"Flow" is a modern take on a very old idea. Atheletes and martial artists before that have been using various methods to enter this state. Josh Waitzkin figure

"Flow" is a modern take on a very old idea. Atheletes and martial artists before that have been using various methods to enter this state. Josh Waitzkin figured out a method for consistently triggering flow in his book, _Art of Learning_. The structure of his method depends on simple things, mainly behavioral conditioning. The method works. I also want to note, he has used it for both primarily mental tasks (chess) as well as physical (competitive push-hands). One last thing: Deepak Chopra produced a game specifically designed to teach someone to enter the state of mindfulness (which, when applied to challenging tasks, gets you flow). It is called "Journey into the Wild Divine". It uses a USB sensor stuck on your finger to measure heart-rate variability, among other things. You can only advance through parts of the game when you can demonstrate the ability to consciously relax and stabilize your heart rate at will. It's a game specifically to teach flow, not just to reward or punish the secondary effects of flow.