The Zone

You have experienced it before, even if you did not have a name for it. Time disappears. Self-consciousness evaporates. Your actions feel effortless and your focus becomes absolute. This is flow — a state of optimal experience first described by psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi.

Flow is not relaxation. It is the opposite — a state of intense engagement where your skills are fully matched to the challenge at hand. Your brain runs at peak efficiency, and the experience is rewarding in itself.

The remarkable thing about flow is that it is predictable. It follows specific conditions, and once you understand them, you can deliberately create the circumstances that make flow more likely.