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The Rise of Superman: Decoding the Science of Ultimate Human Performance
Wall Street Journal Bestseller In this groundbreaking book, New York Times –bestselling author Steven Kotler decodes the mystery of ultimate human performance. Drawing on over a decade of research and first-hand reporting with dozens of top action and adventure sports athletes like big wave legend Laird Hamilton, big mountain snowboarder Jeremy Jones, and skateboarding pioneer Danny Way, Kotler explores the frontier science of “flow,” an optimal state of consciousness in which we perform and feel our best. Building a bridge between the extreme and the mainstream, The Rise of Superman explains how these athletes are using flow to do the impossible and how we can use this information to radically accelerate performance in our own lives. At its core, this is a book about profound possibility; about what is actually possible for our species; about where—if anywhere—our limits lie.
256 pages, Hardcover
First published March 4, 2014
About the author
Steven Kotler
26 books1,003 followersSteven Kotler is a New York Times bestselling author, award-winning journalist, and co-founder and director of research for the Flow Genome Project. His books include the non-fiction works "The Rise of Superman," "Abundance," "A Small Furry Prayer" "West of Jesus," and the novel "The Angle Quickest for Flight." His work has been translated into more than 30 languages. His articles have appeared in over 60 publications, including The New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic Monthly, Wired, GQ, Outside, Popular Science, Men's Journal and Discover.
He also writes "Far Frontiers," a blog about technology and innovation for Forbes.com and "The Playing Field," a blog about the science of sport and culture for PsychologyToday.com.
He lives in New Mexico with his wife, the author Joy Nicholson.
He also writes "Far Frontiers," a blog about technology and innovation for Forbes.com and "The Playing Field," a blog about the science of sport and culture for PsychologyToday.com.
He lives in New Mexico with his wife, the author Joy Nicholson.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 446 reviews
February 3, 2015
This is the book in a nutshell:
Q: How do these athletes beat the odds?
A: They push themselves further by ignoring the statistics telling them that they can't.
Q: Yeah, but how do they do that?
A: By ignoring everything telling them that their dreams are impossible.
Q: Okay, but how do they accomplish this?
A: By pushing themselves...
That's it, folks. That's the whole book. The author gives lots of examples and statistics of why something seems impossible at first and then somebody comes along and goes "Nuh-uh, I'mma beat that record" and THEY DO!
I felt the book was just a bunch of circular reasoning and the audience isn't given anything more than facts supporting why something can't happen and then BLAMMO! someone comes along and does it.
I'll give this book 2 stars for the research, but no more than that since there isn't anything useful to readers other than the "Follow your dreams, you MAY beat the odds (It's possible but we won't tell you how; also, don't get your hopes up)" message.
March 22, 2014
I think it's important to first note that the author Steven Kotler is the "Director of Research" for the Flow Genome Project. So although he is indeed an award-winning journalist in other contexts, he has skin in the game he's pitching with this book.
That said, I don't think what Kotler is pitching is snake oil.
The "flow" state for which he's evangelizing is essentially a wholehearted immersion in the present. Modern society too often distracts us from living in the moment, the argument goes, because we're always off in our minds thinking about work projects, social obligations and technological whiz-bang competing for our attention in the future. People are able to achieve flow states using drugs, video games, meditation, religion, music... really anything that requires or fosters intense concentration.
Once in the flow state, he argues, humans are able to work incrementally on improving our performance at tasks. With training and "flow hacking," we can learn how to enter this state of mind more easily, which will foster growth and increase human potential.
If that was the whole book, I wouldn't have any beef, really. But what annoyed me about The Rise of Superman was the near-deification of action sports athletes that Kotler uses as a frame to explain his point. Because practitioners of these sports need to be at their peak performance or risk death, they need to push the boundaries farther just to survive.
That's fine, I can buy that. What I don't buy is that somehow going from a 540 spin to a 900 spin is a RADICAL EXPANSION OF THE BOUNDS OF HUMAN POTENTIAL. I love watching big wave surfing, I'd love to get into rock climbing, but what the peak athletes in these sports are accomplishing are, at the end of the day, almost totally meaningless and arbitrary notches on a yardstick that stretches to infinity.
A dude jumping out of a helicopter onto a ski slope, then jumping off ANOTHER cliff and parachuting onto another ski slope is pretty rad, but that is not what I think of when I think of "human potential." To me, the advancements these athletes have made in the last several decades have much more to do with the fact that energy drink companies have paid them handsomely to be the faces of their products. That's the real reason you see all these advances -- it's not flow hacking (at least entirely), it's economics.
So while I walk away from this book with a renewed sense of the importance of living in the moment and thoughts of pushing the physicality of my daily existence to meet that goal, I'm still unsettled by the conflicts of interest involved, and Kotler's inability to imagine a greater yardstick for human potential than extreme sports.
That said, I don't think what Kotler is pitching is snake oil.
The "flow" state for which he's evangelizing is essentially a wholehearted immersion in the present. Modern society too often distracts us from living in the moment, the argument goes, because we're always off in our minds thinking about work projects, social obligations and technological whiz-bang competing for our attention in the future. People are able to achieve flow states using drugs, video games, meditation, religion, music... really anything that requires or fosters intense concentration.
