attuned to
what you're doing that it feels like it is flowing
(05:57):
through you like a river, so we can kind of see,
you know. The language for how we described this has evolved,
but the human experience has been the same for literal centuries.
Like Mihai's greatest contribution was giving this feeling a psychological framework,
identifying its triggers, measuring it, understanding how it affects our
(06:20):
brains and our emotions. It was, by no means though,
a novel or new idea. This is something that different cultures,
different people, different groups have named and have conceptualized for centuries.
Flow is just the new label, and I think it's
quite a beautiful thing. Like I honestly find that very
(06:41):
comforting to know that like humanity has had this shared
experienced across thousands and thousands of years across time and context,
and that flow is accessible to everyone and people have
experienced like its wonder before you know I was alive.
I just find it quite beautiful now I did just
(07:03):
say flow is accessible to absolutely everyone, but it does
tend to appear more often and more commonly in people
who engage in structured challenges or creative practices. Musicians, writers, dances, athletes, gamers,
programmers like these other groups that often report entering a
flow state more frequently, and it makes sense when you
(07:27):
think about the conditions that help create it. Their activities
usually involve clear goals, immediate feedback, and a gradual increase
in skill over time. When a musician is practicing a piece,
for example, you know they're constantly adjusting their performance based
on what they hear. The challenge evolves with their ability.
(07:49):
The same goes for athletes, The same goes for gamers,
the same goes for writers. The feedback and the balance
between difficulty and mastery keeps the brain engaged at that
sweet spot. It's not only about the type of activity, though,
it's also about how you approach it. That is really
really critical. People who are intrinsically motivated, meaning they do
(08:13):
things because they genuinely enjoyed them, not because of external rewards.
They tend to experience flow more often. Multiple studies and
reviews show that intrinsic motivation fuels flow because it keeps
your attention grounded in the process itself. We talked about
this like dissipation of ego, that you're in a critic
(08:37):
kind of silences during these moments. That's incredibly important for
this process. You wouldn't be able to access flow if
you were constantly thinking about how this thing that you
did was going to be graded, or whether it was
going to be approved by people, whether it was going
to receive positive feedback, whether people are going to like
you more because you did it. It's just not possible.
(09:00):
This has to be something that you do for you
and you alone, and maybe the benefits of it is
that people celebrate it and think that you're amazing and
think that you're talented. You would do it though even
if you didn't hear that praise. Psychologists actually find that
there is a certain kind of person who is more
able to activate this I guess, non self critical, non
(09:25):
externally validated part of themselves, and these are people who
are high in what we call again autotelic traits. They're
high in curiosity, they're high in persistence, they're not very
self centered, and they have a deep openness to experience.
That is the kind of individual who might be more
likely to fall into a state of flow. And whilst,
(09:49):
of course, you know, we see that a lot in
performance based fields, surgeons, teachers, software engineers like, it's very
essential to know that anybody can expec experience this when
they are doing something they love, even if they don't
have an autotelic personality. The real truth about flow is
that it is a human privilege, it is a human gift.
(10:11):
It's less about who you are and more about finding
the right way to engage. So we've talked about who's
more likely to experience flow, what it feels like, what
is actually happening in our minds when we're in it,
and how can we access its properties and that state more.
(10:31):
We're going to take a short break when we return,
we're going to explore all of those things stay with us.
So what exactly is happening in your brain during flow
that makes it so amazing? Well, the neuroscientist Arnie Ditrich
(10:52):
described flow as a state of transient hypofrontality. What does
that mean? It basically means that certain parts of your
prefrontal cortex, especially those responsible for self monitoring and time awareness,
actually quiet down or are down regulated, meaning that you
(11:14):
are experiencing an altered state of consciousness, rather than your
brain being in a state of frantically juggling multiple things
at once and the accompanying critical thoughts that follow all
these processes kind of fade away for a moment. Your
attention becomes laser focused on the task in front of you.
