What is it like to Flow?

What is it like to Flow?

In the Flow state we tend to experience many different feelings, but among the most common are “STER” that is, we tend to experience selflessness, timelessness, effortlessness, and richness.

Selflessness:
Selflessness is the experience of losing oneself in the activity one is engaged in. It feels as though there is no “you”.

Instead of “I” being the person that does the task, it seems as if you are watching someone else do the task, or as if the task is being done by itself.

Timelessness:

Time can sometimes be experienced as moving very quickly, or as moving incredibly slowly. Think of the saying “time flies when you’re having fun” and the times that you have had such fun. Now, think of the times you were horribly bored in school, or waiting in a really long line that only seems to get longer.

When you’re in Flow, it’s most common for time to pass very quickly, but in some rare cases it seems that time stretches, and what happens in seconds, seems to take minutes, or even hours. Thus, you experience timelessness.

Effortlessness:

Effortlessness typically comes hand-in-hand with that feeling of selflessness that was discussed earlier. If it isn’t “you” that is engaged in the activity, then how can “you” put in any effort? The feeling of effortlessness comes as a byproduct of our mental state. When we engage in any activity our brain moves through 6 general stages – Baseline –> Problem-Solving Analysis –> Pre-Action Readiness –> Action –> Post-Action Evaluation –> Baseline. Normally we move through these stages in a choppy manner, that is, we get stuck at certain stages, however in Flow our brains are able to move through these stages smoothly, effortlessly (TROS).

Richness:

In the Flow state, information seems to come in at a faster rate, and or, as if there is more information coming in than usual. We refer to this as information richness. This can contribute to the timelessness and effortlessness feelings as well as accompany those feelings.

Think about flies, why is it so dang hard to swat those little guys? This is because they take in more visual information per second than we do, and as a result they experience/perceive time at a rate that is slower than we do. In other words, we appear in slow motion to them!

However, we don’t need to become flies to experience time slower, or take in more information, we simply need to tap into our brains optimal state.

That being said, Flow is called the “optimal experience” for a reason, not only do we FEEL our best, but we PERFORM our best.