Flow States

[Zero Gravitas]

All about finding yourself in the groove (not in the Maddona way)



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_(psychology)
http://catb.org/jargon/html/H/hack-mode.html

I'd be interested to hear about situations in which you find yourself in a state of meditative immersion in a single task, gaming is probably the easiest source to identify this in* but any of a wide range of activities that present some level of challenge can display it, from doing crosswords to playing the flute.

I'm not sure that there's not a mild element of mania involved in my personal experience doing something 'in the zone' evokes a constant buzz of satisfaction along with the feeling that anything within the current domain is achievable, the downside being that attempting the same task outside of this state seems dull and not really worth it (perhaps more due to the lack of feelings of satisfaction rather than the task being dull in itself).

It seems to occur most often when operating at the edge of one's ability, perhaps also a reason that going back to it later seems boring, you already understand it, there's no challenge.

_{*Perhaps even in that bloody unicorn game but I'd ask Pedro to grant me some respite.}

I am indeed "Hopped up on goofballs" as nagsy says.

[rudi]

Writing music, writing about music, playing said music to people I don't know. If it's boring music then I find it almost impossible to work up the enthusiasm, if deadlines are too tight my brain pretty much refuses to acknowledge the task at all (I'm a horror at hitting deadlines), if deadlines are too far away I just don't produce anything nearly as good or original: I definitely function better when I know what I'm doing something for and when; if that's the case then I can just keep going with no sense of fatigue or the need to pause and ponder for hours at a time. Sadly, those times seem few and far between, especially now I do much, much less of all three activities.

[ed] I suppose I now hit that same zone through driving quite fast. Give me a couple of hundred miles on single lane A roads and I'm happy as Larry.

[Ginyard]

I'd be interested to hear about situations in which you find yourself in a state of meditative immersion in a single task

Any concentrated professional performing, especially sight reading when there's no time to learn any part of a score. Its a strange place where any sense of time starts to evaporate and intense concentration rubs shoulders with a weird sort of fluctuating serenity, forging a peculiar mediative state.

Oh, and wanking, of course.

[Turgid Bosun]

It's an interesting concept, the 'flow' idea, but I remain somewhat sceptical about its psychological basis. I play improvised music and I also code, and the two are very different ways of thinking, for me. Not that there aren't similarities, but nowhere near enough for me to consider them both to be manifestations of the same general state.

There's a fairly interesting (audio) interview here: http://www.loc.gov/podcasts/musicandthebrain/podcast_charleslimb.html about the neurology of musical improvisation, which suggests (if I remember correctly) that it involves shutting down the self-monitoring, 'inner critic' part of the brain. When I'm programming, I tend to feel as though I'm in a kind of hyper-analytical, very logically focused mode of thought - almost the complete opposite. Perhaps 'flow' could be a state in which all of the parts of the brain that aren't relevant to the task at hand are only minimally active?

I should point out that I haven't really read much about this at all beyond the Wiki article. And I haven't properly studied psychology at all. It's just that I haven't seen a great deal of hard science behind the ideas, which makes me a bit suspicious of it generally, given that people are selling books about it. Then again, if the advice based on 'flow' genuinely helps you to focus, then who's to argue?

I'd like to read more about the neuroscience of 'flow', if such research exists.