Once in the flow state, he argues, humans are able to work incrementally on improving our performance at tasks. With training and "flow hacking," we can learn how to enter this state of mind more easily, which will foster growth and increase human potential.
If that was the whole book, I wouldn't have any beef, really. But what annoyed me about The Rise of Superman was the near-deification of action sports athletes that Kotler uses as a frame to explain his point. Because practitioners of these sports need to be at their peak performance or risk death, they need to push the boundaries farther just to survive.
That's fine, I can buy that. What I don't buy is that somehow going from a 540 spin to a 900 spin is a RADICAL EXPANSION OF THE BOUNDS OF HUMAN POTENTIAL. I love watching big wave surfing, I'd love to get into rock climbing, but what the peak athletes in these sports are accomplishing are, at the end of the day, almost totally meaningless and arbitrary notches on a yardstick that stretches to infinity.
A dude jumping out of a helicopter onto a ski slope, then jumping off ANOTHER cliff and parachuting onto another ski slope is pretty rad, but that is not what I think of when I think of "human potential." To me, the advancements these athletes have made in the last several decades have much more to do with the fact that energy drink companies have paid them handsomely to be the faces of their products. That's the real reason you see all these advances -- it's not flow hacking (at least entirely), it's economics.
So while I walk away from this book with a renewed sense of the importance of living in the moment and thoughts of pushing the physicality of my daily existence to meet that goal, I'm still unsettled by the conflicts of interest involved, and Kotler's inability to imagine a greater yardstick for human potential than extreme sports.
May 21, 2015
I was hoping that the big idea of this book would to give a few "hacks" on how to master flow in your life but the book really didn't deliver. The main value I got out of it were the stories about the pioneers of extreme sports and how they used flow to push beyond what was considered possible for a human body. Extreme sports are definitely great for getting into flow but not something most of us can apply in our lives.
To sum it up, from this book you'll get a dozen examples displaying the power of being fully present in flow state and how it can push the limits of human performance. But there's no clear way how to use this information.
If you wanna learn more about this state of ultimate human performance definitely check out the book titled Flow by the author Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. It's by far the best book written on this topic and is a much better resource than The Rise of Superman.
To sum it up, from this book you'll get a dozen examples displaying the power of being fully present in flow state and how it can push the limits of human performance. But there's no clear way how to use this information.
If you wanna learn more about this state of ultimate human performance definitely check out the book titled Flow by the author Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. It's by far the best book written on this topic and is a much better resource than The Rise of Superman.
January 19, 2021
I picked up this book not actually knowing what it was about. It turned up in my circles a few times, so I decided to go ahead and see, and so spent most of this book finding excuses why I don't really enjoy it. Until I let go and admitted that some books just don't work for some people and that is ok.
One of the main reasons was that I actually already knew about most people described in this book and often I found the voice given to them by this book, did not fit the one I already knew.
So it was a bit boring, but even if I would have checked out what the book is about, I soon found out wouldn't have expected to make a much different decision. Although it's about "flow", the achievements of great people took most of it, yet the science author mentions so much, is never described and proven as a big picture, so it all just sounds like a bunch of theories stringed together with bits of science. I would have loved more proof and less biographies.
Because it became so dull for me, I think I didn't suck up all the techniques to initiate and get into the "flow state", which is a shame, but I won't be reading it again, at least in near future. The really cool thing I liked about this, where the bits about "team flow" and getting into "flow" together with others.
This book wasn't that great for me specifically, but it could be a pretty fun material for someone who isn't familiar with adventure sports. And I already know for a fact there are more achievements now than when this book was published.
One of the main reasons was that I actually already knew about most people described in this book and often I found the voice given to them by this book, did not fit the one I already knew.
So it was a bit boring, but even if I would have checked out what the book is about, I soon found out wouldn't have expected to make a much different decision. Although it's about "flow", the achievements of great people took most of it, yet the science author mentions so much, is never described and proven as a big picture, so it all just sounds like a bunch of theories stringed together with bits of science. I would have loved more proof and less biographies.
Because it became so dull for me, I think I didn't suck up all the techniques to initiate and get into the "flow state", which is a shame, but I won't be reading it again, at least in near future. The really cool thing I liked about this, where the bits about "team flow" and getting into "flow" together with others.
This book wasn't that great for me specifically, but it could be a pretty fun material for someone who isn't familiar with adventure sports. And I already know for a fact there are more achievements now than when this book was published.
September 23, 2014
Nothing really new here. Kotler rehashes Csikszentmihalyi's concept of "flow" with examples taken from extreme sports. The book is too long / badly edited, so the reader is beaten round the head with many more stories than this simple concept needed. This book could have been about 1/6 the length and still got its message out. The real thesis that the author proposes (that we're in some sort of special age of superhuman performance) seems an unnecessary imposition as well. You could do worse than just reading the first chapter or two (or reading other books on the 'flow' state).
September 8, 2023
Както заглавието, така и описанието на книгата могат да ви дадат добра представа за текста в нея - високопарни, преувеличени, половината обем на всяко изречение се състои в случайна комбинация от думите: супер, екстремно, невероятно, разбиващо, смъртоносно и т.н. Всяка дума е написана така, като че ли заслужава да е с С НЕВЕРОЯТНО ЕКСТРЕМНИ ГЛАВНИ БУКВИ И С ПО ТРИ РАЗБИВАЩИ УДИВИТЕЛНИ СЛЕД ВСЯКО СМЪРТОНОСНО ИЗРЕЧЕНИЕ!!!
