One idea central to this book is the ever familiar knowledge is power. If flow underpins optimal performance, then knowing the causes of flow—both where it comes from and why it comes—can help us achieve optimal performance more frequently. If we go one level deeper into this relationship, we’ll get to the lineage of technology that supports this knowing. Thus, if we want to understand what’s possible for the next generation of athletes—or, for that matter, for anyone interested in harnessing this state to improve performance—we also need to understand the revolution that technology is now bringing to flow research.
“Go back to Roger Bannister’s time and the most sophisticated equipment we had was a stopwatch,” says Michael Gervais. “Knowing how long it takes someone to do something is useful, but it’s still a gross metric that explains little about the why. The stopwatch told us Bannister ran a sub-four mile, yet we learned nothing about how he did it or how we could do it. But between then and now there have been six or seven measurement milestones. We moved from gross physical measures to more precise bio-data, from invasive bio-data procedures to noninvasive procedures. Until you get to where we are today—
able to measure and quantify ATP (adenosine triphosphate—essentially cellular energy) levels in real time. This means that our ability to stalk elite performance has undergone a sea change.”
As has our ability to stalk flow. In the 1990s, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), which had been primarily used to study the body, gave way to functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), which measures blood-flow activity in the brain. At Johns Hopkins, it was this technique that allowed Charles Limb to scan the brains of improv jazz musicians during flow—providing our first images of transient hypofrontality in action. At Emory, it was fMRI that helped Greg Berns map the dopamine system’s relationship to flow triggers like risk and novelty. At Baylor, it was David Eagleman and time dilation. And this list goes on.
Neural feedback—the use of EEG to train performance—has undergone a similar transformation. Dr. Leslie Sherlin and his colleagues at Neurotopia, to offer one example, have developed an EEG-based system called “BrainSport”
that, unlike earlier EEG systems, uses advanced hardware and sophisticated software to filter out extraneous noise. As of now, it can record the neuroelectrical activity of a golfer making a putt, a ballplayer swinging a bat, or a speaker giving a talk. Devices capable of working in action and adventure sports’ environments are only a year or two away (Travis Pastrana is putting an early iteration through its paces). Even better, BrainSport is portable and simple to use. “The idea was to develop a robust neural-feedback system that works for everyone,” says Sherlin. “People no longer have to come to the lab, get tons of
sensors attached, and destroy their normal routines. A football player on the flight home after a game; a businessman about to enter a meeting; a housewife with a half-hour before the kids come home. They just put on the headset and start training.”
Concurrently, a revolution in sensors, batteries, and connectivity has led to a flood of “quantified self” devices such as Nike Fuel band, Jawbone’s UP, and the Basis Band. These wearable gadgets monitor an expansive array of biometrics, most of which can be used to hunt flow. And there are iPhone apps that do the same. We can now track cardiac coherence—when brain waves and heart waves synch up—which has been correlated with the state (but needs more research). Other apps let skiers and snowboarders calculate speed, helping them both dial in their challenge/skill ratio and pin down the exact miles per hour that trips their novelty and risk flow triggers.
At the Flow Genome Project we’re taking advantage of both of these lines of development to build a series of dedicated flow research labs—a.k.a. Flow Dojos. Think Cirque du Soleil meets X Games meets the Science Exploratorium. The goal is to simulate all of the high-risk conditions that extreme performers rely upon to trigger flow—just without the risk. Our equipment is of the extreme playground variety, like a giant looping swing that lets almost anyone be safely upside down and twenty-five feet off the ground at the top of the loop, and pulling over three and half Gs at the bottom—which is enough risk and novelty to push most into flow.
Moreover, the swing is lined with LED lights that are connected to sensors like BrainSport. The closer a rider comes to the theta/alpha brain-wave border of baseline flow, the redder the lights turn. This allows the trainee to use real-time neurofeedback without having to break state to look at a data screen. Of course, with all these sensors, we’re also data capturing along the way, and using this information to construct a more accurate “heat map of flow”—a map that will fine-tune our knowledge of the state and its triggers and thus provide everyone with easier access to the zone.
And ours is only one approach. There are many more, and from dozens of angles. But that’s not even the half of it. Alongside these technological developments increasing our in-the-moment access to flow, there’s also an entirely different line of development increasing the total amount of time we can stay in the flow-hacking game. Welcome to the world of bionics.
Hugh Herr, the head of the biomechatronics research group at MIT’s Media Lab, is at the forefront of this world. He’s already built the Rheo knee and the iWalk BiOM ankle, the world’s first two artificially intelligent prosthetics. Both of these devices mimic natural movement patterns, are capable of learning (so they adjust to the user’s gait and not the other way round), and were named Inventions of the Year by Time magazine (the Rheo in 2004, the BiOM in 2007). How durable and dynamic are these devices? The BiOM (the more sophisticated of the two) is already being worn by amputee soldiers
returning to active duty.
But prosthetics for amputee soldiers are just the beginning. Herr has also designed the world’s first true bionic exoskeleton, a revolutionary knee brace for able-bodied people that should be commercially available by 2015. “Right now,” Herr says, “one of the worst parts of growing old is losing the ability to move around. So imagine taking the bionics in the BiOM and turning it into a strap-on device, something that can restore strength and function to the elderly or anyone with a bum knee.”
Most of the athletes interviewed for this book didn’t start exploring flow until their late twenties or early thirties, and none feel they have come close to utilizing the state’s full potential. Unfortunately, as flow explorer skills improve over time, our physical abilities head in the opposite direction. But not for long.
Herr’s bionic knee brace can extend all of our athletic careers for years, possibly decades. And it’s only the first in a torrent of biological enhancement possibilities now in the pipeline.
The standard metric for describing exponential growth rates in technology is Moore’s law—the fact that the number of transistors on an integrated circuit doubles every twelve to twenty-four months while the price remains the same.
Moore’s law is the reason why today’s smartphones are a thousand times faster and a million times cheaper than a supercomputer from the 1970s. Meanwhile, biotechnology—the category that underpins exoskeletons and other enhancement technologies—is currently accelerating at five times the speed of Moore’s Law.
What is the adjacent possible for strap-on bionics? What promise do exoskeletons hold for the future of progression? What about flow hacking? Until recently, older and wiser meant creakier and slower. But with biotechnology expanding at an exponential rate, we can now refresh the physical line of development, while our cognitive and creative lines continue to grow. For the first time in history, anyone looking to push the upper edge of human performance will be able to combine the wisdom of the decades with the sprightliness of youth. So again, where do our limits lie?
“I’m certain we can’t answer that question,” says Michael Gervais. “At the world-class level, where talent differences are marginal, we estimate that 90 percent of success for elite performers is mental—yet this is the one measurement milestone we haven’t hit. We don’t know how to measure thought.
What is it? Where does it begin? Where does it go? Can we track it? Can we track its effects? What’s an accurate picture of its total impact on biology? Until we know these things, psychology remains a fuzzy science. But that’s what’s next. That’s where this technological revolution is leading. That’s why predicting limits is so difficult—because we’re about to be able to take control of the one aspect of performance that trumps all others.”