You can spend an hour trying to concentrate and give very little of that hour to the work itself. You open the document, reconsider the plan, check something, return, then wonder why you cannot get into flow.
Look at the task you have given yourself. Is there an action you can actually take, a challenge worth meeting and some way of seeing whether you are getting somewhere? “Work on my future” can mean everything to you and still leave you staring at a screen. A specific question gives your attention somewhere to go.
Flow is the experience of becoming deeply absorbed in an activity. In Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s account, action and attention come together, self-consciousness recedes and the passage of time can feel different. The activity becomes rewarding in itself.1Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1990). Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. New York: Harper & Row. Chapter 3, “Enjoyment and the Quality of Life,” especially pp. 48–67. Read the book text.
You can improve the conditions for that experience. You can also do valuable work on a day when it never arrives. The useful ambition is to become more capable of giving yourself fully to what matters, with flow as one rewarding expression of that capacity.
Give the mind a task it can enter
Flow, concentration and deep work
Concentration means keeping your attention on something. You might concentrate while checking a bill, learning a difficult movement or listening to someone you love. Flow describes a fuller experience of absorption; it cannot be established just by showing that a task was difficult or that you stayed at your desk. Researchers have specifically warned against confusing the conditions thought to encourage flow with the experience itself.2Abuhamdeh, S. (2020). “Investigating the ‘Flow’ Experience: Key Conceptual and Operational Issues.” Frontiers in Psychology, 11, 158. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2020.00158.
Cal Newport’s deep work describes sustained, distraction-free attention to demanding mental work.3Newport, C. (2015). “Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World.” Author’s book announcement, 20 November. Read Newport’s definition. You might experience flow during it. You might also spend the session wrestling with a problem, making slow progress and finishing with something valuable. Do not dismiss that effort because it lacked the feeling you hoped for.
Start by making three things visible: what you are doing now, how it stretches you and what will tell you whether it is working. Csikszentmihalyi describes clear goals, feedback and challenges that engage our skills as important conditions for flow.4Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1990). Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. New York: Harper & Row. Chapters 3–4, especially “A Challenging Activity That Requires Skills” and “Clear Goals and Feedback,” pp. 49–58. Read the book text. These are useful questions to work with, not a formula that makes every session unfold the same way. In three studies, Stefan Engeser and Falko Rheinberg found that the relationship between skill, challenge and flow also depended on factors such as the importance of the activity and achievement motivation.5Engeser, S. and Rheinberg, F. (2008). “Flow, performance and moderators of challenge-skill balance.” Motivation and Emotion, 32, 158–172. doi:10.1007/s11031-008-9102-4.
Make progress visible while you learn
Suppose you are studying something difficult. “Read for an hour” tells you how long to sit there. “Explain this idea in my own words, then use it to solve one problem” gives you something to examine. Where does your explanation become vague? Which step can you perform without looking? The answer helps you choose what to practise next.
This is how I would use flow in learning: give the mind a worthwhile problem and stay interested in what your work reveals. Enjoy the absorption when it comes, then look at what you can actually do. Feeling engrossed and having learned something are different questions.
A worked example: a proposal you keep avoiding
Imagine you need to write a proposal. It matters, the deadline is approaching and the task keeps returning to tomorrow’s list. Here is one way to make a real beginning. The timings are a practical example; choose a work window that fits your responsibilities.
- Decide what this session will produce. Give yourself 40 minutes to draft the recommendation on one page. Write the decision you want the reader to make at the top. Leave the slides, formatting and full financial model for their own sessions.
- Choose a manageable stretch. If you know the subject but cannot begin, answer three questions in rough sentences: What is the problem? What do I recommend? Why is this better than the alternative? If you lack a crucial fact, make finding that fact the task. You cannot write your way around information you do not have.
- Give yourself a way to judge the draft. Can a reader identify the recommendation, its main reason and its biggest trade-off? These questions give you feedback before anyone else sees it. A page of words that avoids the decision is still unfinished.
- Protect the work you selected. Open the source material you need, put your phone out of reach and close unrelated tabs. If someone needs to reach you urgently, keep one agreed route available. Make the arrangement fit your life so you can honour it.
- Begin with the sentence you can write. You do not need the perfect opening. Write the clearest reason for your recommendation, then use it to find the next sentence. As the draft takes shape, you will see what is missing.
After 20 minutes, perhaps you have written a convincing recommendation but still cannot explain the cost. Now you have learned something useful. Your next action is to check the cost, not to redesign the page or question your entire ability to write.
That change matters. At the beginning you had a looming project. Now you have a specific problem inside work that already exists. You can act on it.
Leave yourself a way back
Then someone needs you. A child calls, a colleague brings a time-sensitive problem or an appointment begins. A practice that only works when nobody interrupts you will be difficult to carry into an ordinary life.
When the situation allows, take a moment to leave a short note before switching. For the proposal, it might read:
Recommendation and main reason drafted. Cost comparison still missing. When I return after the call, open the supplier quote and add the annual cost beneath paragraph two. Then check whether that changes the recommendation.
