This clip is fascinating because psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, the pioneer of research on flow, challenges one of the fundamental premises of learning theory.
The Hole In Conventional Wisdom on Learning
It is almost a truism that when we learn, it's always good to take a step back and reflect on both our performance and our ourselves.
Csikszentmihalyi disagrees... at least in part.
New Truth: Some Types of Metacognition Take You Out of Flow
Here is his big point:
“One of the biggest disruptions of flow is when you evaluate your performance yourself and worry about what other people think about you... The moment you say, 'Oh my gosh, I'm not doing this too well,' that makes it very hard actually to concentrate on the activity after that.”
He then contrasts self-evaluation to what you focus on while in flow:
You pay attention to the performance, and you are trying to do it as well as possible.
To make the point concrete, he gives two different reactions a surgeon could have if something …