Самият текст е объркан, авторът прескача от тема в тема и от случка на случка, описвайки как разни хора скочили от най високия мост, направили най-завъртяното завъртане със сноуборд, пуснали се по най-разпенения поток с каяк и т.н. Книгата претендира да е "изследване на свръхчовешките постижения", но първо тя нищо не из��ледва, а само описва, а това което описва не са никакви "постижения", след като единственото, което се изисква, за да ги "постигне" някой е пренебрежение към вероятността да се пребие, докато прави това, което други са се пребили, докато са опитвали да направят.
Като цяло не разбирам много от екстремни спортове, даже не ги смятам изобщо за спортове и не ги следя. Опитът ми да се поинтересувам малко от тях за съжаление доведе до тази книга, която не знам доколко говори на и за аудиторията на тия спортове, но е толкова малоумна че докато я четях ми се искаше да се гръмна, за да накарам болката да спре.
Самият текст е объркан, авторът прескача от тема в тема и от случка на случка, описвайки как разни хора скочили от най високия мост, направили най-завъртяното завъртане със сноуборд, пуснали се по най-разпенения поток с каяк и т.н. Книгата претендира да е "изследване на свръхчовешките постижения", но първо тя нищо не из��ледва, а само описва, а това което описва не са никакви "постижения", след като единственото, което се изисква, за да ги "постигне" някой е пренебрежение към вероятността да се пребие, докато прави това, което други са се пребили, докато са опитвали да направят.
Като цяло не разбирам много от екстремни спортове, даже не ги смятам изобщо за спортове и не ги следя. Опитът ми да се поинтересувам малко от тях за съжаление доведе до тази книга, която не знам доколко говори на и за аудиторията на тия спортове, но е толкова малоумна че докато я четях ми се искаше да се гръмна, за да накарам болката да спре.
March 23, 2014
i thought I was really going to like this book when I first started reading it. The ideas were exciting and the promise of investigating the neuroscience was appealing. The stories of the of the extreme athletes were engaging at first and then it became some sort of worship of the gods. It quickly devolved from there. Maybe if Kotler had a better editor, the book might have held my interest to the very end. I only was intrigued for about the first 1/3 of the book and then it became a chore to finish it. Glad I didn't rush to recommend it to my friends. I am also glad that I borrowed it from the Amazon library rather than pay for it.
June 2, 2014
Amazing.
This book caused a shift in the way I interact with the world, and I don't think I'll ever go back.
Having never been introduced to the concept of "Flow," Kotler enlightened me from multiple vantage points: the emotional angle, the scientific element, and the dark side.
He uses the extreme sports arena to explain how we've gone from nobody being able to free climb (no ropes) a 1,000 foot mountain 20 years ago, to hundreds of people doing it today. The same with surfers riding 50 foot waves. Or skateboarders who can do a 900 (2.5 rotations). Is it genetics? Or are these athletes accessing a mental state, called Flow, to challenge the boundaries of human performance?
I'll you this, I read this book over a week's period of time...and the day after finishing, I applied a few "Flow hacking" techniques at my workout the next day...and set new personal bests in 11 out of 24 categories of a P90X workout I'd been doing for 2 months with incremental improvement.
Kotler's book has given me a new way of approaching the world - not just from the physical, but intellectual, spiritual and emotional as well.
Highly recommended if you've got an insatiable desire to improve your life performance.
This book caused a shift in the way I interact with the world, and I don't think I'll ever go back.
Having never been introduced to the concept of "Flow," Kotler enlightened me from multiple vantage points: the emotional angle, the scientific element, and the dark side.
He uses the extreme sports arena to explain how we've gone from nobody being able to free climb (no ropes) a 1,000 foot mountain 20 years ago, to hundreds of people doing it today. The same with surfers riding 50 foot waves. Or skateboarders who can do a 900 (2.5 rotations). Is it genetics? Or are these athletes accessing a mental state, called Flow, to challenge the boundaries of human performance?
I'll you this, I read this book over a week's period of time...and the day after finishing, I applied a few "Flow hacking" techniques at my workout the next day...and set new personal bests in 11 out of 24 categories of a P90X workout I'd been doing for 2 months with incremental improvement.
Kotler's book has given me a new way of approaching the world - not just from the physical, but intellectual, spiritual and emotional as well.
Highly recommended if you've got an insatiable desire to improve your life performance.
June 17, 2016
This book tries to break down the psychological concept of "flow" and asks the question: can we master and trigger flow to improve the human experience. If anything, Steven Kotler made me optimistic about the future. We've all experienced flow at least once in our lives without knowing what it was and Kotler here breaks open the mystery like a treasure crate.
I was annoyed at the quantity of examples that padded the book, but I couldn't argue against the science of the roadmap of human improvement proposed by Steven Kotler.
I was annoyed at the quantity of examples that padded the book, but I couldn't argue against the science of the roadmap of human improvement proposed by Steven Kotler.
February 26, 2014
“Flow or die,” author Steven Kotler writes. In our times -- The Second Machine Age -- the choice is that stark.
