The Pursuit of ‘Flow’ Is Overrated

Eyal pushes back on the contemporary obsession with Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's flow state. Yes, flow is real and pleasant; no, you don't need it to do excellent work. Most great output, he argues, is produced under conditions that are nothing like flow — frustration, interruptions, ordinary effort — and treating flow as the prerequisite for serious work becomes one more reason not to start. Better to make peace with friction-rich work and apply discipline (timeboxing, identity-based habits) than to wait for the magical zone.