Flow and Deliberate Practice in Athletics and Academics

When Should We Aim For These States?

The “flow state,” or “being in the zone,” or, perhaps in today’s lingo, being “locked in,” is like an ethereal realm we all hope to gain access to every once in a while. We could argue that Steph Curry’s late game heroics in the Gold Medal Basketball match in the 2024 Olympic Games is a recent example of an athlete reaching flow. Flow is a state of peak performance where things seem effortless. It’s when a batter describes seeing every pitch as big as a balloon or when a shooter can’t miss no matter how many defenders stand between them and the basket.

We all want to fall into flow in our own lives. Luckily, there are preconditions for flow that we can set up to make this all the more likely. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi was the first to conceptualize flow in an academic way. I’ll let him describe it here.

But what this essay is focused on is distinguishing flow from another important state of mind for our scholarly and athletic endeavors: deliberate practice.

Deliberate practice was coined by Anders Ericsson in his quest to understand what separates expert performers from novices in all realms of endeavor. Again, he describes it better than I do, but essentially it comes down to this: practice should be difficult.

This is the essential difference between flow and deliberate practice: flow is an experience of effortlessness, deliberate practice is an experience of intense effort.

Now, why is this important? Well, Dr. Cal Newport brought up this distinction on a recent episode of the Huberman Lab Podcast. Newport is most well-known for his concept of Deep Work, a topic I will talk in length about at some point. In this podcast, he explains that many fans of deep work attempt to connect it to flow, while he believes it is much more of a deliberate practice exercise.

Newport and Huberman come to an agreement that flow is a performance state, while deliberate practice is, well, a practice state.

So what are the ramifications for this distinction in athletic and academic life?

First, if we’re trying to improve our skills, it should be hard. We need to, as Huberman mentions, give a reason for neuroplasticity to happen. We grow stronger and bigger in the gym by giving the muscle a reason to grow — the same should be true skill wise.

So if your sport involves a specific skill, don’t just take the routine repetitions. Find a way to challenge yourself at the edge of your capabilities.

Now what about in the classroom? Here’s where I believe the deliberate practice state is so underutilized: Studying.

We’ve all done it. Highlighting and annotating and re-reading mindlessly and pretending like we’re being productive. But the scientific consensus is that none of that is very helpful. What is helpful is the hard things. Active recall, teaching it back to someone else, finding a way to actually test what you know.

The great thing is that this way of studying saves so much time. It’s incredibly efficient. But it’s much harder to sit down and attempt to recall information you don’t know than it is to simply highlight and underline and hope for the best.

So, our job is to cultivate the deliberate practice mindset when we are in practice mode, whether that’s studying or working on our jumper. So where does flow come in?

Well, flow is a little harder to intentionally cultivate. But, the hope is that it shows up when we’re performing. On the field, we trust that our deliberate practice time has been sufficient to provide us the skills we need. We don’t attempt to consciously control every movement or pay incredible attention to every detail like we might in practice. Essentially, we let go and trust our training.

In the classroom, flow may be a little harder to find. Perhaps on a test, essay, or presentation, we can let go and trust our training, too. If we’ve truly mastered the material through difficult studying, we’ll have a better shot at effortlessly accessing what we need when it matters.

In summary, think of flow and deliberate practice as mental states that inform one another. We want to feel intensity and effort in our practice and studying so we can access the state of effortless flow during our tests, athletic or academic.

So next time you sit down to study or stand up to practice, make an effort to make an effort. And when the time comes, trust your training, and you may find yourself performing at your best.