Another factor, which is part of the flow experience, is something called transient hypofrontality. What this complicated expression means is simply that for a short time (transient) your preFRONTal cortex is less (hypo) active.The prefrontal cortex is part of the neocortex, which, in turn, is the “youngest” part of our brain, evolutionary speaking. This is where all complex thinking happens (like you crunching numbers to decide which house you want to buy), and it’s what allows us to think rationally about our feelings and be self-aware.

Transient Hypofrontality

The US military trained snipers in flow twice as fast as normal. McKinsey established that executives in flow are five times more effective than their steady-state peers. 
This is exactly what 150 years of flow research has revealed; this is what the recent revolution in action and adventure sports clearly demonstrates, flow brings out the very best in us— and for certain, it’s that very best we’ll need to create a world of abundance.

The Bottomline

Every time someone accomplishes something we think is impossible, our definition of that word changes. 
Great achievements inspire us to go beyond them and achieve even more, and that’s what makes flow so important. Without it, humans would stop pushing the boundaries of performance.

Impossible Is So Yesterday

Five strong chemicals are released, all at once, when you’re in flow:<ul><li>Dopamine, which gets you excited about new ideas, while helping you filter what’s important from the noise.</li><li>Norepinephrine, which increases your heartbeat, blood sugar and breathing speed, to give you energy and attention to the task at hand.</li><li>Anandamide, which works a little bit like cannabis, thus getting your brain to make more new connections and be creative.</li><li>Endorphins, which absolves you from physical pain, because it’s 100 times stronger than morphine.</li><li>Serotonin, which causes the glowing feeling after you achieve a goal.</li></ul>

The Flow High

Bannister was the first man to run a mile in under 4 minutes. Before he accomplished this in 1954, for decades people had thought a 4 minute mile simply wasn’t possible. 
However, once he did, someone else did it just two months after him. His record was broken again twice within the next five years and ten years later a high school student ran a 4 minute mile.

Roger Bannister Effect

Flow appears near the emotional midpoint between boredom and anxiety, in what scientists call the flow channel— the spot where the task is hard enough to make us stretch but not hard enough to make us snap.
How hard is that? Answers vary, but the general thinking is about 4 percent. That’s it. That’s the sweet spot. If you want to trigger flow, the challenge should be 4 percent greater than the skills.

The Midpoint

Another part that slows down during flow is your orientation adjustment area, the part of the brain that lets you assess your position in the world, relative to other objects around you.
This is what causes surfers to feel “as if they’re one with the wave” or writers to just “think their words onto the paper.”

Orientation Adjustment Area

Ten core components that indicate the Flow state:
<ul>
<li>Clear goals</li>
<li>Concentration</li>
<li>A loss of self consciousness</li>
<li>Distorted sense of time</li>
<li>Direct and immediate feedback</li>
<li>Balance between ability level and challenge</li>
<li>A sense of personal control over the situation</li>
<li>Intrinsically rewarding so action is effortless</li>
<li>Lack of awareness of bodily needs</li>
<li>Absorption, narrowing of awareness down to the activity.</li>
</ul>

The Core Components

<ul>
<li>As flow requires focus, one of the first changes suggested by experts was the removal of cubicle farms, those open office plans that permit constant interruption.</li>
<li>Studies have shown that each time a flow state is disrupted it takes fifteen minutes to get back into flow, if you can get back at all.</li>
<li>A shy man need only cross the room to say hello to an attractive woman to trigger this rush.</li>
</ul>

Hacking Flow

Three important points to help you perform better:
<ul>
<li>When you’re in flow, five neurochemicals are released simultaneously.</li>
<li>For flow to happen, some parts of your brain must be switched off, not on.</li>
<li>What we think is possible changes every time we see a new achievement, which is why flow is so important.</li>
</ul>

Flow: Performing Like Superman

Most people live in a very restricted circle of their potential being. They make use of a very small portion of their possible consciousness, and of their soul’s resources in general, much like a man who, out of his whole organism, should get into a habit of using and moving only his little finger.

Using years of research and interviews with adventure sports athletes, the New York Times best-selling author of Abundance and A Small, Fury Prayer attempts to unlock the secrets to ultimate human performance and the state of consciousness called “flow." 25,000 first printing.

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Books

An exploration of how extreme athletes break the limits of ultimate human performance and what we can learn from their mastery of the state of consciousness known as "flow" In this groundbreaking book, New York Times-bestselling author Steven Kotler decodes the mystery of ultimate human performance. Drawing on over a decade of research and first-hand interviews with dozens of top action and adventure sports athletes such as big-wave legend Laird Hamilton, big-mountain snowboarder Jeremy Jones, and skateboarding pioneer Danny Way, Kotler explores the frontier science of "flow," an optimal state of consciousness where we perform and feel our best.Building a bridge between the extreme and the mainstream, The Rise of Superman explains how these athletes are using flow to do the impossible and how we can use this information to radically accelerate our performance in our own lives. At its core, this is a book about profound possibility, what is actually possible for our species, and where--if anywhere--our limits lie.

The Midpoint

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