Sophie Leroy and Theresa Glomb studied this kind of “ready-to-resume” plan. Across four studies, they examined how concern about returning to interrupted work under time pressure could leave attention caught on that work while a person tried to handle a new task. Planning the return reduced this attention residue and protected performance on the interrupting task.6Leroy, S. and Glomb, T.M. (2018). “Tasks Interrupted: How Anticipating Time Pressure on Resumption of an Interrupted Task Causes Attention Residue and Low Performance on Interrupting Tasks and How a ‘Ready-to-Resume’ Plan Mitigates the Effects.” Organization Science, 29(3), 380–397. doi:10.1287/orsc.2017.1184. The studies examined attention and performance on the interrupting task; they did not establish faster return to flow in the original task.
Use the note to make the handover concrete. It records where you stopped, what comes next and when you expect to return. When you do come back, begin with that action. If circumstances have changed, revise it. You are returning to the work in front of you, rather than trying to recreate the exact feeling you had earlier.
Bring the body into the practice
Work with the capacity you have today
The physical dimension of the Self Matrix keeps this practical. Ask yourself what you are bringing to the task. Are you hungry? Uncomfortable? Have you been sitting so long that you need to move? Address what is apparent before turning the session into a judgment of your character.
On a depleted day, a useful first step might be a shorter work window or an easier part of the project. On another day, you may be ready for the hardest part. Keep the larger ambition and adjust the immediate demand. There is little wisdom in pretending your body is absent from the work.
Practise beyond the desk
The same questions are useful in physical skills. A musician can work on a difficult transition slowly enough to hear what goes wrong. Someone practising a sport can choose one aspect of technique and ask a coach for feedback. The activity gives attention a concrete object, while the response tells you what to adjust.
You can bring that care into dancing, gardening or learning a movement. Notice what the activity asks of you. Let the body participate fully. There is no need to turn every enjoyable pursuit into a productivity exercise; the quality of being involved is part of what makes it worth doing.
For a fuller treatment of preparation, see The Body Is the Ignition Key. Here, the practical question is what would help you meet today’s task with the capacity you actually have.
Let the work serve something larger
What deserves your attention?
You can become skilful at an activity and still wonder why you are giving your life to it. That is where the spiritual dimension of the Self Matrix matters. Ask what the work serves, who benefits and whether you can respect the direction it is taking you.
A recommendation can serve a client who needs an honest answer. Practice can prepare you to create something beautiful. A difficult conversation can serve a relationship you value. These purposes do not remove the difficulty. They give you a reason to meet it.
Take this question into your reflection or journaling: What important part of my life keeps receiving only my leftover attention? Creativity, patience and serious effort belong there too.
Flow and faith
I would take the idea of flow further. Some of the most magnificent things we can pursue lie beyond what we can presently see ourselves achieving. For me, faith in God belongs here: trusting Him as we reach toward an outcome that our current abilities cannot fully explain.
That faith can coexist with a very practical next step. You may not know how the whole undertaking will come together. You can still write the page, learn the skill, have the conversation or make the attempt that is available to you now. What you learn through doing helps reveal the next move.
This is my spiritual understanding of reaching beyond ourselves. It asks us to hold a great ambition without demanding that we already possess everything needed to fulfil it. The immediate task can stretch the abilities we have, while the larger purpose calls us to become more than we are.
Keep the ambition, make the practice useful
Steven Kotler and Jamie Wheal’s Stealing Fire explores how people seek unusual states of consciousness in pursuit of creativity and performance.7Kotler, S. and Wheal, J. (2017). Stealing Fire: How Silicon Valley, the Navy SEALs, and Maverick Scientists Are Revolutionizing the Way We Live and Work. New York: Dey Street Books. Authors’ book page. It opens an ambitious conversation about human possibility. In everyday practice, I would keep bringing that ambition back to the work and life it is meant to improve.
Neuroscience can help investigate these experiences. For example, a study of 23 men performing mental arithmetic found changes in activity across several brain regions when task difficulty was adjusted to their abilities, compared with boredom and overload conditions.8Ulrich, M., Keller, J. and Grön, G. (2016). “Neural signatures of experimentally induced flow experiences identified in a typical fMRI block design with BOLD imaging.” Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 11(3), 496–507. doi:10.1093/scan/nsv133. That does not give us a simple chemical recipe for a good afternoon. The decisions available to you remain tangible: choose the task, adjust the demand, notice the feedback and care for the person doing the work.
Other people belong in this picture. Keith Sawyer’s work on group flow draws attention to close listening and responsiveness in collective creativity.9Sawyer, R.K. (2026). “Group Flow and the Science of Thinking Together.” The Science of Creativity, 24 April. Author’s account of his research on jazz and theatre improvisation. Read the accessible article. If the proposal becomes a team discussion, bring a clear question and listen to what the others add. Your best contribution may be changing your recommendation because someone has seen what you missed.
Begin with something worth doing
Choose one task you have been circling. Write the result you want from the next session, the first action you can take and how you will judge what you produce. Keep a place for your return note. Then begin.
Afterwards, look at the work. What moved forward? What did you learn? What needs to change next time? If you became deeply absorbed, enjoy that. If the session was difficult and useful, recognise the value of it.
The point of developing your attention is to have more of yourself available for your life: for the work you want to create, the people you care about and the possibilities you have faith enough to pursue.
If you want a practical structure for your next few days, continue with the 72-Hour Focus Reset.