From The Rise of Superman:
From a February 22, 2014 op-ed in The New York Times titled "How to Get a Job at Google”:
From The Rise of Superman:
From the cover story of the December 2013 issue of The Atlantic magazine:
From 2014 book The Second Machine Age — Work, Progress and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies, co-authored by MIT economist Erik Brynjolfsson:
Flow or die, indeed.
Happily, the science of flow is advancing at the speed of The Second Machine Age, and actionable insights are taking shape.
From The Rise of Superman:
All told, The Rise of Superman is a must-read for many professionals, students, parents, entrepreneurs and investors.
A complementary read: serial novel Flowmance Rules — A Sirious Comedy (no affiliation with Apple, Inc., owner of Siri technology).
FR adapts a business plan praised by top technologists and investors. Praise from Amazon's first Director of Personalization:
I received this praise in 2004 (via email).
FR adapts the 2014 version of the plan, of course.
FR's comedy premise centers on tech-assisted ethical nonmonogamy, which appears likely to become main$tream soon, particularly among the very upwardly mobile.
From The Rise of Superman:
Welcome to the pursuit of flow in The Second Machine Age. :-)
From The Rise of Superman:
“Flow's two defining characteristics are its feel-good nature (flow is always a positive experience) and its function as a performance-enhancer. The [neuro]chemicals described herein are among the strongest . . . the body can produce.”
“A ten-year study done by McKinsey found top executives reported being up to five times more productive when in flow. Creativity and cooperation are so amplified by the state that [a] Greylock Partners venture capitalist . . . called 'flow state percentage'—defined as the amount of time employees spend in flow—the 'most important management metric for building great innovation teams.'”
From a February 22, 2014 op-ed in The New York Times titled "How to Get a Job at Google”:
[T]he No. 1 thing we look for is general cognitive ability, and it’s not I.Q. It’s learning ability. It’s the ability to process on the fly. It’s the ability to pull together disparate bits of information.
From The Rise of Superman:
“Flow is the secret to learning faster. A lot faster.”
From the cover story of the December 2013 issue of The Atlantic magazine:
What happens when Big Data meets human resources? The emerging practice of "people analytics" is already transforming how employers hire, fire, and promote.
. . . Perhaps the most exotic development in people analytics today is the creation of algorithms to assess the potential of all workers,
across all companies, all the time.
. . . Gild [is] a company that uses people analytics to help other companies find software engineers.
. . . The way Gild arrives at . . . scores [for ranking coders] is not simple. The company's algorithms begin by scouring the Web for any
and all open-source code, and for the coders who wrote it. They evaluate the code for its simplicity, elegance, documentation, and several other factors, including the frequency with which it's been adopted by other programmers. For code that was written for paid projects, they look at completion times and other measures of productivity. Then they look at questions and answers on social forums such as Stack Overflow, a popular destination for programmers seeking advice on challenging projects. They consider how popular a given coder's advice is, and how widely that advice ranges.
The algorithms go further still. They assess the way coders use language on social networks from LinkedIn to Twitter; the company has determined that certain phrases and words used in association with one another can distinguish expert programmers from less skilled ones. Gild knows these phrases and words are associated with good coding because it can correlate them with its evaluation of open-source code, and with the language and online behavior of programmers in good positions at prestigious companies.
Here's the part that’s most interesting: having made those correlations, Gild can then score programmers who haven’t written open-source code at all, by analyzing the host of clues embedded in their online histories. They're not all obvious, or easy to explain. Vivienne Ming, Gild’s chief scientist, told me that one solid predictor of strong coding is an affinity for a particular Japanese manga [i.e., comics] site.
. . . Gild's CEO, Sheeroy Desai, told me he believes his company's approach can be applied to any occupation characterized by large, active online communities, where people post and cite individual work, ask and answer professional questions, and get feedback on projects.
. . . Google's understanding of the promise of analytics is probably better than anybody else's, and the company has been changing its hiring and management practices as a result of its ongoing analyses.(Brainteasers are no longer used in interviews, because they do not correlate with job success; GPA is not considered for anyone more than two years out of school, for the same reason—the list goes on.)
From 2014 book The Second Machine Age — Work, Progress and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies, co-authored by MIT economist Erik Brynjolfsson:
“Call it talent-biased technical change. In many industries, the difference in payout between number one and second-best has widened into a canyon.”
“The advancements we've seen in the past few years are not the crowning achievements of the computer era. They're warm-up acts.”
Flow or die, indeed.
Happily, the science of flow is advancing at the speed of The Second Machine Age, and actionable insights are taking shape.
From The Rise of Superman:
[O]ver the past decade, we've learned a great deal about how [creative insights] . . . happen—including how flow may make them happen more frequently. Not surprisingly, our creativity lies deeply rooted in the right side of the brain: the side dominated by the implicit system. The reason has to do with the structure of neural networks. When the explicit system (mostly on the left side of the brain) handles a problem, the neurons involved are very close to one another. This much proximity leads to linear connections, logical deductions, and all the other keystones of standard reasoning. When the implicit system is at work, its reach is much broader—far-flung corners of the brain are talking to one another. This is known to experts as "lateral thinking" . . . It means that novel stimuli can combine with . . . thoughts and obscure memories and the result is something utterly new.
Creativity has a brainwave signature as well: alpha waves pulsing out of the brain's right hemisphere. This is considered the readiness state for sudden insight—meaning not the revelation itself, rather its precursor condition. Interestingly . . . it now seems that without a calm, relaxed frame of mind the brain is incapable of switching from a beta-dominated localized networks to alpha-driven widespread webs.
