Quotes About Flow

Feelings are like breathing, they come in and go out.

Where do I get my ideas? The more pertinent question is…how do I make them stop?

The Master gives himself up to whatever the moment brings. He knows that he is going to die, and he has nothing left to hold on to: no illusions in his mind, no resistances in his body. He doesn't think about his actions; they flow from the core of his being. He holds nothing back from life; therefore he is ready for death, as a man is ready for sleep after a good day's work.

If you want to accord with the Tao, just do your job, then let go.

To try to change outward attitudes and behaviors does very little good in the long run if we fail to examine the basic paradigms from which those attitudes and behaviors flow. This

The Psalmist expressed our conviction well: "Search your own heart with all diligence for out of it flow the issues of life.

But he was dreaming. The way to endure a dream was to flow with it until it ended.

You want to dance with life, not race out ahead of life.

Allowing success is the opposite of forcing success.

We might think that by tossing a ball we initiate an action, but this is merely an arbitrary point in a beginningless line of action.

We are like music. … Music exists … in constant flux and flow. Once the movement stops, the music is no more.

If we are the stream, what is it that experiences the flux, the flow, the change? … [T]here is no particular thing … having an experience. There is experience, but no experiencer. … [P]erception, but no perceiver. … [C]onsciousness, but no self that can be located or identified.

When we fancy ourselves to be a particular thing with a name, we see ourselves as we would a cork in a stream. What we do not realize is that there is only stream. What we fancy as particular is, from the first, only movement, change and flow.

Every atom, every minuscule part of the universe is nothing other than movement and change.

The river of intellectual progress is not defined purely by the steady flow of good ideas begetting better ones; it follows the topography that has been carved out for it by external factors. Sometimes that topography throws up so many barricades that the river backs up for a while.

A single piece of information designed to flow through the entire ecosystem of news will create more value than a piece of information sealed up in a glass box.

IDEAS TRICKLE OUT OF SCIENCE, into the flow of commerce, where they drift into the less predictable eddies of art and philosophy.

Flow is not the singular intensity of focusing "like a laser," as we often say. And it is not the miraculous illumination of a sudden brainstorm. Rather, it is more the feeling of drifting along a stream, being carried in a clear direction, but still tossed in surprising ways by the eddies and whirls of moving water.

But standing in the atrium of Building 99, it's impossible not to think that this space was designed to conjure up a different kind of flow: the collective flow of energized minds forming liquid networks in their mixing spaces and situation rooms. Building 99—like Building 20 before it—is a space that sees information spillover as a feature, not a flaw. It is designed to leak. In this, it shares some core values with the liquid networks of dense cities.

Ideas trickle out of science, into the flow of commerce, where they drift into less protectable eddies of art and philosophy.

From a quality-of-life perspective, psychologists have found that the people who have the most flow in their lives are the happiest people on earth.

Scientists who study human motivation have lately learned that after basic survival needs have been met, the combination of autonomy (the desire to direct your own life), mastery (the desire to learn, explore, and be creative), and purpose (the desire to matter, to contribute to the world) are our most powerful intrinsic drivers—the three things that motivate us most. All three are deeply woven through the fabric of flow.

If you want to trigger flow, the challenge should be 4 percent greater than the skills.

This is a very important point. Flow carries within it delicious possibility. In the state, we are aligned with our core passion and, because of flow's incredible impact on performance, expressing that passion to our utmost. Under normal conditions (playing chess, writing a report), this is empowering.