(11:35):
At the same time, dopamine, the neurotransmitter associated with reward
and motivation rises. We know that's going to make you
enjoy the task more. It's also going to help you
with creativity, sustained attention, and pattern recognition, meaning that you
get more in this groove of things. A twenty fourteen
paper published in the journal nerror Image investigated a sample
(11:59):
of twenty seven participants and split them into three different
experimental groups, either flow, where participants engaged in tasks that
automatically adjusted to their skill level, boredom where tasks were
too easy, and overload, where the task was way too challenging.
They found that participants who experienced flow also showed decreased
(12:24):
neural activity in the amygdala. We're talk about the amygdala
on the podcast so often. It could basically be a
co host at this point, but it's responsible for threat detection,
emotional processing, even social behavior. The activity in that area
during flow minimal. This neural shift is also why people
in flow often report losing track of time. You know,
(12:46):
your internal clock is slowing down, and there's nothing scary
that's going to bring you back to the present. Something
really interesting that Chiek sent me Hiyi actually proposed is
that flow might be one of them ingredients of what
he called the good life, a life that is not
defined by constant pleasure, constant comfort, but by regular moments
(13:10):
of deep engagement and meaning. And in a way that
makes sense because flow just gives you a break from yourself,
from self comparison, from worry, from trying to perform. It's
not about escaping life, but about being like completely inside
of it, such that all of these emotional distractions aren't there.
(13:33):
When you think about that, like, it's honestly so rare
that we are in a state like this, and it's
not a form of escapism obviously, Like when you're watching TikTok.
When you're like on your phone, watching a movie, eating
a snack at the same time, you might think that
you're in a flow state. You probably can't tell how
much time is passing. It probably feels very effortless, but
(13:56):
you're not, because it's often a form of, you know, again,
a scape rather than deeper emotional connection. If you know,
you're thinking, I don't think I've ever felt that way
when I'm doing something creative or I used to be
able to do this. I can't get there anymore. I've
rotted my brain. You're definitely not alone. Flow sounds effortless,
(14:17):
it's actually very hard to achieve, especially these days when
our the attention economy is basically meaning that there is
money behind you being distracted. If you are distracted, buy
something on your phone, buy something on the screen, by
an advertisement, by anything like, somebody is making money off
of your distraction. We're checking yourtifications, we're switching tabs, we're multitasking.
(14:42):
That condition that a lot of us find ourselves in
is actually the opposite of what flow needs to survive.
Flow requires uninterrupted focus, that deep, unbroken engagement we have
with one thing, and I listened to this podcast from
the American psychologicals Asociation featuring doctor Gloria Mark, and she
(15:03):
spoke about how, on average, our attention spans now last
for just forty seven seconds forty seven four seven seconds,
and that blew my mind when I heard it. That
is clearly not enough time for your brain to fully
immerse itself in anything. No wonder, flow is becoming harder
(15:25):
to come by because our concentration is like a muscle
and it's probably atrophied a little bit. Here's the good news. Focus,
concentration connectedness. That is a skill, and like any skill,
it can be rebuilt. You can train your brain back
into its flow state. One of the first steps is
(15:49):
to protect your attention. Carve out time for focus the
same way you would for a workout or for a
social event. That might mean turning off notification, setting your
phone across the room, going on a walk without music
without your phone, just to observe, just to have sixty
(16:09):
minutes thirty minutes to be present. You need that uninterrupted
time to reform and rebuild. Next, find the right balance
of challenge, but make sure you are challenging yourself. You
cannot achieve a flow state if you are constantly doing
(16:30):
things that are incredibly passive and boring, scrolling on your phone,
it feels great. There's like a low level of dopamine
constantly available to you. There. You're never going to achieve
a true flow state unless you put yourself in conditions
and situations that take you out of that passive kind
of observational moment that all of us find ourselves in.
