Flow state #

Environment diagram with most of the quadrants a lighter gray. The upper-left, flow state, quadrant is black with white text.

Reference disciplines include psychology, authoritarianism, and business/people-management resources.

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Awry states
...hated jobs...
Hate your job? Here’s what you can do about it right now. (2024, November 11). Calm Blog. https://www.calm.com/blog/i-hate-my-job

Sillaman, N. K. (2023). When You’re Stuck in a Job You Can’t Quit. Harvard Business Review. https://hbr.org/2023/01/when-youre-stuck-in-a-job-you-cant-quit

Brenner, G.H. (2017, March 13). Why do I keep getting stuck in jobs I hate? Psychology Today. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/experimentations/201703/why-do-i-keep-getting-stuck-in-jobs-i-hate

...history as only possible future...
Csikszentmihalyi, M. (2008). Flow: The psychology of optimal experience. HarperPerennial.

Harari, Y. N. (2024). Nexus: A brief history of information networks from the stone age to AI. Random House.

https://www.youngminds.org.uk/young-person/my-feelings/stuck/

Noam Chomsky's body of work

On Feeling Stuck. (2019, September 19). The School of Life. https://www.theschooloflife.com/article/on-feeling-stuck/

Sapolsky, R. M. (2023). Determined: Life without free will. Bodley Head.

The Guardian. (2013, November 2). Ilya: the AI scientist shaping the world. https://youtu.be/9iqn1HhFJ6c?si=haIPvSWX9Y88vqKQ

Zinn, H. (1996). A people’s history of the United States: From 1492 to the present (2nd ed.). Longman.

...living wage...
Christian, A. (2024, March 7). US salaries are falling. Employers say compensation is just “resetting.” BBC. https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20240306-slowing-us-wage-growth-lower-salaries

DeSilver, D. (2018, August 7). For most U.S. workers, real wages have barely budged in decades. Pew Research Center. https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2018/08/07/for-most-us-workers-real-wages-have-barely-budged-for-decades/

Gould, E., & Bivens, J. (2015, January 6).Wage stagnation in nine charts. Economic Policy Institute. https://www.epi.org/publication/charting-wage-stagnation/

Mazelis, J. M. (2017, June 20). Poverty really is the result of a state of mind — among rich people. Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/posteverything/wp/2017/06/20/poverty-really-is-the-result-of-a-state-of-mind-among-rich-people/

Mishra, Vibhu. (2025, April 24). Trust collapsing as job fears surge worldwide, warns UN. UN News. https://news.un.org/en/story/2025/04/1162561

Picchi, A. (2022, July 19). Most middle-class Americans say they can’t support their cost of living, survey finds. CBS News. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/inflation-75-percent-of-middle-class-americans-say-income-below-cost-of-living/

Rothstein, R. (2017, August 25). Is poverty a mindset? Economic Policy Institute. https://www.epi.org/blog/is-poverty-a-mindset/

Steinmetz-Silber, N., & Edelberg, W. (2025, January 31). Has pay kept up with inflation? Brookings. https://www.brookings.edu/articles/has-pay-kept-up-with-inflation/

...purpose...
Brainz Magazine. (2021, February 10). 5 things happen when you work without purpose. Brainz Magazine. https://www.brainzmagazine.com/post/5-things-happen-when-you-work-without-purpose

Graeber, D. (2019). Bullshit jobs: The rise of pointless work, and what we can do about it. Penguin Books.

Heller, N. (2018, June 7). The Bullshit-Job Boom. New Yorker (New York, N.Y.: 1925). https://www.newyorker.com/books/under-review/the-bullshit-job-boom

...repercussions...
Barndollar, H. (2025, April 27). How Trump vs. Harvard is a page out of the Project 2025 playbook. The Republican. https://www.masslive.com/news/2025/04/how-trump-vs-harvard-is-a-page-out-of-the-project-2025-playbook.html

Blinder, A., Hartocollis, A., Patel, V., & Saul, S. (2025, April 16). Why Harvard decided to fight Trump. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/15/us/why-harvard-resisted-trumps-demands.html

Millet K, Dewitte S. Non-conformity may be hidden driver behind relation. BMJ. 2007 Feb 17;334(7589):327-8. doi: 10.1136/bmj.39121.870139.1F. PMID: 17303843; PMCID: PMC1800992.

