32 · Doing
Flow
The state of being fully absorbed in a task: hard enough to hold attention, easy enough to keep going.
Evidence: Holds, with limitsWhat we do with it
- 01
Match the challenge to the person's skill. Too easy is boring. Too hard is stressful.
- 02
Give feedback right away, so people always know what just happened.
- 03
Every needless interruption pulls people out, and getting back in takes a while.
Examples
Getting it wrong, getting it right.
Don't
An editor that opens a “Rate us!” dialog in the middle of a task.
Do
Ask after the task is done, once, and take no for an answer.
The evidence
What the research says.
Widely observed, hard to pin down. Most of the evidence comes from people reporting how they feel when paged at random times. One surprise from Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and Judith LeFevre's 1989 study of 78 workers: people reported flow more often at work than in their free time. In software, Jawaid Ghani and Satish Deshpande found in 1994 that flow among 149 professionals rose with a sense of control and the right level of challenge, and went with exploring the software more.
Sources
- Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1975). Beyond Boredom and Anxiety. Jossey-Bass.
- Csikszentmihalyi, M., & LeFevre, J. (1989). Optimal experience in work and leisure. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 56(5).
- Webster, J., Trevino, L. K., & Ryan, L. (1993). The dimensionality and correlates of flow in human-computer interactions. Computers in Human Behavior, 9(4).
- Ghani, J. A., & Deshpande, S. P. (1994). Task characteristics and the experience of optimal flow in human-computer interaction. The Journal of Psychology, 128(4).
Last reviewed November 7, 2026. How we keep this current