What is a Flow State? A Cognitive Psychology Podcast Episode.
- Connor Whiteley
- 2 days ago
- 12 min read
Ever since I received my Spotify wrap for The Psychology World Podcast in December 2025 and noted that there's a large audience overlap between myself and a motorcycling podcast, I've been interested in learning more about the flow state. Then after watching the curling at the winter Olympics amongst other sports, I kept hearing the sports commentators mentioning the flow state time after time, as well as during the psychology news section of The Psychology World Podcast, I covered the psychology of the autistic flow state. Therefore, as you can see the flow state is important in so many different areas of our life. As a result, by the end of this cognitive psychology podcast episode, you'll understand what is the flow state, how to achieve a flow state and so much more. If you're interested in boosting your productivity, cognitive psychology and more, then this will be a great episode for you.
Today's psychology podcast episode has been sponsored by Cognitive Psychology: A Guide to Neuroscience, Neuropsychology and Cognitive Psychology. Available from all major eBook retailers and you can order the paperback and hardback copies from Amazon, your local bookstore and local library, if you request it. Also available as an AI-narrated audiobook from selected audiobook platforms and library systems. For example, Kobo, Spotify, Barnes and Noble, Google Play, Overdrive, Baker and Taylor and Bibliotheca.
What is Flow State?
A flow state is a cognitive state where you’re completely immersed in an activity. It can be writing, playing sports, driving or any other activity that you’re doing. As well as a flow state involves creative engagement, intense focus and losing your awareness of self and the time. For example, when I was watching the Winter Olympics and Grant Hardie and Bruce Mouat were playing Curling for Team GB, you could see that Bruce (who’s the Skip or Team Captain) was so intensely focused, his eyes were only on the curling stone and the house and he wasn’t paying attention to anything else that was going on around him.
In addition, the flow state was discovered and the term was created by a Hungarian-American psychologist called Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi in the 1960s when he was studying the creative process. He found that when an artist was in the course of flow, they would persist at their creative task relentlessly, even if they were fatigued or hungry. As well as he found that the artist would lose interest after the project was complete so this highlighted the importance of the process and not the end result.
Personally, as a writer, podcaster and all the other creative projects that I do, I understand this point. Since I often joke to myself and my family that after I do a podcast episode and all the different steps that it takes, I rarely remember everything that I mentioned in the episode. This is because myself and a lot of other creators enjoy the creative flow and project, and when it’s done, we move on to the next creative project so we can get into a flow state and get that almost intoxicating sense of enjoyment again.
I sort of imagine that it’s similar for Bruce Mouat when he’s curling, because curling can be a rather long game. Therefore, you would have to enjoy the process and this is probably why athletes keep going to different competitions, keep playing over and over and they don’t give up. They want to return to the flow state, immerse themselves in the game and they want that sense of enjoyment that can only come from playing the sport they love.
Furthermore, as Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi noted, flow is the joy of doing something for the sake of doing it. He largely based his research on lots of interviews with dancers, chess players, poets and other creatives and he argued that flow is “a state in which people are so involved in an activity that nothing else seems to matter” as he wrote in his book Flow. As well as in my writing, I certainly understand this point because it is so annoying when something or someone jerks you out of your flow. I can happily be writing along, learning and just enjoy my creative project when someone knocks on my door, phones me or something else and it jerks me out of the flow. Honestly, sometimes I get really angry inside myself and it is just so frustrating because I was happy, enjoying myself and I was in the flow. Then someone just has to interrupt me.
I am not impressed when that happens.
On the other hand, this isn’t because I’m not a negative person, I’m easy to annoy or anything like that. It is because the flow state brings myself and others a sense of unique joy and we like being in it, and we don’t like that joy being removed from us by being jerked out of the flow state.
Furthermore, the reason why the flow state is so enjoyable is because it creates a sense of pride, success and accomplishment so this encourages you to learn more as well as develop your skills. Also, throughout this podcast episode, I’ll be using the term “joy” to describe the feeling of being in a flow state, and whilst this isn’t correct, some argue that is. Since the feeling of joy isn’t forefront during the task since the person is enjoying the feeling of being immersed in the task and the experience.
Personally, when I was writing the paragraph above, I was really interested in the idea of applying this to education. Since as an aspiring educational psychologist, I’m training myself to apply psychological theories, concepts and research to help learning and education more often. My mind goes to if we allow students to enter a flow state and if we set up our classrooms or learning experiences to encourage a flow state to occur, then we can help students associate learning with pride, success and accomplishment. This will make the student feel good and it will encourage them to keep on learning as well as developing their skills. Later in the episode, we’ll explore this in a little more depth.
