A flow state is the experience of being “in the zone” and fully immersed
in an activity. Scientists have tried to quantify this feeling. They found that
to achieve a state of flow, a task must be roughly 4
percent beyond your
current ability. In real life it’s typically not feasible to quantify the difficulty
of an action in this way, but the core idea of the Goldilocks Rule remains:
working on challenges of just manageable difficulty—something on the
perimeter of your ability—seems crucial for maintaining motivation.
Improvement requires a delicate balance.
You need to regularly search
for challenges that push you to your edge while continuing to make enough
progress to stay motivated. Behaviors need
to remain novel in order for
them to stay attractive and satisfying. Without variety, we get bored. And
boredom is perhaps the greatest villain on the quest for self-improvement.
