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The state of fl ow happens under very specifi c conditions – when we encounter a challenge that tests our skills, and yet our skills and capacities are such that it is just about possible to meet that challenge. So both the challenge and the skills are at high levels, stretching us almost to the limit.

If challenges exceed skills, one can become anxious. If skills exceed challenges, we usually become bored (like bright kids at school). Neither of these two cases results in fl ow.

Csikszentmihalyi (1992) investigated the phenomenon of fl ow by interviewing thousands of people from many different walks of life – chess players, mountain climbers, tennis players, ballet dancers, surgeons, and so on. He came to the conclusion that fl ow is a universal experience, which has several important characteristics:

• Clarity of goals and immediate feedback on progress. For example, in a competition you know what you’ve got to achieve and you know exactly how well you are doing, i.e. whether you are winning or losing.

• Complete concentration on what one is doing at the present moment, with no room in one’s mind for any other information.

• Actions and awareness are merged. A guitar player merges with his instrument and becomes the music that he plays. The activity seemingly becomes automatic, and the involvement effortless – though this is far from the truth.

• Losing awareness of oneself or self-consciousness is also a common experience but, interestingly, after each fl ow experience the sense of self is strengthened and a person becomes more than he or she was before.

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• Sense of control over what one is doing, with no worries about failure.

• Transformation of time. Usually, time passes much faster than expected. However, the reverse can also be true.

• Activities are intrinsically rewarding. This means they have an end in themselves (you do something because you want to), with any other goal often being just an excuse.

What is also interesting in fl ow is the almost total absence of emotions during the actual process. One seems to be almost beyond experiencing emotions, most likely because the awareness of self is not present. It is important to note, however, that we experience an increase in positive emotions after the occurrence of fl ow (Seligman, 2002).

Popovic (? Nash, personal communication) describes his own experi-ence of fl ow as follows:

A good discussion often brings a sense of fl ow. I am not aware of myself, the world around, or the passage of time. I get totally involved in the conversation. Everything goes smoothly. It is a challenging but not a rough ride. Yet, like with all truly fulfi lling experiences, you know that you were in fl ow, not while you were there, but because of missing it after.

Thinking about it, it seems to me that the merger between a person and his or her own action, coupled with complete concentration, enables that person to spend less energy on an activity than it would usually require and therefore achieve more with less effort. An increased effort is necessary to get us into this state, but once there, an activity feels almost effortless. As such, fl ow can be conceptualized as a low-energy solution to high-energy problems.

Activities that lead to a fl ow experience are called autotelic (from the Greek: auto = self, telos = goal), because they are intrinsically motivated and enjoyable and have an end in themselves, rather than in some other end product.

Many activities are conducive to fl ow: sports, dancing, involvement in creative arts and other hobbies, sex, socializing, studying, reading and, very often, working. In fact, most daily activities can lead to optimal experience (another name for fl ow), as long as the situation is suffi ciently complex to activate the high-challenge, high-skill condition (Della Fave & Massimini, 2004a). Activities in which fl ow is rarely experienced include housework, idling and resting. In addition, in most cultures, people don’t associate watching TV with optimal experience.

Although optimal experience is described in the same way across countries, some of the fl ow-conducive activities vary, because of cultural and circumstantial differences. Thus Roma (Gypsy) people very often fi nd fl ow in raising children or grandchildren, which is not a common pattern elsewhere. Leisure activities, which are frequently associated with optimal experience, are not associated with them in Iran. People in traditional societies fi nd fl ow in housework, though this is rare in Europe (Della Fave & Massimini, 2004b). Perhaps, it is the societal perception of housework as a somewhat inferior activity that may have something to do with it. While TV is generally counter-productive for fl ow, blind people quote media (including television

‘watching’) as their most fl ow-related activity. This is not surprising: TV is not designed for blind people, so ‘watching’ TV is for them associated with a challenge – having to build mental images of the characters in the absence of being able to see them. Nepalese people, too, associate the media with optimal experience. Not having a TV at home makes watching it a rare (and possibly challenging) opportunity (Della Fave &

Massimini, 2004a). These research fi ndings mean it is not possible to say for certain which activities are defi nitely fl ow-related and which are not.