Moreover, because being in a flow state is a dynamic cognitive state, you always have to adjust the skill level, the complexity and the challenge of the activity. Since as you practice any given skill, you develop a level of mastery and this will change how the feeling of the flow state is. As a result of if your skill level has exceeded the activity then boredom sets in and this disrupts the state of flow.
This is likely to be a reason why professional sportspeople want to progress up the leagues, take on harder, more challenging opponents and continue to improve. For the last two Winter Olympics Bruce Mouat and his team have been silver medallists so they’re second in the world. They’re really good, amazing and they are always in such a flow state. Yet I cannot imagine Team GB being able to reach a flow state in a curling match in a junior league. It wouldn’t be challenging enough and their skill level would be vastly superior to the challenge of the game in that lower league.
How Do You Achieve A Flow State?
According to Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, anyone can find a flow state simply by thinking of activities that would apply to the list of conditions that I’m going to give you in a moment. Since achieving a flow state isn’t about doing something creative because you can enter a flow state during work or chopping wood, but flow is about a balance between the tedium of boredom as well as the tension of anxiety.
Ultimately, if you want to achieve a flow state then you become immersed and enjoy the experience of doing the activity itself. As well as the following factors help you achieve a flow state:
· Find the process of the activity enjoyable instead of the end result
· Don’t agonise over failure
· Have a sense of timelessness or distorted time
· Immediately seek the benefits of your actions
· The activity is a balance between your skills and the challenge of the activity
· Lose your awareness and distractions
Building upon these factors, I want to focus on the second point, don’t agonise over failures, because my immediate reaction was I have no idea how Bruce Mouat could possibly enter a flow state during the gold medal match at the Winter Olympics. Yet then I remembered a lecture during the final year of my psychology undergraduate degree on sports psychology that was memorable for a host of reasons, but that’s beyond the scope of this episode. The sports psychologist told us about how professional athletes do a lot of mental preparation, training and they focus a lot on the experience of the games itself. For example, once the sports psychologist had the players shoot penalties in front of the immense crowds at the end of the match so the players could experience the pressure of shooting penalties with a massive audience. This would allow the players to get used to it in a real game and it would be less distracting for them.
My point is that the reason why Bruce Mouat and other professional athletes can enter a flow state during such a high stakes game is probably because they’re used to this, they don’t worry about the stakes and they just focus on playing the game that they love. As well as they use whatever mental preparation tricks their coach or other professionals have taught them.
On a final side note for this section, you can try too hard to search for a flow state, because if you push yourself to enter flow then you can lose the tension and skill level, so this stops your immersion and your flow state.
How Does Your Comfort Zone Impact Flow?
Your comfort zone can impact your flow because for you to be able to reach a flow state, the activity needs to push you outside of your comfort zone. This is one of the reasons why flow can be applied to sports, the workplace and educational settings. For instance, in the workplace, a project can leave an employee feeling that they’re in “the zone” of flow as well as in education, students can see a challenging assignment that has led to learning. Later in this episode, you’ll learn more about how skill and challenge can lead or cannot lead to the flow state in certain situations.
Can The Flow State Impact Anxiety?
Interestingly, flow can be used as a tool for better emotional regulation because if a person enters a flow state then the uncertainties that person has just melts away. This helps the person to reduce these feelings of anxiety because they’re so immersed in their activity that they don’t think about their anxieties or doubts. As well as being in a flow state during an activity that they enjoy helps a person to have a sense of autonomy over their time, mind and body.
Personally, this is another really useful tool for educational psychologists because when I covered flow on a news section of The Psychology World Podcast, I focused on autistic flow states. This is very helpful for self-regulation for autistic people because it allows them to process their emotions, calm their anxieties and so on. This is another benefit of allowing students to enter a flow state and not interrupting them because it allows them to self-regulate, which is an important life skill.
How Could Flow be Applied to Daily Life?
You can apply flow to your daily life by doing daily activities and dip into the flow state. Since everyone is different, it is hard to say what activities will make you go into flow and what activities will not. For example, reading and writing help me go into a flow state, but cooking and gardening doesn’t. You might be the complete opposite. Therefore, a lot of us do have flow experiences throughout the day depending on our activities and daily tasks.
