Two malattributions to flow

Especially in IT, but also in general, people are somewhat enamored with Csikzentmihalyis concept of flow. For good reasons, e.g. it just feels very nice when you are in the flow and you can grind out a lot of somewhat tedious work, and very few things are as satisfying, as having a good session of coding in the flow and producing several hundreds lines of code that seemingly work. And sometimes they do, and sometimes it is just a bad idea to just sit down and code a ton, and I think we will also see how you can know beforehand.

However, kitchen sink psychology/pedagogy made two malattributions to flow, I have seen, read or heard of repeatedly, to the point where I feel sufficiently annoyed to write a post about it:

1. Flow is an optimal state for work
2. Flow is an optimal state for learning

Both statements are, of course, wrong. At least in their full generality. And it is kind of obvious, when one considers that flow happens when you somehow perform an immersive activity at an ideal difficulty - not too hard, not too easy, but challenging. You have knowledge of all the things you can and must control.

But work obviously can also be hard (and tedious), or easy (but tedious). And learning usually is hard (and tedious), because if it would not be hard, you would not need to learn it, duh. Similarly effective exercise, in particular, deliberate practice, is usually dialed in at a difficulty which is just slightly above what would be optimal to experience flow.

In conclusion, flow is pretty often just nothing you can expect from work, and optimal learning usually contradicts flow.

In the end, we have to meet two conditions to achieve flow state:

1. low friction in task execution
2. finely tuned difficulty

We can pretty much always improve the first condition. Most of productivity improvements boil down to a reduction in friction. However, the difficulty of tasks is something we have less influence over. We can get better, either in general (e.g. by studying mathematics or lifting weights) or in specific skills, so things become easier, but of course this then also entails that some tasks become too easy. Just like weightlifting, at some point the tiny plastic dumbbells don’t cut it anymore for engagement, even in the most disadvantaged positions, and some weights will be struggling no matter how much training you do.

Of course, if you have work to do and you can do the necessary preparations to achieve flow for some large chunks of it, it can be very productive. And a lot of good practices built around this concept¹, like having uninterrupted days for productive work, not disrupting people, blocking out large chunks of time and putting on engaging music.

However, in the end, there is always the difficulty condition on flow, putting both upper and lower bounds on the difficulty of some task and limiting the utility and applicability of flow.