(16:56):
Flow thrives in that sweet spot between bordermen and anxiety
and just making something a little bit more complex, a
little bit more difficult than maybe you need to pushing
yourself to do things that are a little bit out
of the ordinary, even if initially it feels hard to
bring yourself to do them because you know that what's
(17:19):
coming is going to be this like enchanting state of mind.
What I mean by that is, like, go and invest
in buying some painting supplies so that the only option
for you at the end of the night is not
just scrolling. You have a creative thing that you can
engage in. Go and buy a Sudoco book, Go and
start a sub stack, Go and create a website for yourself,
(17:41):
or like a journal website for yourself. Just like do
anything junk journal, like get yourself into a sport. You
cannot be in flow and also completely passive and bored
with your everyday life. I know it's kind of probably
uncomfortable to hear, but if something is too easy, there's
(18:03):
no point in your brain reaching that level of engagement.
Choose tasks that also matter to you. Obviously, flow rarely
happens when you're doing something purely for external validation. It's
most likely to appear when it's something that's meaningful to you.
I feel like these days, we constantly feel like we
need to produce or make or put stuff out there
(18:25):
for other people's enjoyment and for other people's reassurance or attention.
It's probably not so likely that flow is going to
appear in those moments. We need that internal harmony, that
internal validation, that intrinsic motivation, pushing us to keep going,
(18:45):
pushing us to engage, pushing us to want to try
finally be patient. Flow isn't something you can force. Sometimes
it just happens, and when it does, please remit keep
it in mind. I will. This is like a wild story,
but I remember one of the first times I experienced
(19:08):
flow was and this is going to sound so cheesy
the first time I made a podcast episode for a
UNI assignment. Half the reason why I knew that this
was going to be something that I was good at
and that I was going to want to do and
that I was going to love was because I made
this podcast for like an international relations course when I
(19:31):
was at UNI, and I remember exactly where I was sitting.
I was sitting on the third floor of this library
at A and U, the university I went to. And
I sat there without eating, without drinking, without going to
the bathroom, for I think five hours just making this podcast.
And when you find flow, I think you also find purpose.
(19:53):
Everybody wants to find what they're going to be great
at their dream job. You know what they're here for.
Flow is like your key to finding that. When you
find flow, you find purpose. So slow down, try not
to distract yourself, try not to force yourself into it.
Just listen to your environment, listen to your feelings, listen
(20:13):
to your mental state, and flow will come a lot easier,
and with that so many other answers that you might
be looking for in your life. So with that in mind,
thank you for listening. Thank you for listening to this
mini bonus episode. I hope you enjoyed it. If you
made it this far, please leave a little comment down below.
(20:36):
When do you experience flow and do you think that
your flow state is aligned with your purpose? Yes or no?
I think it is. I know other people who think
that flow aligns with more so what they're passionate with
that they never want to make money off of, or
that is always going to be their escape or their
hobby for them. So I want to hear your thoughts
and your opinions. Make sure as well that you are
(20:58):
following us. Hit the subscribe button, hit the what is
the button? I think it's just a follow button. Hit
the follow button so that you know when new episodes
come out. We have some amazing episodes coming up this December.
I just interviewed a guest on the Psychology of Plastic Surgery.
I interviewed another one on the Ambition Trap. Like There's
(21:18):
so much good stuff coming, so make sure that you
are around for that and follow us on Instagram at
that Psychology podcast if you want to see more behind
the scenes stuff and what we're getting up to, or
engage with the community. There are so many opportunities for
you to do that over there. Thank you as well
to our research assistant Libbie Colbert for her contributions to
(21:38):
this episode. She's fantastic. She is amazing. We appreciate her
so much. But with all that being said, we will
talk to you very soon. Stay safe, be kind, and
be gentle to yourself. See you later.
Hello everybody, and welcome back to the Psychology of Your Twenties,
the podcast where we talk through some of the big
life changes and transitions of our twenties and what they
mean for our psychology.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
Hello everybody, welcome back to this show. Welcome back to
the podcast. New listeners, our listeners, wherever you are in
the world, it is so great to have you here.
