How to find your flow state when you’ve lost it

Diane Allen had been concertmaster of the Central Oregon Symphony Orchestra for 15 years. She was the lead violinist, second in command to the conductor, and she knew her performance had a ripple effect: “If I'm having a great day, that's going to ripple out throughout the orchestra. If I'm having a bad day, that's gonna ripple out.” The violin was everything—she taught students all day, rehearsed every evening, and played three shows over a weekend. Then one night, she sat down, gave the cue for the music to start, and couldn't move. Her elbows froze. She managed to keep playing, but something had broken. “I was just playing the notes. I could not feel the music.” That terrifying feeling—playing without emotion, without flow—marked the beginning of a midlife unraveling.

What flow is and why it matters

Flow is the state of complete absorption in a challenging task, where time disappears and self-consciousness vanishes. Richard Husky, a cognitive scientist at UC Davis who studies flow in the brain, defines it as an optimal experience with five characteristics: losing track of time, losing a sense of self, feeling in control, not feeling physically or mentally taxed in the moment, and experiencing euphoria. The term was coined by psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi in 1975, who described it as being “carried by the flow” like water.