I think it's more convincing if you point out that the reason meditation is harder is the effort involved in pointing your thoughts back towards your breath or

I think it's more convincing if you point out that the reason meditation is harder is the effort involved in pointing your thoughts back towards your breath or something else very simple. Flow is the state where it is no longer a struggle to control your attention. What you are paying attention to can require a very active mind. Mindfulness meditation involves practice at directing your attention, your focus is on meta-cognition. Your breath is often chosen because it requires no attention. It's boring. That makes it good practice at discarding all the other thoughts that come up and focusing your attention back where you want it to be. Sure, meditation is a broad term but this is at the core of the vast majority of what's called meditation. Some ideas involve meditation with a goal (considered attainable or just an asymptotic ideal at the end of the direction of improvement) of achieving a state like flow in this practice, so you no longer struggle to maintain your attention on nothing. Apparently extremely serene and calm and peaceful. Sounds wonderful. Flow is different from meditation, to paraphrase what ramblerman said in another comment: meditation is an exercise of directing attention. Being good at that can help you attain "flow" more easily in other activities. I know I've found meditation to seem to be good practice for when I want to focus my attention deeply.