Back for another episode as we of course break down
the psychology of our twenties. Today, we've got another one
of our bonus episodes. These like kind of shorter coffee
(00:46):
break style chats are when we take one psychological concept,
one word that gets thrown around a lot, and really
just unpack what it actually means. Normally, like we don't
like they don't really have enough content for like a
whole forty minute episode, but I still really want to
deep dive into them, and I still feel like there's
(01:06):
a lot in the topic and in the conversation that
we can learn from. So today is one of those episodes,
and what we're talking about is something that I think
we've probably all experienced, maybe not always recognized. It's also
one of my favorite things to talk about in general.
We're going to explore. This concept of flow states that
(01:30):
sweet spot where you are so immersed in what you're
doing that you just lose all sense of time. You
forget to check your phone, you forget you're even you
for a little while, you are just so totally in it.
Maybe you have gotten this when you're doing something creative.
(01:52):
I know for me, when I'm painting, when I'm doing sodoko,
I always get into a flow state. But maybe when
you're dancing, sketching, or maybe it's when you're just with
your best friend and suddenly hours fly by in a
matter of minutes. It's so rare. It's this magical zone
of effortless engagement that I think we could all benefit
(02:13):
from experiencing a little bit more so. The term flow
was first introduced by the Hungarian American psychologist Mihai chick
sent me Haii in the nineteen seventies. In his words,
the best moments in our lives are not the passive, receptive,
relaxing times. The best moments usually occur when a person's
body or mind is stretched to its limits in a
(02:37):
voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult and worthwhile that is
also enjoyable. He first identified this feeling by looking at
some of the most talented and exceptional people in the world, athletes,
ballet dancers, entrepreneurs, authors, scientists, and identifying this thing that
(02:57):
kind of linked them all together. Something they all had
in common was that when they were doing the thing
that they loved and that they were the best at.
Although they described it differently, they all had this feeling
of flow that they said told them almost made them
feel like even if they never found success, they were
(03:19):
on the right path. They wanted to chase this feeling
to accept me High actually outlined the eight main characteristics
of flow that he identified in all these different cases.
See if you kind of align with any of these,
See if these have been your experience. The first was
intense focus and concentration. Whatever you are doing, you are
(03:43):
completely absorbed. The second is merging of action and awareness.
You stop thinking about what you're doing, you just do it. Third,
loss of self consciousness. You forget to be self critical.
Even if you have the loudest inner critic when you're
in a state of flow, they are nowhere to be seen. Fourth,
(04:06):
a sense of control. You feel capable, balanced between challenge
and skill. Fifth is a distorted sense of time. The
hours literally feel like minutes. You look up, it's like
you started at two, it's eight pm. Sixth, there is
clear goals and feedback. You know what you're doing and
you can see how you're doing. Seventh is a sense
(04:29):
of effortlessness. You're working hard, but it doesn't feel hard.
You don't feel like you're becoming exhausted. An eight is
something called an autotelic experience, meaning that you are doing
this thing for its own sake, not for a reward,
not for an audience. If nobody ever acknowledged what you
(04:50):
were doing, you would still do it every single day
if you could. Even though Cheeks sent me high Yee
gave it a modern label, the experience of flow, it's
actually not modern at all. Throughout history, people have described
something strikingly similar. For example, ancient Greek philosophers talked about eudaemonia,
(05:11):
a state of human flourishing that came from deep engagement
with meaningful activity. Artists during the Renaissance describe divine inspiration
right this trancelike creative state where their art seemed to
come from something above them or around them, rather than
from them. Writers Virginia Wolfe, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Elizabeth Gilbert.
