{"id":38026,"date":"2021-06-10T15:10:25","date_gmt":"2021-06-10T19:10:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/?p=38026"},"modified":"2021-06-14T10:15:35","modified_gmt":"2021-06-14T14:15:35","slug":"flow-activities","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/flow-activities\/","title":{"rendered":"Flow Activities: How They Make You Complex"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

What is a flow activity? How can engaging in flow activities make you more complex? What are the four categories of flow-producing activities?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are four categories of flow activities: aleatory, mimicry, vertigo, and competition-centered. Partaking in these activities will help your consciousness become more complex in many ways.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Continue reading to learn about flow activities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

Activities That Promote Flow<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Though you can experience flow<\/a> unexpectedly, you\u2019re most likely to experience it when you deliberately take part in certain flow activities and possess the skills or traits necessary to facilitate it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many activities have been developed around helping participants and audiences achieve flow. Games, sports, religious rituals, and art are examples. Regardless of the activity, every flow experience<\/a> Csikszentmihalyi studied helped people become more complex through:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

  1. Developing a new sense of self<\/li>
  2. Achieving a specific goal<\/li>
  3. Improving performance of the activity<\/li>
  4. Experiencing a new reality<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

    Your consciousness becomes more complex doing activities in several stages. When engaging with an activity, you enter and exit a flow state<\/a> depending on whether you\u2019ve reached your current goal, and you never stay in the same state for long. The stages are:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    1. Flow 1. <\/strong>You start an activity and immediately have to master certain skills to do it well. For example, if you\u2019re learning to play tennis, just learning how to hit the ball over the net will likely occupy your time at first. However, it\u2019s a concrete goal with clear feedback that you\u2019ll soon achieve. <\/li>
    2. Boredom or Anxiety.<\/strong> Once you\u2019ve achieved your goal, what used to be difficult is now easy. In the tennis example, hitting a ball over the net becomes too easy, causing you to be bored and exit flow. Or you may face an opponent who is more skilled, making you feel anxious and exiting flow.<\/li>
    3. Flow 2. <\/strong>Flow 2 occurs when you leave your anxious or bored state by working toward new goals. In the tennis example, you might practice a new skill, such as hitting the ball toward the outer edge of your opponent\u2019s court. Once you\u2019ve achieved these goals, you may slip back into Boredom or Anxiety, at which point you\u2019ll have to develop new goals. <\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

      Each time you return to flow to pursue a new goal, you\u2019ve become a more complex person with new skills that enable you to take on greater challenges. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

      Categories of Flow-Producing Games and Activities<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

      There are four categories of games and activities; each offers optimal experiences for different reasons:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

      1. Aleatory. <\/strong>These activities center on random chance. Winning these games can provide a sense of power or provide a plan of action. For example, the Chinese try to divine the future based on the patterns of dropped sticks. Trying to understand the present and future is a strategy for ordering consciousness. Even winning a game like bingo is fun because its structure makes the odds feel in your favor despite the random gameplay.<\/li>
      2. Mimicry. <\/strong>Mimicry is any activity that creates an alternate reality using disguise or fantasy. Art forms, such as dance and theater, fall in this category. For example, members of the Yaqui Indian tribe of Mexico dressed as deer\u2014their prey\u2014in ceremonies because it made them feel kinship with the animals. <\/li>
      3. Vertigo. <\/strong>This category includes activities that directly modify your perception, such as spinning or doing drugs. It\u2019s the most direct way to reorder consciousness, and though it might make you think you\u2019ve expanded your consciousness, this isn\u2019t possible\u2014you can\u2019t expand consciousness; you can only reorder it, which might give you the impression you\u2019ve expanded it.<\/li>
      4. Competition-centered. <\/strong>The Latin root of the word competition means, \u201cseeking together.\u201d In competitive activities, you feel most satisfied when your skills are well-matched with those of your opponent, and you\u2019re able to push yourself<\/a> to win. If you have more skills than your opponent, winning is easy and boring. If you aren\u2019t as skilled, competition can make you feel anxious because you\u2019d like to win, but you can tell you don\u2019t have the skills.<\/li><\/ol>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

        What is a flow activity? How can engaging in flow activities make you more complex? What are the four categories of flow-producing activities? There are four categories of flow activities: aleatory, mimicry, vertigo, and competition-centered. Partaking in these activities will help your consciousness become more complex in many ways. Continue reading to learn about flow activities.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":38048,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,160],"tags":[377],"class_list":["post-38026","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-psychology","category-science","tag-flow","","tg-column-two"],"yoast_head":"\nFlow Activities: How They Make You Complex - Shortform Books<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"According to Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, the author of Flow, flow activities enrich your sense of self and make your consciousness more complex.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/flow-activities\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Flow Activities: How They Make You Complex\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"According to Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, the author of Flow, flow activities enrich your sense of self and make your consciousness more complex.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/flow-activities\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Shortform Books\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2021-06-10T19:10:25+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2021-06-14T14:15:35+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/s3.amazonaws.com\/wordpress.shortform.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/06\/shadow-of-dancer.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"980\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"563\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Hannah Aster\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Hannah Aster\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"3 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/flow-activities\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/flow-activities\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Hannah Aster\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/f39f52830e4f7039a16e45d12354542f\"},\"headline\":\"Flow Activities: How They Make You Complex\",\"datePublished\":\"2021-06-10T19:10:25+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2021-06-14T14:15:35+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/flow-activities\/\"},\"wordCount\":689,\"commentCount\":0,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/#organization\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/flow-activities\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/06\/shadow-of-dancer.jpg\",\"keywords\":[\"Flow\"],\"articleSection\":[\"Psychology\",\"Science\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/flow-activities\/#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/flow-activities\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/flow-activities\/\",\"name\":\"Flow Activities: How They Make You Complex - 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