Flow – A State of Mental High Performance

Focus, dedication and engagement combine with clarity, efficiency and a feeling of ease and enjoyment. Being in flow is becoming one with what you are doing. Action and consciousness merge. Sense of time disappears and each task runs into a continuous stream of motion: It just works!

Musicians

…in flow master difficult passages with great security. It’s a state without worry but still with absolute control.

Managers

…describe flow as a feeling of great clarity, presence and persuasiveness. Thoughts come easily and spontaneously, action is powerful, efficient and direct.

Athletes

…call it “The Zone”:

“It’s magic! When it happens I can feel my game rise to a new level. At that level all sorts of odd things happen. Everything moves so quickly that every fake, cut and pass is surprising, and yet nothing can surprise me. It is almost as if we were playing in slow motion. There have been many times in my career when I felt moved or joyful, but these are the moments when I have chills pulsing up and down my spine.”

Bill Russell
1956-69 center of the Boston Celtics
current record holder of most NBA-Championships (11)

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Professor of Psychology and Management
Peter F. Drucker School of Management Claremont, USA

…discovered for the scientific world the experience of total absorption in an activity and explored its necessary conditions. Many of the people from different fields whom he interviewed described the sensation of these extraordinary experiences as a “continuous flowing”. This is how he came to name them flow-experiences.
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