Although, gaming and watching TV prevent us from entering a flow state because this doesn’t involve the loss of awareness of time and self, and our enjoyment typically comes from the TV or game itself, not the process or task of watching TV or gaming.
How is Mindfulness and the Flow State Similar?
It’s important to note that whilst both the flow state as well as mindfulness require the mind to be clear and free from distractions, they are different. For example, the flow state requires the mind to be lost in the process of doing something so the mind isn’t focused on anything in particular. Whereas in mindfulness, the attention is kept on what you’re doing, so a mindfulness meditation requires you to focus on your breathing.
What is an Autotelic Experience?
An autotelic experience is when an individual isn’t invested in glory, status, materialism or fame and instead, the person is content and comfortable with the flow of their life. For example, the person is content with their personal hobbies, their family and their work life. As well as the autotelic person doesn’t look for external praise or benefits to reaching a flow state.
Personally, I think this is a really interesting idea because at first, we really wouldn’t assume that people in a flow state would be autotelic in the slightest. This is because normally when we think about the flow state, we think about professional athletes, writers, poets and other creatives who want to become famous, renowned and they want the glory of winning or producing something great. Yet if I really think about it, and a lot of other writers have said the same over the years, we write because we enjoy it. We write because we like the feeling, the flow state and even if we never ever made any money off it, we would keep writing because we love it.
I imagine it’s the same for professional athletes, so I think it is very easy to say that entering a flow state doesn’t have to be tied to glory, materialism, fame or anything. You really can just be in a flow state because you enjoy the activity so much.
How Is Flow Related to Peak Performance?
A flow state can be seen as a precursor to peak performance because a lot of professional athletes, like Bruce Mouat and Grant Hardie, dive into a flow state when they’re performing. This is because their skill level matches the challenge of the curling match so as the athletes improve their skill and their mastery improves, this allows them to reach their peak performance in their chosen sport.
Cognitive Psychology Conclusion
On the whole, this has been a really fun episode to investigate, put together and produce because whether you’re doing a creative task, riding a motorbike or you’re doing something else that you enjoy, you can potentially reach a flow state. When that happens, you honestly feel great, joyous and it is a wonderfully unique feeling that is hard to get any other way.
As a reminder, a flow state is a cognitive state where you’re completely immersed in an activity. It can be writing, playing sports, driving or any other activity that you’re doing. As well as a flow state involves creative engagement, intense focus and losing your awareness of self and the time.
Additionally, these are the following factors that help you achieve a flow state:
· Find the process of the activity enjoyable instead of the end result
· Don’t agonise over failure
· Have a sense of timelessness or distorted time
· Immediately seek the benefits of your actions
· The activity is a balance between your skills and the challenge of the activity
· Lose your awareness and distractions
Finally, I want to wrap up this psychology podcast episode by giving you some questions to think about to help you achieve a flow state:
· What activities do I enjoy?
· How could I minimize distractions whilst doing this activity?
· How could I reduce my concerns about failure?
· How could I strike a balance between my skills and the challenge of the activity?
I really hope you enjoyed today’s clinical psychology podcast episode.
If you want to learn more, please check out:
Cognitive Psychology: A Guide to Neuroscience, Neuropsychology and Cognitive Psychology. Available from all major eBook retailers and you can order the paperback and hardback copies from Amazon, your local bookstore and local library, if you request it. Also available as an AI-narrated audiobook from selected audiobook platforms and library systems. For example, Kobo, Spotify, Barnes and Noble, Google Play, Overdrive, Baker and Taylor and Bibliotheca.
Have a great day.
Cognitive Psychology References and Further Reading
Beard, K. S. (2015). Theoretically speaking: An interview with Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi on flow theory development and its usefulness in addressing contemporary challenges in education. Educational Psychology Review, 27(2), 353-364.
Csikszentmihalyi, M. (2014). Flow and education. In Applications of flow in human development and education: The collected works of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (pp. 129-151). Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands.
Csikszentmihalyi, M. (2014). Applications of flow in human development and education (pp. 153-172). Dordrecht: Springer.
Csikszentmihalyi, M., Abuhamdeh, S., & Nakamura, J. (2014). Flow. In Flow and the foundations of positive psychology: The collected works of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (pp. 227-238). Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands.
Groys, B. (2018). In the flow. Verso Books.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/basics/flow
Nakamura, J., & Csikszentmihalyi, M. (2014). The concept of flow. In Flow and the foundations of positive psychology: The collected works of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (pp. 239-263). Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands.
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