· Link Some Neurons ·

In this blog post, I aim to explain flow. As flow is not yet a thoroughly discovered subject, my approach will be similar to carving a stone sculpture. I will approach flow from different perspectives to narrow down our understanding of it with the expectation of reaching a clearer and more concrete idea about flow. I will explain quotes from some ancient thinkers that, in my opinion, concern the state of mind we call flow today. I will provide information regarding flow research. My aim is to give enough information to remove the abstractness regarding flow and eventually present a cognitive bias I derived that could be implemented in our way of thinking to improve the quality of our lives.

Philosophical Carving
Lao Tzu: “A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.“
Rumi: “As you start to walk on the way, the way appears.“
Confucius: “Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life.“

Despite being recently discovered and studied, traces of the flow state can be found hundreds of years ago. In his Tao Te Ching, the foundational work of Taoism and one of the most translated books in history, Lao Tzu talks about the concept of Wu Wei, which is often translated as “effortless action.” While describing the concept of Wu Wei, Lao Tzu emphasizes stillness of mind during an act of action.
What he means by stillness of mind resembles the state of mind during flow state. Mind consists a lot of noise. Thoughts, ideas, memories, feelings passing one after another. Only some of it come to our attention. This is where attention mechanism comes into play to decrease the noise and increase the weight of a specific subject in your mind, in other words focus. Once you focus on a specific subject, you meet the most crucial criterion of flow. In taoist words, once you reach the stillness of mind during an action, your actions will go effortlessly.
As we know through scientific discoveries, the experience of flow state requires starting the act with high concentration and no distruptors around. In their quotes Lao Tzu and Rumi, similar to how I thought and used flow in my daily routine, emphasizes “starting”. The act of starting should be an actual start. You should actually make a step for the journey to begin as Lao Tzu suggests; you should actually start to walk for the way to appear as Rumi suggests.. What I mean by actually starting is that the act of start should include focus, the most crucial necessity of flow state. Once you start and go into flow, the path will appear and it will seem as if it happened almost by itself once you leave the state of flow despite knowing that it was you the actor.
The advice of Confucious is more easy to address. It is rather popular than the other quotes. It is often shared online since a job takes approximately one-third of our lives in modern era which is undeniably a lot in terms of time spent since approximate age of death is much later than the times of Confucious, Lao Tzu and Rumi.
Work requires effort. What Confucious suggests once you choose a job you love, the work you do won’t feel like a “work” because it will go effortless, very similar to the concept of Wu Wei in Taoism which is not shocking as they both lived in 5th century BC China. However, Confucious emphasizes something different than the other two thinkers, “…a job you love…”. Which brings another aspect of flow state into spotlight, joy.
As we are now familiar with ancient thinkers’ understanding of flow in their own way of thinking, it is time to dive into our own understanding of flow.

Psychological Carving
I have mentioned focus being a crucial necessity to experience flow, it is crucial to enter flow state but what are the criterias to keep it going ? There are many, I think the most important two of them are joy and the level of difficulty of the task.
Joy acts as both a motivator and a reward. When you engage in an activity that you enjoy, your brain releases dopamine, a neurotransmitter associated with pleasure and satisfaction. This release of dopamine not only makes the task more enjoyable but also reinforces your focus, making it easier to continue the activity and stay in the flow state. Joy creates a positive feedback loop: the more you enjoy the task, the more focused you become, and the more likely you are to remain in flow. This intrinsic satisfaction is why tasks that align with your passions or interests often lead to deeper and longer-lasting flow states. Therefore, while focus is the entry point to flow, joy is the fuel that keeps the experience alive and thriving.
Flow studies done in 80s show that the relation between difficulty of the task and and skillset of the person has a strong impact on entering flow state. The relation can be illustrated as shown below:

The task shouldn’t be too challenging for the person, not only for focus to stay but also for dopamine (joy) to appear, importance of these were described above. If task is too challenging or too simple, boredom will take place of focus which will result in leaving flow state or the person won’t enter flow at all. If the level of difficulty is just right the person will stay focused on the task and try to progress within flow and once some progress is done, dopamine will appear and the joy felt will keep you stay in flow and keep going.
Again, you can experience flow during a task you don’t prefer to do or a task that is too simple or complex, however, you cannot experience flow without focus. Therefore, while focus is a necessity, others are driving factors that set the quality, length of flow. Think of focus as the power button of your PC and others as the hardwares that make your pc run smooth or slow or even give a blue screen similar to you leaving flow.
The attributes that impact entering flow state and staying in it are many, the ones I explained can also be explanied in sub-categories. I won’t be mentioning those as my goal is to keep this post simple and readable.

The Cognitive Bias
A cognitive bias that heavily decrease the efficency of our lives. Making our time wasted and our goals harder to achieve. As I have became aware of this cognitive bias, I implemented it in my life and made my decisions accordingly when I was in a dilemma of reading an academic paper or watching another episode of my favorite series, studying another course on machine learning or playing my favorite strategy game. When faced these kinds of dilemmas, we tend to choose the one that requires less effort, mental or physical. Watching an episode of your favorite serie will be more fun and easy than reading a paper; the same goes for video games versus a machine learning course. The thought is usually: “Ugh, I’d rather watch a series than read a complex academic paper for 2 hours.” The deterrent thought here is “Doing something difficult for a long time.
There is a contingent cognitive bias here, a term I invented just now. Let me explain:
Difficulty is subjective, therefore while talking about difficulty we also take perception into account. The deterrent thought I mentioned earlier has two elements that are perceived: Difficulty and time.
During flow state difficulty and time are perceived as if they don’t exist, since difficulty results in the production of joy during flow state, plus, time is perceived as if it went so fast. Meaning the two actors of our deterrent thought simply disappear. Therefore, it is fair to say that if the person enters flow state, this deterrent thought doesn’t hold. In other words, a contingent cognitive bias.

Consequently, the flow state has always existed. During the days of Rumi, Lao Tzu, and Confucius, not many were aware of its existence. I first learned about it while reading Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman and later through Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. In our time, more people are aware of its existence, and we know more about the flow state thanks to research done on it. The realization of “Why should I stay away from work if I won’t perceive that it’s difficult and slow, and therefore not suffer ?” came as a eureka moment. It doesn’t always succeed in making me start the work that needs to be done, but I have improved the quality of my days considerably. I hope this reading will serve you in the same way or even better.