(05:34):
They write about like this rapture of creativity, the sense
of like losing themselves in thought and creation. It's an
outer body experience. And even in Eastern philosophies, Buddhism, Taoism,
there's this idea of wouweih, which is effortless action, the
act of doing without forcing, of being so attuned to
what you're doing that it feels like it is flowing
(05:57):
through you like a river, so we can kind of see,
you know. The language for how we described this has evolved,
but the human experience has been the same for literal centuries.
Like Mihai's greatest contribution was giving this feeling a psychological framework,
identifying its triggers, measuring it, understanding how it affects our
(06:20):
brains and our emotions. It was, by no means though,
a novel or new idea. This is something that different cultures,
different people, different groups have named and have conceptualized for centuries.
Flow is just the new label, and I think it's
quite a beautiful thing. Like I honestly find that very
(06:41):
comforting to know that like humanity has had this shared
experienced across thousands and thousands of years across time and context,
and that flow is accessible to everyone and people have
experienced like its wonder before you know I was alive.
I just find it quite beautiful now I did just
(07:03):
say flow is accessible to absolutely everyone, but it does
tend to appear more often and more commonly in people
who engage in structured challenges or creative practices. Musicians, writers, dances, athletes, gamers,
programmers like these other groups that often report entering a
flow state more frequently, and it makes sense when you
(07:27):
think about the conditions that help create it. Their activities
usually involve clear goals, immediate feedback, and a gradual increase
in skill over time. When a musician is practicing a piece,
for example, you know they're constantly adjusting their performance based
on what they hear. The challenge evolves with their ability.
(07:49):
The same goes for athletes, The same goes for gamers,
the same goes for writers. The feedback and the balance
between difficulty and mastery keeps the brain engaged at that
sweet spot. It's not only about the type of activity, though,
it's also about how you approach it. That is really
really critical. People who are intrinsically motivated, meaning they do
(08:13):
things because they genuinely enjoyed them, not because of external rewards.
They tend to experience flow more often. Multiple studies and
reviews show that intrinsic motivation fuels flow because it keeps
your attention grounded in the process itself. We talked about
this like dissipation of ego, that you're in a critic
(08:37):
kind of silences during these moments. That's incredibly important for
this process. You wouldn't be able to access flow if
you were constantly thinking about how this thing that you
did was going to be graded, or whether it was
going to be approved by people, whether it was going
to receive positive feedback, whether people are going to like
you more because you did it. It's just not possible.
(09:00):
This has to be something that you do for you
and you alone, and maybe the benefits of it is
that people celebrate it and think that you're amazing and
think that you're talented. You would do it though even
if you didn't hear that praise. Psychologists actually find that
there is a certain kind of person who is more
able to activate this I guess, non self critical, non
(09:25):
externally validated part of themselves, and these are people who
are high in what we call again autotelic traits. They're
high in curiosity, they're high in persistence, they're not very
self centered, and they have a deep openness to experience.
That is the kind of individual who might be more
likely to fall into a state of flow. And whilst,
(09:49):
of course, you know, we see that a lot in
performance based fields, surgeons, teachers, software engineers like, it's very
essential to know that anybody can expec experience this when
they are doing something they love, even if they don't
have an autotelic personality. The real truth about flow is
that it is a human privilege, it is a human gift.
(10:11):
It's less about who you are and more about finding
the right way to engage. So we've talked about who's
more likely to experience flow, what it feels like, what
is actually happening in our minds when we're in it,
and how can we access its properties and that state more.
(10:31):
We're going to take a short break when we return,
we're going to explore all of those things stay with us.
So what exactly is happening in your brain during flow
that makes it so amazing? Well, the neuroscientist Arnie Ditrich
(10:52):
described flow as a state of transient hypofrontality. What does
that mean? It basically means that certain parts of your
prefrontal cortex, especially those responsible for self monitoring and time awareness,
actually quiet down or are down regulated, meaning that you
(11:14):
are experiencing an altered state of consciousness, rather than your
brain being in a state of frantically juggling multiple things
at once and the accompanying critical thoughts that follow all
these processes kind of fade away for a moment. Your
attention becomes laser focused on the task in front of you.
