What is flow state?
A flow state is deep absorption in a task pitched just beyond what a person finds easy. The research on it began with workers carrying a signalling device for a week.
Answer to the question
What is flow state?
A flow state is a period of deep absorption in an activity whose challenge suits the person's skill. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi described it in his 1990 book Flow through eight components, among them clear goals, immediate feedback, concentration and an altered sense of time. A 1989 sampling study found most flow reported at work.
Key takeaways
- Csikszentmihalyi and a co-author (1989) followed 78 adult workers for a week and found that most flow experiences were reported during work, not leisure, while motivation was higher in leisure.
- In Flow (1990), Csikszentmihalyi listed eight components and wrote that a flow state needs both a structure and a person, so job redesign and building the person's capacity go together.
- Fong and colleagues (2015) pooled 28 studies and found a moderate link between challenge-skill balance and flow, weaker in work or education settings and under experience sampling.
- Cutting and colleagues (2023) published a preregistered game study in which an AI system controlled difficulty, a further test of how challenge, skill and engagement relate.
- Harris and colleagues (2021) found a pooled correlation of 0.31 between a flow state and performance across 22 sport and gaming studies, with the direction of the link undetermined.
Adult workers who were prompted at random moments through a week of ordinary shifts reported most of their flow experiences during work, not leisure. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and a co-author published that finding, and it still shapes how a flow state is discussed in offices, in sport and in game design. A flow state is a stretch of deep absorption in an activity, with attention fully taken up by a task pitched just beyond what the person finds easy, so that effort feels light while the work itself is demanding. The term has entered everyday speech, which is part of why it needs a careful definition.
What did Csikszentmihalyi list?
In Flow, published in 1990, Csikszentmihalyi set out eight major components of enjoyable experience. People mentioned at least one, and often all of them. The task is one the person has a chance of completing. Concentration on it is possible, partly because the goals are clear and feedback arrives at once. Involvement is deep and effortless enough to push the worries of daily life out of awareness. The person feels in control of their actions. Concern for the self disappears, and the sense of self comes back stronger afterwards. The sense of how long the activity lasted shifts.
He did not weigh the eight equally. He wrote that the altered sense of time may be a by-product of intense concentration rather than a feature in its own right. Lists with nine components circulate widely, and they come from a later book by the same author, so the eight-feature flow state is the version that belongs to Flow.
Csikszentmihalyi held that a flow state needs both a structure and a person. The structure is a goal, rules, skill in the relevant field, clear and immediate feedback, and a challenge that suits the skill. The person brings the ability to organise their own attention so that flow becomes possible.
What counts is the challenge the person perceives and the skill they believe they have, not the measured difficulty of the task. For work, he proposed two moves together: redesign jobs so they resemble activities that produce flow, and help people build the capacity to enter it. He held that neither move alone would do much good.
What counts is the challenge the person perceives and the skill they believe they have, not the measured difficulty of the task.
What did the 1989 sampling find?
The 1989 study followed 78 adult workers and used the experience sampling method: participants were signalled at random times across a week and reported on their experience each time. A moment counted as flow when the person rated both challenge and skill above their own weekly average. The authors reported that most measures of experience were more closely tied to whether the person was in flow than to whether they were working or at leisure. Relaxation and motivation were the exceptions.
Most flow states were reported at work. Motivation was higher in leisure, whatever the quality of the moment. Workers in a flow state reported more positive work experiences than workers who were apathetic. How that sampling design defined flow, and what it left out, is covered in [What the Flow Studies Measured](https://thewhyweproject.com/articles/what-the-flow-studies-measured).
A 2015 meta-analysis led by Carlton J. Fong pooled 28 studies to ask how far a match between challenge and skill, the challenge-skill channel, goes with a flow state. The relationship was moderate, and smaller for intrinsic motivation. It was weaker in individualistic cultures, in work or education settings, in studies using experience sampling, and where flow was reported as a momentary state rather than a lasting trait. The authors named challenge-skill balance, clear goals and a sense of control as contributors to flow.
Joe Cutting and colleagues published a preregistered study in 2023 in which an AI system controlled the difficulty of a game, a further test of how challenge, skill and engagement relate. For a reader at a desk, the 1989 work-setting study is the nearest match, and the meta-analysis shows that the link between challenge and skill shifts with the setting.
What do the performance figures mean for a manager?
Twenty-two studies from 20 articles, 13 in sport and 9 in gaming, were combined by D. J. Harris and colleagues, with 2,462 participants in the analysis. The pooled correlation between a flow state and performance was 0.31. Sport and gaming gave similar values, 0.32 and 0.30.
The authors wrote that current evidence cannot settle which way the relationship runs or which mechanisms carry it. Their funnel plots suggested some publication bias, and no study in the set reported a negative relationship. Every one of those studies took place on a pitch or in front of a game, so how far the figure carries into an office remains open.
The framework points to four features of a task that a manager or an individual can arrange. The goal can be stated in one sentence. Feedback arrives within the activity, as with a test result, a draft read aloud or a running total. The difficulty sits slightly above current ability, judged by the person doing the work. The time is protected from interruption, which is the subject of [Why Attention Residue Lingers at Work](https://thewhyweproject.com/articles/why-attention-residue-lingers-at-work) and [Self-Interruption Is Half the Story](https://thewhyweproject.com/articles/self-interruption-is-half-the-story).
These are our applications of the framework, not results from a trial of any workplace change, and the one step the research does support is to ask the worker how hard the task feels and how well equipped they are for it, because the flow state Csikszentmihalyi described depends on those two perceptions and not on any measure taken from outside.
Common questions
What is flow state?
A flow state is a period of deep absorption in an activity whose challenge matches the person's skill. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi described it in his 1990 book Flow, listing eight components that include clear goals, immediate feedback, concentration and an altered sense of time.
Who coined the term flow state?
The psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi developed the concept and the term, and set it out for general readers in Flow in 1990.
How do you get into a flow state at work?
The research describes the conditions, not a guaranteed route. They are a clear goal, immediate feedback, a challenge that fits perceived skill and attention that stays undisturbed. Research on how strongly each condition predicts flow is mixed, and the link was weaker in work settings.
Does a flow state improve performance?
A 2021 meta-analysis of 22 sport and gaming studies found a pooled correlation of 0.31 between flow and performance. The authors said the evidence cannot determine which causes which.
Sources
Csikszentmihalyi, M. Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. Seed book.
Csikszentmihalyi, M., & LeFevre, J. (1989). “Optimal experience in work and leisure.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 56(5), 815-822. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.56.5.815 https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.56.5.815
Fong, C. J., Zaleski, D. J., & Leach, J. K. (2015). “The challenge-skill balance and antecedents of flow: A meta-analytic investigation.” The Journal of Positive Psychology, 10(5), 425-446. doi:10.1080/17439760.2014.967799 https://doi.org/10.1080/17439760.2014.967799
Cutting, J., Deterding, S., Demediuk, S., & Sephton, N. (2023). “Difficulty-skill balance does not affect engagement and enjoyment: a pre-registered study using artificial intelligence-controlled difficulty.” Royal Society Open Science, 10(2), 220274. doi:10.1098/rsos.220274 https://doi.org/10.1098/rsos.220274
Harris, D. J., Allen, K. L., Vine, S. J., & Wilson, M. R. (2021). “A systematic review and meta-analysis of the relationship between flow states and performance.” International Review of Sport and Exercise Psychology, 16(1), 693-721. doi:10.1080/1750984X.2021.1929402 https://doi.org/10.1080/1750984X.2021.1929402