But this isn't where the process ends. . . . [T]hat moment of sudden insight comes with a different brainwave signature. Exactly thirty milliseconds before the breakthrough intuition arrives, EEG shows a burst of gamma waves. These ultrafast brainwaves appear when a bunch of widely distributed cells—i.e., novel stimuli, random thoughts, obscure memories—bind themselves together into a brand new network. It is the brainwave signature of the "Aha!" moment.
"But the interesting thing about a gamma spike," explains Leslie Sherlin, "is that it always happens inside of theta oscillations. The two waves are coupled. It makes sense. Theta processes novel incoming stimuli; gamma is what happens when those stimuli snap together into new ideas. But it's hard to do any of this on command. It takes meditators a long time to get that kind of control. This is where the athletes in flow have a huge edge—their brain is already in alpha/theta. They're holding themselves in the only state that can produce that gamma spike."
When you add these elements together it's easy to see why flow is such an effective decision-making strategy.
All told, The Rise of Superman is a must-read for many professionals, students, parents, entrepreneurs and investors.
A complementary read: serial novel Flowmance Rules — A Sirious Comedy (no affiliation with Apple, Inc., owner of Siri technology).
FR adapts a business plan praised by top technologists and investors. Praise from Amazon's first Director of Personalization:
Frank [Ruscica, author of this review], I just spent about an hour surfing around your [business plan for a provider of customized lifelong learning and career services (CLLCS)] with a bit of amazement. I run a little company...We are a team of folks who worked together at Amazon.com developing that company's personalization and recommendations team and systems. We spent about 1.5 years thinking about what we wanted to build next. We thought a lot about online education tools. We thought a lot about classified ads and job networks. We thought a lot about reputation systems. We thought a bit about personalized advertising systems. We thought a lot about blogging and social networking systems. Eventually, we came up with the idea behind 43 Things.
...I guess I'm mostly just fascinated that we've been working a very similar vein to the one you describe, without having a solid name for it (we call it 'the age of the amateur' or 'networks of shared experiences' instead of CLLCS, but believe me, we are talking about the same patterns and markets, if not in exactly the same way). Thanks for sharing what you have -- its fascinating stuff.
I received this praise in 2004 (via email).
FR adapts the 2014 version of the plan, of course.
FR's comedy premise centers on tech-assisted ethical nonmonogamy, which appears likely to become main$tream soon, particularly among the very upwardly mobile.
From The Rise of Superman:
[T]here are extraordinarily powerful social bonding neurochemicals at the heart of both flow and group flow: dopamine and norepinephrine, that underpin romantic love.
. . . The neurochemicals that underpin the [flow] state are among the most addictive drugs on earth. Equally powerful is the psychological draw. Scientists who study human motivation have lately learned that after basic survival needs have been met, the combination of autonomy (the desire to direct your own life), mastery (the desire to learn, explore and be creative), and purpose (the desire to matter, to contribute to the world) are our most powerful intrinsic drivers—the three things that motivate us most. All three are deeply woven through the fabric of flow.
. . . “No question about it,” says Flow Genome Project Executive Director Jamie Wheal, “there's a dark night of the flow. In Christian mystical traditions, once you've experienced the grace of God, the 'dark night of the soul' describes the incredible pain of its absence. The same is true for flow. . . . If you've glimpsed this state, but can't get back there—that lack can become unbearable.”
Welcome to the pursuit of flow in The Second Machine Age. :-)
August 17, 2022
"This is a book about the impossible, but it starts with the invisible. Over the past three decades, an unlikely collection of men and women have pushed human performance farther and faster than at any other point in the 150,000-year history of our species. In this evolutionary eyeblink, they have completely redefined the limits of the possible. But here’s the stranger part: this unprecedented flowering of human potential has taken place in plain sight, occasionally with millions of people watching–yet almost no one has noticed..."
I'm generally a fan of books about the realm of high performance, so I put this one on my list when I came across it. I enjoyed The Rise of Superman; for the most part. The author drops the above quote in the book's intro.
Author Steven Kotler is a New York Times bestselling writer, an award-winning journalist, and the Executive Director of the Flow Research Collective. He is one of the world’s leading experts on human performance.
Steven Kotler:
Kotler gets the writing here off on a good foot, with a decent prologue. He mentions the "flow" state.
Adding to the quote at the start of this review, he talks about the trend of increasing performance in extreme sports.
He writes with a decent style that shouldn't have trouble holding the reader's attention. The narration of the audiobook version I have was also done well.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's concept of "flow" is the central focus of this book. The concept is covered so extensively here, that the book's title should have included the term, IMHO. A more appropriate title for this one would have been something along the lines of: "High Performance and The Flow State."
Kotler mentions the interesting reported phenomenon of time dilation among those who experience this optimal psychological state. He also provides the reader with a bit of neurochemistry related to the flow state, in some decent writing.
Kotler continues on here, covering many different athletes and performance-related topics. He includes accounts of both death and near-death experiences by those chasing the upper limits of human performance.
Some more of what is covered here includes:
• Extreme skateboarding; Danny Way.
• Big wave surfing.
• Solo free climbing; Alex Honnold.
• Wing suits.
• The marshmallow test.