What for one person is ‘a piece of cake’ can be a challenge for another.

The opportunities for optimal experience rely, therefore, on our subjec-tive perception.

Having said that, the frequent choice of activities that are non-conducive to fl ow is a problem for the majority in the West. Remember,

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it is not just the balance between challenge and skills that is necessary for fl ow – both have to be stretched. When watching TV, for example, the low skill matches the low challenge, which usually results in apathy, unless, of course, we are watching a documentary on quantum mechanics. At work, on the other hand, we experience high-skill, high-challenge situations more often than during leisure. Yet we often would rather do something else than work. Given a choice between TV and work, why would we choose the former over the latter?

Csikszentmihalyi explains this by distinguishing between enjoyment and pleasures. Flow may be a state of ultimate enjoyment, but it requires effort and work, at least to begin with. It’s far too easy to switch the TV on, and it is this effortlessness that ‘sells’ this mildly pleasurable activity to us.

Tips & Tools From apathy to fl ow

Have you ever wondered how much your TV time affects your ability to immerse yourself in other rewarding activities? Try turning your TV on no more than three times per week. Once your show has fi nished, switch the TV off, don’t channel-surf. Be mindful of the choices you are making – select the programmes you want to watch at the start of the week and stick to them.

In addition to autotelic activities, Csikszentmihalyi (1997) talks of autotelic personality – a person who ‘generally does things for their own sake rather than in order to achieve some later external goal’ (p. 117). These people develop skills that help them get into the fl ow state frequently, skills that include curiosity, interest in life, persistence and low self-centredness.³

Tips & Tools Finding fl ow

Identify activities that help you to get into fl ow (activities that you might call ‘serious play’). Gradually increase the diffi culty or complexity of these activities, ensuring they match your growing skills. If an activity is too easy, make it more challenging. On the other hand, if it’s too hard, fi nd a way to boost your skill level.

Dangers of fl ow

With fl ow having become such a popular notion and a desirable state, few pause to ask whether it is always good. In fact, the activities in which fl ow is found can be morally good or bad. Gambling, for example – especially games like bridge or poker – has all the conditions necessary for fl ow: the games are challenging and require a high level of skill to stand any chance of winning.

Even activities that are morally good or neutral, like mountain climbing, chess or PlayStation, can become addictive, so much so that life without them can feel static, boring and meaningless. A simple non-gambling game on your computer, like solitaire, which many people use to ‘switch off’ for a few minutes, can take over your life. This happens when, instead of being a choice, a fl ow-inducing activity becomes a necessity.

Csikszentmihalyi himself is very much aware of the dangers of fl ow.

He writes (1992: 62):

enjoyable activities that produce fl ow have a potentially negative effect: while they are capable of improving the quality of existence by creating order in the mind, they can become addictive, at which point the self becomes captive of a certain kind of order, and is then unwilling to cope with the ambiguities of life.

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Addiction to fl ow can also lead to losing a larger perspective. A worka-holic manager may lose himself in fl ow at work until 10 or 11 at night, forgetting dinner, his family or saying goodnight to the children.

Csikszentmihalyi (1992: 70) also adds:

The fl ow experience, like everything else, is not ‘good’ in an abso-lute sense. It is good only in that it has the potential to make life more rich, intense, and meaningful; it is good because it increases the strengths and complexity of the self. But whether the conse-quence of any particular instance of fl ow is good in a larger sense needs to be discussed and evaluated in terms of more inclusive social criteria.

The issue regarding fl ow is not only how we can make it happen, but also how we can manage it: using it to enhance life, yet being able to let go when necessary.