The key to flow is to control consciousness

You can experience flow when you have an order in your consciousness. In turn, an order in consciousness is achieved when new information are congruent with your goal. Having a clear goal is one of the crucial component of flow (The components of flow experience).

Making new information congruent with your goal is difficult. We live with biological and social instruction which may cause psychic disorder in our consciousness, and may trap us in The treadmill of rising expectation. Dealing with such disorder will deplete our Psychic energy, which is essential for experiencing flow (The difference between pleasure and enjoyment is the amount of psychic energy spent)

Fortunately, we don’t really have to waste our psychic energy to such disorder, as long as we can control our consciousness. To control consciousness is to override biological and social instruction, and To control consciousness is to be able to focus attention at will. Controlling consciousness is learnable.

References

Mihaly, Flow (p. 39).

When a person is able to organise his or her consciousness so as to experience flow as often as possible, the quality of life is inevitably going to improve […] even the usually boring routines of work become purposeful and enjoyable. In flow we are in control of our psychic energy, and everything we do adds order to consciousness.