How flow flows, in Optimum Drive I lay out why flow is the ultimate mental state for peak human performance. Flow is a semi-meditative mind state where humans preform optimally. It requires substantial time and exposure to a task to reach a level of sublime competence too be able flow in that task. This can occur naturally as a process of steady unconscious improvement that can come from prolonged experience alone or a deliberate trained conscious effort (or of course some combination of both).

Flow is purely subconscious, as a result it feels a little “out of body” because your conscious mind is free to observe intently or wonder aimlessly. Consciousness is not necessary for the task, it is only, after all, an observer (so we can say many animals only flow). It can be a real source of pride, wonder and awe if you consciously trained to attain flow or possibly (if it organically occurred) it can feel quite strange or weird all the way to just something else we never give a second thought and is part of a long list of things we take for granted.

In its simplest form think of it as a human motor function, all the things our body does (thankfully) without any conscious effort. Heart beating, breathing, those are obvious, there actually are eighteen named autonomic systems at work at all times just keeping us going (Homeostasis is the name for all of that). They are all part of our subconscious (or unconscious) mind that utilizes 95%(!) of our mental capacity. Besides the autonomic system(s), which keeps us ticking along, the rest of our subconscious (and a great majority of our mental capacity) is cognition, all the things we have learned but aren’t consciously thinking about so yes things like memories…but also things like walking. This is where flow lives. Walking is actually flow. Walking is automated and adaptable, completely subconsciously, it is vastly more complex that we could consciously handle (remember that’s only 5% of our mental capacity). Walking has hundreds of muscle firings (up to 600!) and we learned it…literally one step at a time over months as our young brains developed and grew to a capacity that the “program” “walking” could be written (and so on).  

This automation in our subconscious is made of feedback loops. It is every individual required sub-task in a self-correcting feedback loop. All working together to enable flow in the task. What does “all working together mean”? It is a complex system, every adjustment in any individual feedback loop effects the entire system, they are ripples and the system has to as a whole continue to function along the way compensating for the ripples or we fall down, just before that though our conscious mind gets a kick of adrenalin (still the best energy drink out there) along with the command to immediately do something (that’s what the adrenalin is for). So, the flow keeps flowing as long as everything is happening within spec for our subconscious program to handle the task but once things go out of spec the alarms go off, the flow state is broken and we are consciously trying to sort out this surprise new experience consciously. These moments are sub optimal and when describing it later tend to use words like lucky…or unlucky. Why those words? 5% isn’t going to solve much in the moment (even when jacked on adrenaline). We can only consciously focus on one thing as a time (conscious multitasking is a myth) so at all costs these moments are best avoided. This is why flow is peak human performance, we simply cannot perform better than being in flow, therefore make sure those feedback loops are all fully capable of self-correcting and the system for the task is as a result robust.

The feedback loops all take information from our senses (how we connect with the world), this information is continuously updating so this program is adaptive and self-updating (as of course then is the system) so don’t think of it as a fixed program. We walk for most of our lives and as we age it changes and right along with us (because it is us), our program called “walking” is continously adapting. As mentioned in the opening paragraph this can be also be done intentionally.

Teaching methodology, first rule of teaching is that there are no rules for teaching. Everyone is different, within reason, the ends justify the means. How small the loops (sub-tasks) need to be is very much up to the individual. Smaller is more detailed and therefore more accurate but some people can handle multivariable loops…others cannot.

Breaking down the tasks is the first thing to do (create the curriculum as it were). Next a safe, simple way to efficiently practice the skill and ample time to ingrain (program) the improvements and move to the next one. Make sure it all overlaps so there are no gaps. Test the individual sub-tasks and when combined with others test again. Move slowly and patiently. The enemy here is impatience and assumption, these will kill the chances of the end program being good enough for flow to occur. It takes time, it has to be accurate. What we are aiming for is two things; one is “normal range”, we want the sub-task to be self-correcting within normal range which is defined by experience. If we are teaching ourselves it is only our experiences, if we are fortunate enough it is a professional in that task/field and the normal range is more absolute and closer to the real ideal (moral of the story, get a professional to teach you). We then want to take that new normal range and ingrain in. The ingraining is the setting of the sub-task into the program in our subconscious effectively putting it in play. I say in Optimum Drive “the tell” that’s it’s done is the person can have normal conversation while doing the task (proving it is subconscious).

It’s not quite flow or no flow, there is a grey “semi-flow” in between where we (somewhat nervously) monitor the task not quite trusting things. This often happens when you change things or haven’t done the thing for a while. Once the trust is there the flow can be left to do it’s (nearly magical, nearly superhuman) thing. If not…back to work because, well, the job is never really done.

If you find human performance/potential interesting check out my book (Optimum Drive) and my website (www.theoptimumdrive.com) which has many blog posts on these topics and more