• Big water kayaking; Doug Ammons
• Free diving; the mammalian dive reflex.
• The fallacy of effective multi-tasking.
• "Fixed" vs. "Growth" mindsets.
• Group flow.
• The effect of home entertainment on performance; the VCR.
• The assumed impossible 4-minute mile.
• Felix Baumgartner's record-breaking Red Bull plunge from the edge of space.
Although I did enjoy most of the writing here, if I were to find fault with the book, I would say that there was too much blow-by-blow accounting of individual feats by athletes. This is likely a subjective thing, and I'm sure some people will appreciate the level of detail the author provides.
The author also doesn't spend too much time giving the reader practical, actionable advice on how to achieve (and stay in) the flow state, either. I feel like he should have devoted more time to this here.
Additionally, there was just something about the overall presentation of this book and the author's writing style that just did not resonate with me as well as I'd hoped. Possibly a subjective thing. Take from that what you will...
Also, he dropped this factoid in the book that had me pause and try to verify (I couldn't). There were no footnotes in the PDF version I had. To the best of my knowledge, this is not true. He says: "We have as many neurons in the gut and heart as in the brain..." (page 56)
I have always heard that the rough number is 100 billion neurons in the brain, 500 million in the gut, and 40k in the heart.
When an author drops assertions like this, they really should be annotated.
**********************
The Rise of Superman was a mostly well-written book, that makes a good addition to the shelf of anyone interested in the realms of high-performance.
I would recommend it to anyone interested.
3 stars.
I'm generally a fan of books about the realm of high performance, so I put this one on my list when I came across it. I enjoyed The Rise of Superman; for the most part. The author drops the above quote in the book's intro.
Author Steven Kotler is a New York Times bestselling writer, an award-winning journalist, and the Executive Director of the Flow Research Collective. He is one of the world’s leading experts on human performance.
Steven Kotler:
Kotler gets the writing here off on a good foot, with a decent prologue. He mentions the "flow" state.
Adding to the quote at the start of this review, he talks about the trend of increasing performance in extreme sports.
He writes with a decent style that shouldn't have trouble holding the reader's attention. The narration of the audiobook version I have was also done well.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's concept of "flow" is the central focus of this book. The concept is covered so extensively here, that the book's title should have included the term, IMHO. A more appropriate title for this one would have been something along the lines of: "High Performance and The Flow State."
Kotler mentions the interesting reported phenomenon of time dilation among those who experience this optimal psychological state. He also provides the reader with a bit of neurochemistry related to the flow state, in some decent writing.
Kotler continues on here, covering many different athletes and performance-related topics. He includes accounts of both death and near-death experiences by those chasing the upper limits of human performance.
Some more of what is covered here includes:
• Extreme skateboarding; Danny Way.
• Big wave surfing.
• Solo free climbing; Alex Honnold.
• Wing suits.
• The marshmallow test.
• Big water kayaking; Doug Ammons
• Free diving; the mammalian dive reflex.
• The fallacy of effective multi-tasking.
• "Fixed" vs. "Growth" mindsets.
• Group flow.
• The effect of home entertainment on performance; the VCR.
• The assumed impossible 4-minute mile.
• Felix Baumgartner's record-breaking Red Bull plunge from the edge of space.
Although I did enjoy most of the writing here, if I were to find fault with the book, I would say that there was too much blow-by-blow accounting of individual feats by athletes. This is likely a subjective thing, and I'm sure some people will appreciate the level of detail the author provides.
The author also doesn't spend too much time giving the reader practical, actionable advice on how to achieve (and stay in) the flow state, either. I feel like he should have devoted more time to this here.
Additionally, there was just something about the overall presentation of this book and the author's writing style that just did not resonate with me as well as I'd hoped. Possibly a subjective thing. Take from that what you will...
Also, he dropped this factoid in the book that had me pause and try to verify (I couldn't). There were no footnotes in the PDF version I had. To the best of my knowledge, this is not true. He says: "We have as many neurons in the gut and heart as in the brain..." (page 56)
I have always heard that the rough number is 100 billion neurons in the brain, 500 million in the gut, and 40k in the heart.
When an author drops assertions like this, they really should be annotated.
**********************
The Rise of Superman was a mostly well-written book, that makes a good addition to the shelf of anyone interested in the realms of high-performance.
I would recommend it to anyone interested.
3 stars.
July 2, 2020
The rise of superman: Decoding the Science of Ultimate Human Performance
I was very much fascinated with the title “The rise of superman”. No wonder I wanted To know what are those super powers which make a normal person to a superman and ready to take that journey to krypton.
Steven Kotler has beaded all the best experiences he had as sports journalist.
As book gave himself a awakening of human capabilities and left him no choice to go on journey to find the what is secret behind. Book is very well researched with facts and figures which keep you intact and read them carefully of all events.
“Flow” is the epicenter of the whole book which help you to understand the state of mind of people behind the extraordinary and historic events. This is kryptonite give you adrenaline while reading this books which is quite consuming.
Aftermath leaves you with importance of being in present, stay focused and art of mastery.
This book is one of the book which make you think totally out of the box and grind you inside.
Totally recommend you to read this book.!!!!
I was very much fascinated with the title “The rise of superman”. No wonder I wanted To know what are those super powers which make a normal person to a superman and ready to take that journey to krypton.
