Flow States in the Digital AI Age – An Introduction
It started with a piano—and a piece of software that changed everything.
Andrew Chey couldn’t believe his eyes when his twelve-year-old daughter, Sarah, who usually squirmed through her daily practice, sat spellbound at the keyboard for three solid hours. The catalyst? A new piano practice app that seemed to read her mind, serving up pieces that kept her perfectly balanced between boredom and frustration.
Sarah had stumbled into what psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, the father of flow theory, described as a state of full immersion—where effort meets ease, and time dissolves. Athletes call it the zone, musicians feel one with their instrument. As Steven Kotler’s research on extreme sports athletes demonstrates, it’s that elusive space where challenge meets skill, leading to peak performance and deep satisfaction