Roeder, A. (2012, February 20). Repercussions of gender nonconformity. Harvard Gazette. https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2012/02/ptsd/

Sharma, P. (2021, August 25). Depth study - social Conformity and Non-Conformity. HSCOne. https://hsc.one/courses/society-culture-hsc/social-conformity-and-non-conformity/

Williams, T. C. (2025, April 15). Trump’s Harvard whiplash. Atlantic Monthly (Boston, Mass.: 1993). https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/04/demands-harvard-contradictory/682464/

...told what and how to think...
Chomsky, N. (2012, February 1). The Purpose of Education. Learning without Frontiers. https://youtu.be/DdNAUJWJN08?si=6rjqirLTENl8lTiE

Chomsky, N. (2012b, February 17). Education For Whom and For What? The University of Arizona. https://youtu.be/e_EgdShO1K8?si=Yk1DnaPJADiuEBwA

Curtis, Adam. 2009. The century of the self. Wyandotte, MI: BigD Productions.

Stanley, J. (2024, September 9). Skip navigation Search Sign in Russia, Nazi Germany, MAGA: The Dangers of Weaponizing History and Education. Amanpour and Company. https://youtu.be/LjK5Rt3DuJc?si=918k6m6oWiiW0kdw

...history as only possible future: including Chomsky...
Chomsky in many ways is a very early information architect. He's cited as working within the disciplines of linguistics, analytic philosophy, cognitive science, and political criticism. In my opinion, in all of these paradigms he is tracing information expression closer to the bone of information connections than anyone outside of Buckminster Fuller and Saul Wurman.

Chomsky's body of work is extensive, including articles, books, essays, documentaries, and more YouTube discussions than I've ever been able to hunt down and watch. Anyone can find their preferred length and type of content to start learning more about Chomsky, his thinking, and his views around political systems, which is ultimately what most hinders or frees flow-state in a culture.

...history as only possible future: including Harari...
There are three reasons I included Harari's Nexus as one of the supporting materials for history as our future. One, it traces the information systems, and shows how they've been consistently present, going further back than our documented history. Two, it shows how they vary, across cultures and through time. And three, most importantly, it shows how certain people will try to convince others that the current system is the only one that 'makes sense'. Merely by the juxtaposition of that argument within the fuller context of history, variability, and shifting systems through time, we can start to understand that it's not just "the way it is". It's a narrative verging on fantasy.

...history as only possible future: including Sapolsky...
You would think that including a book predicated on the idea that we are fractal nodes in a larger system would be supporting the concept that we just have to comply, "this is the way it is, suck it up and deal."

That thinking is a narrow reading of the outcome without understanding the context, variabilities, and impact of time.

Sapolsky shows iteratively that systems we have in place are dysfunctional and causing a vast array of individual expressions of pain. Then the same system, policed by people who are benefiting from a win/lose scenario, tells those in pain that they are fucked up while pointing to their own 'win' as evidence that those in pain chose to 'lose'.

These usurious systems, as shown to great effect by Harari, are not the only options. If we change the system to reflect a diverse approach to an unknown future (e.g., adapt with survivability as a higher priority than hierarchy), a vast array of social dysfunction and individual pain expression will shift. Because we are determined by our passed-down understanding, current environment, information beyond our limited perception, and time. It is not that this is 'the way it is', but that forces within our society are working hard to maintain an informational, physical, and societal status quo. We literally are not shifting with our learnings, specifically to benefit a select portion of a hierarchical system.

...meaningful...without harming...
This is an age-old question. It's so complex that it's in religions, philosophies, psychology, ethics, and morality frameworks. Mythologies, organized and unorganized religion, and cults tend tries to come up with some kind of easy list of characteristics for 'what makes a good human'. Philosophy and ethics show that it's really not simple, with the trolley problem being one of the most explored ideas in the zeitgeist.

...told what and how to think...
It truly amazes me how much of our literature around flow state assumes that unhappiness -- a lack of flow, stuck in a rut, etc. -- is because you aren't conforming well enough. It assumes mental illness that has everything to do with your approach to the world, and not that the systems in our environments are actively extracting environmental contexts from the many so a few can have easier lives. Add that many of these same 'course correcting' articulations, when pushed back and told, "this isn't working for me," go on to tell those people that they aren't working hard enough or believing in the ends state deeply enough.

And, just to add to confusion, sometimes their 'course correcting' works. Which isn't an argument that they are nearing a quality of truth, but that they have found a node of perceptual truth. Again, our true/false binary language is not up to the nuance of experienced reality.

What it means is that we don't know, but certainty is our primary tool to get people to pay us. Know your mind and experiment.