Steven Kotler has beaded all the best experiences he had as sports journalist.
As book gave himself a awakening of human capabilities and left him no choice to go on journey to find the what is secret behind. Book is very well researched with facts and figures which keep you intact and read them carefully of all events.
“Flow” is the epicenter of the whole book which help you to understand the state of mind of people behind the extraordinary and historic events. This is kryptonite give you adrenaline while reading this books which is quite consuming.
Aftermath leaves you with importance of being in present, stay focused and art of mastery.
This book is one of the book which make you think totally out of the box and grind you inside.
Totally recommend you to read this book.!!!!
July 25, 2015
This is NOT a book about the comic book hero. It’s a book about a mental state called “the flow” and how adventure and extreme athletes have used it to make tremendous strides in their sports. The characteristics of the flow include extreme focus, time dilation / time distortion, a vanishing sense of self, extremely high performance, fearlessness, and a falling away of everything non-essential to the task at hand.
Kotler is by no means the first author to write about the flow. The term was inaugurated by a book entitled Flow first published in 1990 by a University of Chicago Psychology professor named Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. Csikszentmihalyi coined the term in the process of conducting a study on happiness. He found that happy people tended to engage in activities in which they could immerse themselves and find the zone. Contrary to the early part of Kotler’s book--in which it sounds like adventure athletes cornered the market on flow--Csikszentmihalyi says that said activity could be work or hobby and that the flow is to be found in poetry writing, yoga, martial arts, copy writing, or potentially any activity in which the skill level and challenge are both high.
(To be fair, Kotler does get around to recognizing that extreme athletes neither invented nor exclusively exploit the flow. However, his—well-taken—point is that such athletes are unusually good a finding, and dropping deep into, the flow in part because risk-taking behavior is an important trigger. And for free climbers [rock climbers without ropes], mega-ramp skateboarders, and bodysuit skydivers sometimes there are only two possible states of existence—the flow and being scraped off a rock.) It should be noted that some of the elements of flow sound a lot like the states that have been described by various mystical religious traditions for centuries, e.g. the dissolution of a feeling of separation between self and the rest of the universe. Warning: religious readers may find it disconcerting to read that there are scientific explanations for states that were once attributed to communion with god or the like.
While I’ve given Kotler’s book high rating, I haven’t yet given one reason to read it—and I do recommend people read it. First, while Csikszentmihalyi is the “father” of flow research, his methods were decidedly low tech--i.e. surveys and interviews—but Kotler reports on more recent studies involving neuroanatomy, neuroelectricity, and neurochemistry. Second, while Kotler delves into the science of the flow, he does so in a manner that is approachable to non-scientists. Finally, all of the narrative accounts of extreme athletes interspersed with the more technical commentary make for a very readable book, even if one is not particularly knowledgeable of—or interested in—such sports. I gave this book a high rating both for its food-for-thought value, and because of its high readability.
I will admit that I was not so enamored of the book when I first began it, and other readers may find the same irritation. For one thing, Kotler’s adoration of extreme athletes comes off sounding like diminishment of mainstream athletes and others involved in “flowy” activities. A prime example of this is seen in Chapter 1. Kotler gives us an endearing description of how gymnast Kerri Strug won the gold in the 1996 Olympics by sticking a landing on a shattered ankle. However, he then comes off a bit douchey when he suggests that Strug’s achievement pales in comparison to Danny Way’s skateboard jumps at the Great Wall of China.
For another thing, in his zealousness to prove that extreme sports practitioners are full-awesome while mainstream athletes are “meh,” Kotler makes some comparisons that seem apples and oranges to a neophyte such as me. If they are fair comparisons, he certainly doesn’t explain why they should be considered so. The best example of this is when he states that Olympic divers took decades to achieve increases in rotation that extreme skiers and skateboarders surpassed in much less time. This seems unreasonable for two reasons. First, divers have a very standard distance in which to achieve their acrobatics. In other words, they don’t get to build a “mega-platform” that’s 50% taller like Danny Way creates “mega-ramps” that were bigger than ever before. Of course, if you can increase the distance between yourself and the ground you can increase your spins, rotations, or whatever much more quickly (yes, your danger goes up vastly, I’m not diminishing that.) Second, the divers gained zero advantage from technological improvements, but the same cannot be said for skiers and skateboarders. In other words, if you go from skis made of oak to ones made of carbon nanotubes (that are 50 times stronger and 1/100th of the weight) of course you’re going to make gains faster.
Perhaps, I’m overstating Kotler’s disdain for mainstream athletics, but that’s what happens when one uses a national hero as a set up to show how much more awesome a relatively unknown skateboarder is (among skateboarders Way is extremely well-known but he’s not a household name as the Olympian was--at least for a short time in the late 90’s.) I suspect that Kotler was just trying to convince a general audience that the athletes he’s speaking about aren’t pot-smoking knuckleheads who are as likely to be seen on America’s Funniest Home Videos crushing their nads on a handrail as setting a new world record. These men and women are serious people engaged in serious activities, and they give it their all. They do deserve more respect for that than they are probably given by broad sectors of the populace. Perhaps, the importance of what these folks are achieving does need to be conveyed because the demographic that reads books and the one that follows extreme sports probably has wide wings of non-overlapping area. (I’m not saying skateboarders are illiterate or bookworms don’t skate--just that the Venn diagram has substantial areas of mutual exclusivity.)
