Comments on: Flow

By: Shane

Shane — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 09:07:03 +0000

Hello Tom,

Thank you for commenting!
I have also had the experience that whenever I am in a state of flow, I soak up information effortlessly. It’s a completely different experience from trying to learn something by force, so to speak.
What you write about expanding the peripheral vision reminds me of martial arts, where you learn to unfocus and use your entire visual field to keep track of what’s going on around you. Needless to say, an actual fight isn’t very likely to produce flow, but a “friendly” competition match is.

By: Tom

Tom — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 05:54:52 +0000

Hello Shane. a wonderful website you have :)
I came to realize that the concept of flow is the key to giftedness (which i’ve been reading about these weeks).
When I was a kid, I used to experience flow almost all the time (I know now that this optimal state of mind is largely responsible for the accelerated learning). Unfortunately, along the years I seem to have lost the ability to maintain the flow (possibly due to the prefrontal cortex deterioration along the time which is an universal phenomenon). This is how I characterize my own experiences of flow in physiological and psychological terms:

- For intellectual activities: vision broadening (i.e. peripheral vision), perception of brighten images (slowing of brain waves), auditory illusion of white noise, dramatic increase in mental speed (e.g. reflex, operation processing), sense of omniscience, surreal-ness and total awareness.

- For creative activities: burst of inspiration, goose bump, body softening, impression perceiving, “rage” to express.

I’m more concerned, however, about deliberately entering the state of flow (in the literature this quality is attributed mostly to one’s neurological basis, hence me attempting to challenge this assumption). So far I’ve partial answers to this but fail to tap into optimal state in every instances. Here are my partial answers:

1) “pseudo-kinesis” (mentally imagining moving an object in your focus)
2) Expand your vision as peripheral as possible.
3) Removal of all perceptible pains and negative feelings followed by a period of deep relaxation until involuntary images are perceived.

I hope these infos contribute to your pursuit of flow :)

By: Shane

Shane — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 20:54:46 +0000

That’s great! Not all nine factors are necessary to experience flow.
Personally, I have been busy with too many different things lately, to experience any deep states of flow. I’m currently working on removing distractions and single-tasking again.
Thanks for commenting!

By: Sean

Sean — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 09:31:04 +0000

This is great news Shane – I often experience flow although only points 3 to 6 so I still think I have some way to go yet!

By: Shane

Shane — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 18:58:45 +0000

Hey Oscar, thanks for stopping by! I’d never heard of the pomodoro technique before. Googled it and will read up on it, though. I’ve been trying some similar “time-boxing”/Parkinson’s law type of time-management methods, but I haven’t had any breakthroughs yet.
I think that most time-limiting methods are probably detrimental to flow, because flow has a lot to do with deep immersion. Not that that’s always a good thing, of course. I don’t expect to experience flow when filling out my tax form, so I might as well use a time-limiting method for something like that.

By: Oscar - freestyle mind

Oscar - freestyle mind — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 16:00:59 +0000

Interesting. I’m currently working using the pomodoro technique (25 minutes maximal focus, 3-5 minutes break). It helps me a lot although it’s far from the kind of flow you were talking about.