Flow in the State of Flow - How Geniuses Make Iconic Works

“He was able to focus on his task and block out everything,” said the wife of Michael Schumacher in a documentary on Netflix. She was referring to the trauma associated with Senna’s infamous death in a freak accident in Italian Grand Prix.

“Laser focus” is how Elon Musk’s biographer Walter Isaacson defines Musk’s ability to focus on tasks.

In psychology, this is called a Flow State. Academic definition is “a mental state in which a person is completely focused on a single task or activity.”

“I was in the zone” - We have heard many athletes say this. This is Flow State.

The term “flow” was coined by Mihály Csíkszentmihályi in 1970 and he went on to call it “secret to happiness”.

"The mind is not a vessel to be filled, but a fire to be kindled" - Plutarch

Ask any writer or creative person (with some sense of genius) and they would agree to being in this state of flow. It is like being in a profound zone where you are pulled in to it, your whole is consumed, the maker becomes the making, the consumer becomes the consumed, and when it is over, with a jerk the doer rears his neck out to stare at the naked world again.

The ancient Chinese called it Wu Wei. It is loosely defined as a way of doing nothing, but in actuality it means the act of doing one thing and being totally immersed in it.

If you are a creative person (and you could be ‘creating’ anything), try to be in the flow state. It guarantees calmness, enjoyment of task, and mostly the results are worth it.