Flow and Mindfulness
Today, I’d like to explore the concepts of "flow" and mindfulness.
Life offers a state sometimes referred to as “flow.” According to Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, the psychologist who first described flow, it is a state in which a person becomes deeply immersed in what they are doing, to the point of losing self-consciousness and even an accurate sense of time. Elite athletes often try to induce this state deliberately, through routines or pregame rituals that help them channel intense focus when performing.
For humans who evolved on the savannah, this capacity for concentration was nurtured by hunting. Whether tracking prey or eluding predators, survival depended on focusing both mind and body, pushing performance to the limit. In modern times, though, office work and other daily tasks rarely require such immersion. To reach a flow state, the work must be challenging enough to demand your full power, yet not so difficult that it becomes impossible. You need a constant influx of “just-right” problems—ones you can barely manage if you give your maximum effort. Only when you find yourself rapidly solving these challenges do you open the door to flow.
For many people today, that experience is mostly confined to video games. In a well-designed game, each mission is slightly harder than the last, providing a perfect “Goldilocks” difficulty curve—never too easy, never too hard. Players stay immersed by solving the problems one after another, feeling that intoxicating sense of deep focus and progress.
When someone experiences flow, they often become more mindful. Immersing oneself in a task organizes one’s emotions and creates a sense of mental calm. There are many ways to achieve mindfulness—meditation and zazen, for example—but they all center on unifying the mind. Even short bursts of focused concentration can yield significant mental health benefits, making us more resilient to stress and more willing to tackle tough challenges. In this way, it resembles working out or fitness; if you train consistently, you’ll be able to produce significant power when needed, and your day-to-day performance improves. It’s no surprise that busy professionals now pay closer attention to maintaining their “fitness,” whether physical or mental. Some level of discipline has become expected for both manual labor and knowledge work.
That said, humans are also inherently lazy. We prefer to avoid unnecessary effort or pain. We might overindulge in foods we know aren’t healthy. Most people just want to live as comfortably as possible, spending the least energy. Yet there are those who embrace being “stoic”—they find joy in running long distances, climbing mountains, or swimming in the ocean. While many people spend their free moments watching short videos or playing addictive mobile games, there’s also an Olympic event called the triathlon, which showcases humanity’s fascination with pushing physical boundaries.
Stoic individuals discover satisfaction in self-improvement, a notion that resonates with Zen principles. In Zen, you don’t run to lose weight; you run to run. Actions become their own purpose. You climb a mountain simply because you want to climb, with no need for further rationalization. Indeed, reasons are mostly post hoc. Our bodies move first, and then we rationalize our actions later. People train their brains for different goals—perhaps to stave off cognitive decline or to manage a developmental disability—but ultimately these reasons often come after the fact. Those who value training will train, and those who don’t never will.
As a result, trying to convince people of something’s worth when they don’t feel that worth themselves can be pointless. Even if they agree superficially, the effect soon fades. In the long run, the universe has its own way of delivering what’s needed to those who need it. As an app developer, I just “build what I want to build.” That pursuit alone brings me into flow and yields mindfulness. Whether I get high ratings or low ratings, or whether the user count soars or stagnates, my fundamental path remains the same. I’ve been wondering how best to promote BrainDojo, but reflecting on all this has reminded me of my deeper motivations.
If you want to try BrainDojo, you can download it on the App Store.
