Being in the groove, in the zone — finding “flow.” The feeling of being so engrossed in an activity that time slips away.
States of flow can lead to productive work sessions or explain your compulsion to endlessly scroll through social media. For the most part, they’re a good thing: People like being in flow states, says David Melnikoff, a productivity expert and Stanford Graduate School of Business assistant professor of organizational behavior.
Conventional wisdom dating back to the term’s establishment in the 1970s — by a psychologist named Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi — says that flow comes from finding a challenge that you can totally immerse yourself in. Melnikoff’s research counters that idea: If you want to be highly productive, you only need to take an uncertain situation and figure out how to exert some control over it, he says.
Think about a person playing a slot machine for hours, says Melnikoff. You might not …