There are eight characteristics of flow:
- You have clear goals and are receiving immediate feedback within the activity.
- There are many opportunities for decisive action.
- Awareness and action merge.
- You focus on the task at hand.
- You feel in control of your actions.
- Awareness of self disappears during the task and feels stronger following task completion.
- The concept of time has no meaning.
- The experience is autotelic.
When I conducted my research, I interviewed 16 firefighters: eight men and eight women who had at least seven years of experience in the fire service. After explaining the definition of flow, each individual firefighter lit up in recognition of the concept. He or she may have referred to the flow state as something else (for example, “bringing my A-game” or “being in the zone”), but he or she knew the feeling to which I was referring. This section describes the characteristics...