What it is
Flow is “the mental state in which a person performing some activity is fully immersed in a feeling of energized focus.” Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi introduced the idea in Beyond Boredom and Anxiety (1975). The name came from people he interviewed, who described being carried along by a current.
He named three conditions: clear goals, clear and immediate feedback, and a balance between the challenge in front of you and the skill you bring to it. Too easy is boredom. Too hard is anxiety.
How it shows up for me
I get it cooking, coding and playing guitar. The warning I keep for myself is that flow feels good no matter what you’re doing, so it’s possible to be in flow at the wrong thing, for hours, while the people I love wait.