(11:35):
At the same time, dopamine, the neurotransmitter associated with reward
and motivation rises. We know that's going to make you
enjoy the task more. It's also going to help you
with creativity, sustained attention, and pattern recognition, meaning that you
get more in this groove of things. A twenty fourteen
paper published in the journal nerror Image investigated a sample
(11:59):
of twenty seven participants and split them into three different
experimental groups, either flow, where participants engaged in tasks that
automatically adjusted to their skill level, boredom where tasks were
too easy, and overload, where the task was way too challenging.
They found that participants who experienced flow also showed decreased
(12:24):
neural activity in the amygdala. We're talk about the amygdala
on the podcast so often. It could basically be a
co host at this point, but it's responsible for threat detection,
emotional processing, even social behavior. The activity in that area
during flow minimal. This neural shift is also why people
in flow often report losing track of time. You know,
(12:46):
your internal clock is slowing down, and there's nothing scary
that's going to bring you back to the present. Something
really interesting that Chiek sent me Hiyi actually proposed is
that flow might be one of them ingredients of what
he called the good life, a life that is not
defined by constant pleasure, constant comfort, but by regular moments
(13:10):
of deep engagement and meaning. And in a way that
makes sense because flow just gives you a break from yourself,
from self comparison, from worry, from trying to perform. It's
not about escaping life, but about being like completely inside
of it, such that all of these emotional distractions aren't there.
(13:33):
When you think about that, like, it's honestly so rare
that we are in a state like this, and it's
not a form of escapism obviously, Like when you're watching TikTok.
When you're like on your phone, watching a movie, eating
a snack at the same time, you might think that
you're in a flow state. You probably can't tell how
much time is passing. It probably feels very effortless, but
(13:56):
you're not, because it's often a form of, you know, again,
a scape rather than deeper emotional connection. If you know,
you're thinking, I don't think I've ever felt that way
when I'm doing something creative or I used to be
able to do this. I can't get there anymore. I've
rotted my brain. You're definitely not alone. Flow sounds effortless,
(14:17):
it's actually very hard to achieve, especially these days when
our the attention economy is basically meaning that there is
money behind you being distracted. If you are distracted, buy
something on your phone, buy something on the screen, by
an advertisement, by anything like, somebody is making money off
of your distraction. We're checking yourtifications, we're switching tabs, we're multitasking.
(14:42):
That condition that a lot of us find ourselves in
is actually the opposite of what flow needs to survive.
Flow requires uninterrupted focus, that deep, unbroken engagement we have
with one thing, and I listened to this podcast from
the American psychologicals Asociation featuring doctor Gloria Mark, and she
(15:03):
spoke about how, on average, our attention spans now last
for just forty seven seconds forty seven four seven seconds,
and that blew my mind when I heard it. That
is clearly not enough time for your brain to fully
immerse itself in anything. No wonder, flow is becoming harder
(15:25):
to come by because our concentration is like a muscle
and it's probably atrophied a little bit. Here's the good news. Focus,
concentration connectedness. That is a skill, and like any skill,
it can be rebuilt. You can train your brain back
into its flow state. One of the first steps is
(15:49):
to protect your attention. Carve out time for focus the
same way you would for a workout or for a
social event. That might mean turning off notification, setting your
phone across the room, going on a walk without music
without your phone, just to observe, just to have sixty
(16:09):
minutes thirty minutes to be present. You need that uninterrupted
time to reform and rebuild. Next, find the right balance
of challenge, but make sure you are challenging yourself. You
cannot achieve a flow state if you are constantly doing
(16:30):
things that are incredibly passive and boring, scrolling on your phone,
it feels great. There's like a low level of dopamine
constantly available to you. There. You're never going to achieve
a true flow state unless you put yourself in conditions
and situations that take you out of that passive kind
of observational moment that all of us find ourselves in.
