What is flow, and how do you get back into it?

By the Make It Happen Day team. Updated October 3, 2026.

Flow is a state of absorbed, effortless focus on something that matters to you. Researchers have linked it with better performance, though the evidence comes mostly from sport and gaming and cannot yet explain why (Harris et al., 2021).

What is flow?

Researchers describe flow as a peak experiential state in which people report focused concentration, effortless performance and enhanced enjoyment (Harris et al., 2021). Most people have felt it: an afternoon that disappears because you were completely inside the work.

Does flow improve performance?

A meta-analysis pooling 22 studies found a medium-sized positive relationship between flow and performance (r = 0.31, 95% confidence interval 0.24 to 0.38) (Harris et al., 2021). The studies covered sport and gaming tasks. The relationship is a correlation, and the authors report that no proposed explanation has convincing evidence. Read it as a promising signal, not a promise.

Why is flow hard to find when you are busy?

Attention drifts. In a phone-based study of 2,250 volunteers, people's minds were wandering 46.9% of the time, and that typically made them less happy (Harvard Gazette, 2010).

“A human mind is a wandering mind, and a wandering mind is an unhappy mind.”

Interruptions add a second cost. In a controlled experiment, interrupted people finished their tasks in less time with no difference in quality, but reported more stress, frustration, time pressure and effort (Mark et al., 2008). That was an email task in a laboratory, so it does not measure flow itself.

Which ideas help, and what do we actually know?

Where do you start?

These are our suggestions, drawn from the ideas above. They are not findings from the studies.

1. Choose one thing that matters this week.
2. Set aside a block of time for it, and tell people you are unavailable.
3. Remove one recurring interruption, such as a notification you do not need.
4. When the block ends, write down the next step, so tomorrow starts where today stopped.
5. Notice what helped and what did not, then change one thing. Small steps, repeated, add up.

What this page cannot tell you

It cannot tell you that any of this will work for you, or diagnose why you feel stuck. It is general information from published research, not therapy or medical care. If you are struggling, please speak with a qualified professional.

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