MetaFilter posts tagged with Flow

Optimizing Your Brain At Work

Vulpyne — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 11:26:28 -0800

Optimizing Your Brain at Work is a pretty fascinating talk at Google by David Rock about managing your brain's internal states and attention, as well as threat responses with the goal of optimizing information processing. It is a Youtube link, and fairly long (~55min). He also mentions The Neuroscience of Mindfulness during the talk, so here is a convenient link to that.

At 1,789,549 mph, that's a hell of a flow ...

WCityMike — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 20:03:03 -0800

"You have no idea how big that is. This is giant on a scale where it's not just that we can't see what's doing it; it's that the entire makeup of the universe as we understand it can't be right if this is happening."

Best Buy Bodhisattva

chunking express — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 14:23:57 -0800

Best Buy Bodhisattva. From the story:

3, 4, 5 minutes into the song. Kyle slips deeper into what is clearly a state of Samadhi; He no longer perceives a space between himself and the game. There is no him. There is no song. There is no guitar. At 6 minutes in, a small crowd has formed, perhaps 15 of us. His sravaka - his disciples - look nervously at us, absorbing the distractions, protecting him a bubble of calm. There is complete silence. Even my son is staring slackjawed, like he does in church during communion, not understanding the content of the ritual but understanding the tone and sacredness of the space. At just over 6 minutes, the song becomes even more ludicrous. While actually playing it will ever remain for me an uncrossable gap, I am enough a student of the form to recognize the crux. He is Lance Armstrong approaching the bottom of Alpe D'Huez: Will he attack? Kyle has yet to use the Star Power crutch he has carried throughout his meditation.

via Kottke.

spooky fluids!

sergeant sandwich — Wed, 10 May 2006 15:14:04 -0800

Order from chaos! Fill a cylindrical bucket with water and make it so the bottom can spin. At certain speeds, stable regular polygonal shapes will spontaneously form at the turbulent surface of the water. See the video. [2.6MB avi] [via last week's PRL]

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

loquacious — Wed, 22 Mar 2006 23:24:07 -0800

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi: Author of the excellent book "Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience" which investigates the phenomenon of the happiness of doing, how the balance between stress/anxiety and slack/boredom effect experience and happiness, and how we can all use it to our advantage.

Flow in Games

MetaMonkey — Sun, 12 Mar 2006 21:21:20 -0800

Flow in Games: a Jenova Chen MFA thesis
'This site is currently focused on Jenova's MFA thesis research. It is about inventing new methodologies usable by the frontline game designers to help realizing dynamic flow experiences for different individuals and more importantly for potential gamers who are still out of the current video game market.'
Try the experimental game fl0w (instructions, more info, discussion). Learn more about the thesis methodology, or take a look at some further reading. [warning: site appears to be under development somewhat] (see also)

Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience

y2karl — Fri, 10 Oct 2003 13:02:15 -0800

A certain psychologist of Hungarian extraction, Mihaly Csikszentimihaly--sounds like stoned sex-crazed muppet: Me High-ee! Chicks sent me highee!--began by monitoring the activities and emotional states of talented adolescent artists with what became known as experience sampling forms, now available in a new, improved hi tech version. He found people reported the greatest satisfaction when actively involved in a challenging task that stretches abilities, to the extent that time, space, and self-awareness become secondary to the accomplishment of the task. He wrote a book about it, Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, which flew off the shelves in the Self Help sections of bookstores everywhere--even though there were no easy steps nor Idiots Guide To... included beyond an academic enunciation of the parameters involved: the zone of experience in which Flow existed. [More Within]

apollonia6 — Sun, 10 Mar 2002 10:36:22 -0800

FLOW is a spiffy flash-animated music video thingamabob, if you're into that kinda thing. Very clickable.