1. Set clear goals

Knowing what you want to accomplish is the first key to experiencing flow. You may experience flow when simply running for pleasure. However, having more concrete goals, such as running a predetermined distance at a specific pace is more likely to result in flow. The quantitative nature of a concrete goal allows you to more easily measure performance. Knowing you’re on the path to achieving your goal sets the stage for all the flow components that follow.

It’s also important to have long-term, short-term and even moment-by-moment goals. Long-term goals provide needed directions on an epic journey. These directions can include a season-long training plan that successfully alternates hard and easy days, nutritional planning, supplementary exercises, and a tapering phase that helps you arrive at the starting line fit and fresh. Without a long-term vision directing your training, the odds of injury or staleness greatly increase. Setting long-term goals also helps you establish realistic expectations for progression over a series of months and years.

Short-term goals are easier to bite off and dictate your daily training. Research in motivation suggests that human beings are more likely to persevere toward larger, more abstract goals when smaller, incremental goals are present along the way. If the dream is to qualify for the Boston Marathon, then running a successful workout will increase your motivation to keep training hard enough to make it to the starting line in Hopkinton. With concrete goals in mind, a bad run or a bad week is much less likely to deter you in your long-term quest.

Having a moment-by-moment awareness of your goals makes them more pliable and can better fuel your motivation. These goals can be immediate (e.g., controlling your breathing up a steep hill) or a constant reinforcement of important short-term and long-term goals (e.g., running 3:10 in the marathon to qualify for Boston). Flow experiences narrow your focus almost entirely to the task at hand. By keeping your goals at the forefront of your thinking, you stand a better chance of achieving them. At the same time, being able to adjust your goals on the fly—if your skill level or the challenge at hand proves to be higher or lower than expected—better allows you to maximise your potential on that day.

No matter what type of goal you’re setting, it should always relate to the activity. Setting a goal of experiencing flow sets you up for disappointment and according to Csikszentmihalyi, it may actually hinder you from experiencing it. You may have hopes of experiencing flow while competing, but your goals should be specific to your race. Flow is the byproduct of a perfect storm, not the storm itself.

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