Why Keep a Primary Flow Activity?

Steven Kotler calls a primary flow activity the thing a person has done since childhood and still gets lost in. Skiing is his. About 90 percent of the time he skis, he enters flow. The shared version shows up as group flow with an editor he has worked with for 25 years, or as a conversation where an hour disappears.

Adults drop the activity when a job and a family arrive, and quitting it is the single worst thing they can do for focus. Flow is a trainable focusing skill, different from meditation but the same kind of skill. A Sunday in flow makes flow easier at work on Tuesday, and the activity lowers the anxiety that blocks it. Two to four hours a week is about what it takes. In real burnout, doubling down on the activity is the way back, because flow overwrites burnout.