I think the title suggests larger questions. What is Flow? How many different kinds of flow states are there? To what extent are they equal?

I recently listened to "Your Brain: Who's in Control?" [1], a PBS documentary that looked at a musician in an MRI rapping a memorized piece vs an ad-hoc rap. They found the musician's prefrontal cortex was inhibited when doing the ad-hoc exercise. The prefrontal cortex is used as a "filter" center, to predict and evaluate the potential outcome of actions and basically to tell you when something is a bad idea.

When developers are in flow, and they are creating brand new code - do their prefrontal cortex'es also become inhibited? Is that the same kind of flow state?

I believe there are multiple types of flow state:

- gardening/choirs, time drops away and you lose yourself in the trimming, edging and mundane gardening tasks

- gaming, when I was younger and after an approx 16 hour binge of Civilization, my mind was still in the game. I was asleep and was still thinking in-game, solving problems, and wondering "where is the end turn button." Being in that level of flow state, the thoughts of 'end turn', 'move unit' - just occurred, my mind's connection to the game through my body was erased, the motor movements to click, hotkeys, all gone from conscious thought and just automatic.

- music: Type (A) - playing a well known piece, it just happens. Type (B) Improv, jazz musicians do this all the time for hours on end.

- biking/exercise: after a few hours, a sense of time can stop and everything becomes automatic.

- driving: actions to signal, brake, accelerate require no thought; your mind says "speed up" and the body's reaction is automatic and requires virtually no thought. The interface between you and the car disappears, you no longer think "press my foot down" - you only think "accelerate"

- reading: a best example of this I recall was being younger and reading Lords of the Rings. Hours melted away, I experienced complete immersion in the story.

- math homework: I recall calculus homework sessions that took 3-4 hours, and did not feel nearly as long. After a while would just get lost in the problems and lose time.

I think all of these are flow states. I don't think they are all exactly the same. Which is all to say, I suspect there is a lot more to 'flow' state than we think, there are likely multiple facets which are different on their own. Further, individual variation could have a significant impact. Would someone who is ADHD experience the same flow states in the same ways?

Another aspect, common & routine actions get "burned into" our neural circuitry. A persons morning routine is an example, the actions for 'burned-in' things no longer require much if any thought at all to do. You stop thinking "what's next" and just instead follow a routine and pattern that needs no decision making. It takes time and repetition to achieve this. This burn-in I feel is likely super related to 'flow'.

For neural burn-in, I wonder if it's like a thru-hiker. EG: Routine aspects like foot placement and moving the trekking poles become burned in - leaving more space in the conscious for other activities. Yet, I know that things like "watching out for Bears" is not in the conscious space, but very active! I recall some times of seeing Bears almost immediately without realizing I was scanning for them so much. Very much like a high importance CPU interrupt firing, but one that I would have thought would have been a more active process rather than a background process.

All in all, a super interesting area ripe for a lot more research. Our current understanding of flow feels like we now just past the "peak of 'mount stupid' (AKA Child's Hill)" [2] in the dunning-kruger effect, and just realized that we know very little about flow at all.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yQ6VOOd73MA

[2] https://www.theoptimumdrive.com/f1-blog-entries/2020/6/8/exp...