What is Flow

A state of consciousness where a person is completely immersed in the present moment while doing something that he/she loves; this state merges optimal experience with a challenge-skill balance and provides multiple benefits to well-being and personal development.

Flow is the complete immersion of the player into the gameplay.

Csikszentmihalyi (1996) defines flow as the timeless and total involvement of individuals to engage in activities.

The state of getting fully immersed at work.

state occurring during internet navigation which is intrinsically enjoyable, accompanied by loss of self-consciousness, self-reinforcing and leads to a sense of playfulness.

The sense of heightened immersion which results in extremely high performance of tasks. Within software applications, this results from changing elements of an in-app task from requiring working memory to automation, thereby decreasing overall cognitive load.

This state was defined as absolute absorption in an action and included four elements namely time distortion, exploratory behavior, sense of concentration, and playfulness, second, all these four elements were inter-correlated and interchangeable.

Holistic emotion that one feels when he/she becomes wholly absorbed in the job.

It is defined as the increase or decrease in the unit time interval in stocks and denoted by f( t ).

A mental state reached when an individual is completely immersed in an activity and is in a maximum state of concentration, full commitment, and satisfaction in its accomplishment (Csíkszentmihályi, 1975).

In modern psychology, flow represents an “ideal mental state” that allows free-flowing ideas and a sense of accomplishment. In 1990, Csikszentmihalyi suggested that seeking this “ideal mental state” would create better results.

A state of being involved, being ‘in-the-moment’. Flow is achieved at the organizational level when employees feel free to interact, adapt, learn, and evolve to address environmental changes or threats. Flow in organizations can be achieved through the interconnectivity of the three helixes of complexity thinking, distributed leadership, and team science: The Triple Helix of Flow.

The immersive feeling of being focused in an activity, with a high level of pleasure and fulfillment.

a state of complete engagement with a task, which is often associated with a focus on the task itself and the loss of the sense of space and time.

It is defined as the increase or decrease in the unit time interval in stocks and denoted by f ( t ).

A state of intense engagement in an academic task such that students fail to notice the passing of time or even fatigue.

A state of consciousness in which people are so involved in an activity that they lose sense of time, place, and any negative cognitive thought.

Flow is a theory on motivation (Csikszentmihalyi, 1991). It describes a sense of control, deep engagement, and exhilaration when one is involved in an optimal experience.

Active engagement including motivation and attention.

The mental state in which practitioners enter when they take part in an activity that they deem engaging, creating a mental state which elicits deep concentration.

State occurring during internet navigation which is intrinsically enjoyable, accompanied by loss of self-consciousness, self-reinforcing and leads to a sense of playfulness.

A theory of engagement which describes a state of deep concentration while the participant(s) in an activity are in a creative and rewarding state of mind.

Mental state of users who are completely involved in the process of an activity.

A sequence of packets typically from the same application between a given source to a specific destination.

It is a positive, complex and highly structured state of deep involvement, absorption, and enjoyment. The basic feature of this experience is a dynamic equilibrium perceived between high environmental action opportunities (challenges) and adequate personal resources in facing them (skills). Additional characteristics are deep concentration, clear rules and unambiguous feedback from the task at hand, loss of reflective self-consciousness, control of one’s actions and environment, alteration of temporal experience, and intrinsic motivation.

Refers to the progressive achievement of tasks along a value stream so that a product proceeds from design to launch, order to delivery, and raw materials into the hands of the customer with no stoppages, scrap, or backflows ( Womack & Jones, 1997 ).

It is defined as the increase or decrease in the unit time interval in stocks and denoted by f ( t ).

The mental state achieved with the balance of the mental states of anxiety and boredom in which a person may be best suited to perform a task.

A state of being when the challenge of the task is suitably matched with the skill level of the individual. Being in a flow state means that perceptions of reality are distorted and the individual has focused most attention to the task at hand.

A state of mind where the student is fully engaged in the activity, which must be fun and reasonably demanding. The key is that almost any task or work can be transformed into a flow experience by creating opportunities for feedback and setting achievable goals within the task.

a directed relationship that transmits events from a source activity to a sink activity.

The extent to which a person’s fantasies and phantasies balance (i.e. their cognitions are consonant) to the point they lose track of time because they feel they are achiving what they want to achieve.

A state of immersion in an activity in which a person feels a heightened sense of focus and involvement.

A state that is achieved when the task or challenge to be overcome is interesting for the person who performs it and has nothing to do with other external objectives.

In terms of gaming, flow is a state of fulfillment where the player feels the game is in optimal conditions for his own level of experience, not too difficult nor too easy, increasing the loyalty and sense of personal achievement. There is an entire theory constructed around explaining this concept, it is not only limited to the field of games, any human activity can be described in terms of passion and boringness, concepts that are the pillars of this construct.

The state of being fully engrossed in an activity; deep concentration.

Flow is an intrinsically motivated, optimal enjoyable mental state leading to increased attention, cognitive involvement, and a feeling of fun and escapism.

It is defined as the increase or decrease in the unit time interval in stocks and denoted by f ( t ).

or rate is the amount of change in a variable over time. Flow represents the change in the status of a variable over a specified time unit.

Flow is the state of optimal happiness which people get when they are actively participating in tasks. Csikszentmihalyi (1992) identifies “concentration on the activity” and “involvement in the activity” as two characteristics of the flow experience.

The sense of optimal experience created with the feelings of challenge, telepresence, involvement with the activity, arousal, and time distortion.

An intense, ego-free, hyper-focused state of attention brought about by compelling activities at the appropriate challenge level.

Optimal experience of an activity. Flow is used to describe a state of complete concentration, during which all senses are focused on the activity performed.

The way resources or people in a process move from the first step to the last.

It is defined as the increase or decrease in the unit time interval in stocks and denoted by f ( t ).

The founder of the discipline referred to as “Positive Psychology,” Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi coined the phrase “flow” to describe the state of becoming so absorbed in the creativity of the work we are doing that we lose track of time, and all distractions fade into the background. This concept of “flow” contributes to the study’s model because it supports strong best practices such as the incorporation of clear goals, detailed feedback, and a balance between challenges and skills. This is the state of engagement the study will strive to create; when learning becomes the end in itself ( Csikszentmihalyi, 2000 ; Sami & Csikszentmihalyi, 2012 ).

The state of being fully engrossed in an activity.

The frame of mind experienced when an activity is neither boring nor overly challenging.

Concept developed by Csikszentmihalyi (1990). “The mental state of operation in which the person is fully immersed in what he or she is doing.” Flow is the feeling of complete and energized focus in an activity, with a high level of enjoyment and fulfillment. (Wikipedia, 2007a)