Finding Flow

Athletes refer to it as "being in the zone" and artists and musicians as "aesthetic rapture.” For decades now, a remarkable researcher from the University of Chicago -– and author of President Clinton's favorite book -– has studied exactly this. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi started with art students, then chess players, musicians, inner-city basketball players, and eventually Bornean weavers and European monks, asking them to describe their experience in moments that stood out as the best in their lives. Across the board, they reported feeling a sense of effortless action, and something in the actual process of getting involved with an activity left the person feeling that s/he were a part of something greater, just moving along with the logic of the activity. He calls this state Flow, and describes how it is accessible to anyone doing any activity.

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