When we’re challenging ourselves with a task, our mind reaches full capacity. According to Csikszentmihalyi, “The best moments in our lives are not the passive, receptive, relaxing times… the best moments usually occur if a person’s body or mind is stretched to its limits in a voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult and worthwhile.” To that end, engagement and concentration are key in achieving flow state.Īccording to Csikszentmihalyi, the human mind can process up to 120 bits of information per second. The flow mental state is generally less common during periods of relaxation and makes itself present during challenging and engaging activities. The feelings that would consume you under normal circumstances (inhibition, hunger, fatigue, or aches and pains) melt away, and all that matters is your dedication to your craft. The mind’s usual chatter begins to fade away, placing us in a non-distracted zone. When you’re giving your fullest attention to an activity or task that you are incredibly passionate about, singularly focused on, and totally immersed in, you may find yourself creating the conditions necessary to experience a flow state of mind. Csikszentmihalyi and Nakamura reached this conclusion by interviewing a variety of self-actualized, high-performing people: including mountain climbers, chess players, surgeons, and ballet dancers. “There’s this focus that, once it becomes intense, leads to a sense of ecstasy, a sense of clarity: you know exactly what you want to do from one moment to the other you get immediate feedback,” Csikszentmihalyi said in a 2004 TED Talk. I believe if I use this app ‘everyday’, it will help me become a better writer.Popularized by positive psychologists Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and Jeanne Nakamura, flow state describes a feeling where, under the right conditions, you become fully immersed in whatever you are doing. To stop that, when I make a spelling mistake I try to either retype it or if my fingers become all thumbs I hit return and start a new line. My problem is I still find myself doing spelling edits. The timer turns into a button that you click on to end the writing session, or if you prefer, just keep on writing (the good thing). One thing, when the time is up there’s no feedback, maybe that’s a good thing. For testing, I did a bunch of text returns to get me to the bottom of the page and kept on hitting return so it’s good to know that you will never run out of a page to type on. I like the way you can save your work as well as the different ways it can be saved, for example, by name, by date, etc. It’s fun to play around with how long you have before the text actually is gone. When typing I played with the text disappearing to the point where it was ‘almost’ totally gone, and resume typing to bring the text back in a-nick-of-time. Love the different times and fonts you can choose. Since this only works with EL Cap and higher I’m using Flowstate on my external SSD running the Sierra GM Beta. Review is coming from a Mac mini late 2012 running Yosemite with a SSD drive running macOS Sierra GM Beta. Your documents are synced across all devicesīest Way To Bring Out The Writer Within You What does it feel like to write with pure momentum? What comes out when you hurtle deeper and deeper without pausing to tweak or edit?įor those willing to set aside their preconceptions of how to write, they may find a companion in Flowstate: a single law that silences the analytical brain and amplifies a voice of candor. The only way to save your work is by writing until the timer ends.įlowstate is guided by a simple philosophy: flow, then react. If you exit early, or stop typing for longer than five seconds, all progress is lost. It frees the writer to turn on, tune in, and open up.Ĭhoose how long you want to write (5, 15, 30 min), then enter a flow session. Flowstate is a response to the amphetaminic digital age. Many sit down to write and watch hours vanish with nothing to show but a trail of browser tabs. The world is a hive of distractions, multi-tasking, and cultural ADD. SLATE | WIRED | THE NEXT WEB | THE VERGE | MASHABLE | ENGADGET | THE BOSTON GLOBE | HUFFINGTON POST | LIFEHACKER | GQ | BUSTLE | NOFILMSCHOOL | VOX MAGAZINE | DIGTAL TRENDS | MACWORLD | POPSUGAR | APP ADVICE | TECH TIMES | EXAMINER | PSFK | THE DAILY ORANGE | NEWSLEDGE | SPEIGEL VOX: “For the first time in my life, my fingers moved continuously across the keyboard for 15 minutes”īOSTON GLOBE: “Forces you into ‘the zone’ and keeps you there” MASHABLE: “Kept my nose to the grindstone better than any cup of coffee ever could” THE VERGE: “Among the cleanest and best designed note-taking apps I've ever used on iOS”ĭIGITAL TRENDS: “May force you into producing the best writing of your life” GQ: “One of the most powerful mechanisms to spur the imagination” HUFFINGTON POST: “An unparalleled writing experience”
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