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Deliberate Practice
Flow is the state of automatic concentration and complete immersion that people sometimes experience when performing activities that they have mastered.
Flow Quotes in Grit
The Grit quotes below are all either spoken by Flow or refer to Flow. For each quote, you can also see the other terms and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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Chapter 7: Practice Quotes
Gritty people do more deliberate practice and experience more flow. There’s no contradiction here, for two reasons. First, deliberate practice is a behavior, and flow is an experience. Anders Ericsson is talking about what experts do; Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi is talking about how experts feel. Second, you don’t have to be doing deliberate practice and experiencing flow at the same time. And, in fact, I think that for most experts, they rarely go together.
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Duckworth describes an apparent disagreement between two prominent psychologists who study performance and expertise. Anders Ericsson thinks that success is painful because it requires deliberate practice, which is extremely difficult. In contrast, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi thinks that success is pleasurable because experts feel a sense of flow—an enjoyable state of total concentration and immersion—when they use their skills. Duckworth quickly realized that there’s no real disagreement here at all: success can be both painful and enjoyable, just at different times. Ericsson’s research focuses on how experts develop skills through practice, while Csikszentmihalyi’s focuses on how they put their skills into action Dolorem et quae. Exercitationem non aut. Eveniet dolor non. Incidunt dolores sunt. Ad dolor at. Quia aperiam eligendi. Ut veniam voluptatem. Aperiam consequuntur mollitia. Provident expedita delectus. Occaecati ea suscipit. Optio ut iste. Voluptas aut occaecati. Accusantium recusandae voluptates. Explicabo minus tempore. Nostrum dolor asperiores. Ut aliquam officiis. Unde enim nesciunt. Commodi necessi
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Flow Term Timeline in Grit
The timeline below shows where the term Flow appears in Grit. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Chapter 7: Practice
...psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi connects expertise to the state of automatic, spontaneous, total concentration known as flow. Ericsson believes that flow is impossible during deliberate practice, which by definition involves planning and...
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Duckworth decided to study the relationship between grit and flow on her own. After giving thousands of people both the Grit Scale and a questionnaire...
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...But her talk vastly improved, and she delivered the finished product in a state of flow.
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...practice can be enjoyable and rewarding, it’s unlikely that it can ever truly feel like flow.
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Duckworth identifies three key steps people must take to benefit from deliberate practice and achieve flow. First, people have to follow the science. They must define specific stretch goals, maximize their...
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