In this state, an hour can pass in the blink of an eye and you feel in full control.
A flow state helps reduce the effects of stress — even more effectively than mindfulness.
A flow state — sometimes known as being ‘in the zone’ — is the experience of being fully engaged with what you’re currently doing.
Many activities can provide flow states — in fact anything that engages the attention, stretches your skills a little and that you are doing for its own sake.
When you’re in a flow state:
- an hour can pass in the blink of an eye,
- you feel what you are doing is important,
- you’re not self-conscious,
- action and awareness merges,
- you feel in full control,
- and the experience is intrinsically rewarding.
Flow beats mindfulness
These results come from a study of 5,115 people in China conducted during the COVID pandemic.
They were asked about their experiences of mindfulness and flow.
Researchers found that people who were quarantined for longer had worse mental health, except for those who experienced more flow states.
Mindfulness was also helpful, but not as powerful as flow states in warding off stress.
The study’s’ authors write:
“In a sample collected via social media in February 2020 in China, experiencing flow and mindfulness was associated with better well-being.
More interestingly, whether people were in quarantine was irrelevant for well-being among people who experienced a lot of flow in the previous week, but the same was not true for mindfulness.”
Getting into a flow state
To create a flow experience, you need:
- to be internally motivated, i.e. you are doing the activity mainly for its own sake,
- the task should stretch your skills almost to the limits, but not so much that it makes you too anxious,
- there should be clear short-term goals for what you are trying to achieve,
- and you should get immediate feedback on how you are doing, i.e. you can see how the painting, photo, blog post etc. is turning out.
Related
The study was published in the journal PLOS ONE (Sweeny et al., 2020).
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