Flow, for me, is a specific mode of attention. It’s sustained, externally oriented, and lightly held. It depends on a certain looseness that’s hard to manufacture, and easy to lose.

Awareness of being observed alters that mode. The looseness goes. Attention turns inward. I begin evaluating rather than participating: monitoring myself instead of staying with what’s happening.

The shift is subtle but its effects are immediate. Flow doesn’t survive that shift. The moment attention is redirected toward how the work appears, the work itself recedes.

What brings it back isn’t reassurance or confidence. It’s forgetting: the brief moment when I stop tracking myself and the work takes over.

That forgetting feels like freedom. Fragile, but essential. It’s where the work actually happens.