In Flow!

Managing our time and energy well

The concept of ‘flow’ was popularised by Mihály Csíkszentmihályi (‘me high chick sent me high’ is a close approximation!) in a 1990 book of the same name.

Flow is a state in which people are so involved in an activity that nothing else seems to matter, a person is fully immersed in what they are doing. Csíkszentmihályi described flow as "being completely involved in an activity for its own sake. The ego falls away. Time flies. Every action, movement, and thought follows inevitably from the previous one, like playing jazz. Your whole being is involved, and you're using your skills to the utmost."

From the brain perspective it seems to involve two key elements of brain management. The first is by managing our time well we focus our left hemisphere fully on the present moment and the task in hand and all other temporal concerns are ignored – time, ego, food.

The second is through managing our energy well, our two brain hemispheres are aligned and we are doing exactly what we should be doing, there are no internal tensions nor external distractions that might shift focus away from the left hemisphere’s high concentration.

Flow comes from the overlap of managing both our time and energy well.