(16:56):
Flow thrives in that sweet spot between bordermen and anxiety
and just making something a little bit more complex, a
little bit more difficult than maybe you need to pushing
yourself to do things that are a little bit out
of the ordinary, even if initially it feels hard to
bring yourself to do them because you know that what's
(17:19):
coming is going to be this like enchanting state of mind.
What I mean by that is, like, go and invest
in buying some painting supplies so that the only option
for you at the end of the night is not
just scrolling. You have a creative thing that you can
engage in. Go and buy a Sudoco book, Go and
start a sub stack, Go and create a website for yourself,
(17:41):
or like a journal website for yourself. Just like do
anything junk journal, like get yourself into a sport. You
cannot be in flow and also completely passive and bored
with your everyday life. I know it's kind of probably
uncomfortable to hear, but if something is too easy, there's
(18:03):
no point in your brain reaching that level of engagement.
Choose tasks that also matter to you. Obviously, flow rarely
happens when you're doing something purely for external validation. It's
most likely to appear when it's something that's meaningful to you.
I feel like these days, we constantly feel like we
need to produce or make or put stuff out there
(18:25):
for other people's enjoyment and for other people's reassurance or attention.
It's probably not so likely that flow is going to
appear in those moments. We need that internal harmony, that
internal validation, that intrinsic motivation, pushing us to keep going,
(18:45):
pushing us to engage, pushing us to want to try
finally be patient. Flow isn't something you can force. Sometimes
it just happens, and when it does, please remit keep
it in mind. I will. This is like a wild story,
but I remember one of the first times I experienced
(19:08):
flow was and this is going to sound so cheesy
the first time I made a podcast episode for a
UNI assignment. Half the reason why I knew that this
was going to be something that I was good at
and that I was going to want to do and
that I was going to love was because I made
this podcast for like an international relations course when I
(19:31):
was at UNI, and I remember exactly where I was sitting.
I was sitting on the third floor of this library
at A and U, the university I went to. And
I sat there without eating, without drinking, without going to
the bathroom, for I think five hours just making this podcast.
And when you find flow, I think you also find purpose.
(19:53):
Everybody wants to find what they're going to be great
at their dream job. You know what they're here for.
Flow is like your key to finding that. When you
find flow, you find purpose. So slow down, try not
to distract yourself, try not to force yourself into it.
Just listen to your environment, listen to your feelings, listen
(20:13):
to your mental state, and flow will come a lot easier,
and with that so many other answers that you might
be looking for in your life. So with that in mind,
thank you for listening. Thank you for listening to this
mini bonus episode. I hope you enjoyed it. If you
made it this far, please leave a little comment down below.
(20:36):
When do you experience flow and do you think that
your flow state is aligned with your purpose? Yes or no?
I think it is. I know other people who think
that flow aligns with more so what they're passionate with
that they never want to make money off of, or
that is always going to be their escape or their
hobby for them. So I want to hear your thoughts
and your opinions. Make sure as well that you are
(20:58):
following us. Hit the subscribe button, hit the what is
the button? I think it's just a follow button. Hit
the follow button so that you know when new episodes
come out. We have some amazing episodes coming up this December.
I just interviewed a guest on the Psychology of Plastic Surgery.
I interviewed another one on the Ambition Trap. Like There's
(21:18):
so much good stuff coming, so make sure that you
are around for that and follow us on Instagram at
that Psychology podcast if you want to see more behind
the scenes stuff and what we're getting up to, or
engage with the community. There are so many opportunities for
you to do that over there. Thank you as well
to our research assistant Libbie Colbert for her contributions to
(21:38):
this episode. She's fantastic. She is amazing. We appreciate her
so much. But with all that being said, we will
talk to you very soon. Stay safe, be kind, and
be gentle to yourself. See you later.
Host
Jemma Sbeghen
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