New years have new resolutions. Get in shape. Read more. Make more time for friends and family.
Each of our resolutions is a plan for something new, or at least a little bit different, and I don't think my list of resolutions looks the same as yours. I hope that you will add feel more flow to your resolutions.
Mihly Cskszentmihlyi's research on flow began in the 70s. It is the "secret to happiness" according to him. Each of us can incorporate flow into our lives. A life worth living is characterized by immense joy.
Researchers have gained a lot of knowledge about what it is like to be in flow and how it affects our mental health. When we feel flow, we are completely absorbed in a highly rewarding activity, and not in our inner monologues.
I have been studying flow for the last 10 years, and I am an assistant professor of communication and cognitive science. When people experience flow, my lab looks at what happens in our brains. Our goal is to make it easier for people to feel the flow of the experience.
What is it like to be in a flow?
People say flow is like being in the zone. Cskszentmihlyi and Jeanne Nakamura are psychologists. People are in a state of intense concentration when they feel flow. Their thoughts are focused on the experience.
They feel as if there is a merging of their actions and their awareness when they lose a sense of time. They have control over the situation. The experience is not taxing.
Flow is what researchers call an autotelic experience. The Greek words telos and autotelic mean end or goal. There areelic experiences that are worth doing. These are sometimes called rewarding experiences. Flow experiences are rewarding.
When a task's challenge is balanced with one's skill, it's called flow. The task challenge and skill level have to be high. I tell my students that they won't feel flow when they are doing the dishes. Most people are skilled at washing dishes.
When do people experience flow? Cskszentmihlyi's research focused on people doing things they enjoy. He studied swimmers, chess players, dancers, mountain climbers and other athletes. He studied how people can find flow in everyday experiences.
I enjoy snowboarding on the mountain, and I feel flow on it. Other people feel it when they ride their bike, cook or run. You should be able to achieve flow if the task's challenge is high and your skills are good.
Adapted from Cskszentmihlyi.
Flow occurs when a task's challenge and one's skills are both high.
People can experience flow using interactive media, like playing a video game. Cskszentmihlyi said that games are obvious flow activities and play is the flow experience. Video game developers are very familiar with the idea and think hard about how to design games so that players feel flow.
Cskszentmihlyi called flow the secret to happiness. Why is that happening? The experience can help people achieve their goals. Research shows that taking a break to do something fun can help enhance one's self-control, goal pursuit and well-being.
Next time you feel guilty for playing a video game, remind yourself that you are actually doing something that can help set you up for long-term success and well-being.
Quality is important, but not necessarily quantity. Spending a lot of time playing video games has a very small effect on your well-being. If you want to feel flow, focus on games that help you.
A recent study shows that flow helps people stay strong. Flow can help you focus on something enjoyable. Studies show that experiencing flow can help guard against depression.
People who experienced stronger feelings of flow had better well-being than people who experienced weaker feelings. Feelings of flow may have helped distract them from worrying.
Researchers have been studying flow for 50 years, but only recently have they begun to understand what is happening in the brain during flow. René Weber, a media neuroscientist, has proposed that flow is associated with a specific brain-network configuration.
Weber's hypothesis is supported by studies that show that the experience is associated with activity in brain structures that are involved in feeling reward. This may be one reason why people are so focused on tasks that make them feel flow.
Flow is associated with decreased activity in brain structures that are involved in self-focus. Feelings of flow can help distract people from worry.
Asteroid Impact is a video game developed by Weber, Jacob Fisher and I. Participants in my research play Asteroid Impact while having their brain scanned.
My work shows that flow is associated with a brain network configuration that has low energy requirements. This may explain why we don't experience flow as physically or mentally demanding.
I have shown that the brain changes its network configuration during flow, instead of maintaining one stable network configuration. The brain network reconfiguration helps people adapt to difficult tasks.
The brain can tell us more.
Researchers don't know how brain responses associated with flow contribute to well-being. There is very little research on how brain responses cause flow. Every neuroscience study I described was correlational.
We can conclude that the brain responses are related to flow. We can't conclude that the brain responses cause flow.
The researchers think that the connection between flow and well-being has something to do with suppression of brain activity in structures associated with thinking about ourselves, as well as increased activity in reward-processing regions.
I think testing this hypothesis is important. Video games are being used in clinical applications to treat attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder.
Maybe one day a clinician will be able to prescribe a video game that is approved by the FDA to help bolster someone's resilience or fight off depression.
If it is possible, that is several years into the future. I hope that you will find more flow in your life. You might find that this helps you achieve your other resolutions as well.
Richard Huskey is an assistant professor at the University of California, Davis.
The Conversation's article is a Creative Commons licensed one. The original article can be found here.