As I indicated above, in each chapter we get both some insight into the nature of the flow and its triggers and stories of adventure / extreme athletes that serve as examples of what’s being discussed. In chapter 2 we learn what the flow looks like in terms of brain waves (i.e. high theta/low alpha, or between meditation and a relaxed / resting state of wakefulness.) In chapter 3, we learn about the neuroanatomy of the flow in terms of what areas of the brain it lights up, and that it’s at least as important what areas shut down. In chapter 4, we learn about the neurochemistry of the flow and that a cocktail of dopamine, norepinephrine, endorphins, anandamide, and serotonin makes up the chemistry of flow, but, critically, not so much with the adrenaline. The subsequent chapters deal with triggers of the flow, and what conditions best set up achievement of this state of mind.
Chapter 9 stands out as an important, but quite different, portion of the book. It deals with the downside (or dark side) of the flow. This has a lot to do with the fact that the aforementioned internal substances (and the flow state in general) are quite addictive. While it’s unfair to say, and unlikely, that the extreme athletes Kotler writes about (i.e. the ones at the top of their games) are drug addicts as some might assume of skate boarders, snow boarders, and the like, it may not be unreasonable to say that they have a kind of monkey on their backs—albeit a perfectly legal one.
As I’ve said, I recommend this book for anyone who is interested in this state of mind. One needn’t be interested in extreme sports to get a lot out of the book.
Kotler is by no means the first author to write about the flow. The term was inaugurated by a book entitled Flow first published in 1990 by a University of Chicago Psychology professor named Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. Csikszentmihalyi coined the term in the process of conducting a study on happiness. He found that happy people tended to engage in activities in which they could immerse themselves and find the zone. Contrary to the early part of Kotler’s book--in which it sounds like adventure athletes cornered the market on flow--Csikszentmihalyi says that said activity could be work or hobby and that the flow is to be found in poetry writing, yoga, martial arts, copy writing, or potentially any activity in which the skill level and challenge are both high.
(To be fair, Kotler does get around to recognizing that extreme athletes neither invented nor exclusively exploit the flow. However, his—well-taken—point is that such athletes are unusually good a finding, and dropping deep into, the flow in part because risk-taking behavior is an important trigger. And for free climbers [rock climbers without ropes], mega-ramp skateboarders, and bodysuit skydivers sometimes there are only two possible states of existence—the flow and being scraped off a rock.) It should be noted that some of the elements of flow sound a lot like the states that have been described by various mystical religious traditions for centuries, e.g. the dissolution of a feeling of separation between self and the rest of the universe. Warning: religious readers may find it disconcerting to read that there are scientific explanations for states that were once attributed to communion with god or the like.
While I’ve given Kotler’s book high rating, I haven’t yet given one reason to read it—and I do recommend people read it. First, while Csikszentmihalyi is the “father” of flow research, his methods were decidedly low tech--i.e. surveys and interviews—but Kotler reports on more recent studies involving neuroanatomy, neuroelectricity, and neurochemistry. Second, while Kotler delves into the science of the flow, he does so in a manner that is approachable to non-scientists. Finally, all of the narrative accounts of extreme athletes interspersed with the more technical commentary make for a very readable book, even if one is not particularly knowledgeable of—or interested in—such sports. I gave this book a high rating both for its food-for-thought value, and because of its high readability.
I will admit that I was not so enamored of the book when I first began it, and other readers may find the same irritation. For one thing, Kotler’s adoration of extreme athletes comes off sounding like diminishment of mainstream athletes and others involved in “flowy” activities. A prime example of this is seen in Chapter 1. Kotler gives us an endearing description of how gymnast Kerri Strug won the gold in the 1996 Olympics by sticking a landing on a shattered ankle. However, he then comes off a bit douchey when he suggests that Strug’s achievement pales in comparison to Danny Way’s skateboard jumps at the Great Wall of China.
For another thing, in his zealousness to prove that extreme sports practitioners are full-awesome while mainstream athletes are “meh,” Kotler makes some comparisons that seem apples and oranges to a neophyte such as me. If they are fair comparisons, he certainly doesn’t explain why they should be considered so. The best example of this is when he states that Olympic divers took decades to achieve increases in rotation that extreme skiers and skateboarders surpassed in much less time. This seems unreasonable for two reasons. First, divers have a very standard distance in which to achieve their acrobatics. In other words, they don’t get to build a “mega-platform” that’s 50% taller like Danny Way creates “mega-ramps” that were bigger than ever before. Of course, if you can increase the distance between yourself and the ground you can increase your spins, rotations, or whatever much more quickly (yes, your danger goes up vastly, I’m not diminishing that.) Second, the divers gained zero advantage from technological improvements, but the same cannot be said for skiers and skateboarders. In other words, if you go from skis made of oak to ones made of carbon nanotubes (that are 50 times stronger and 1/100th of the weight) of course you’re going to make gains faster.
Perhaps, I’m overstating Kotler’s disdain for mainstream athletics, but that’s what happens when one uses a national hero as a set up to show how much more awesome a relatively unknown skateboarder is (among skateboarders Way is extremely well-known but he’s not a household name as the Olympian was--at least for a short time in the late 90’s.) I suspect that Kotler was just trying to convince a general audience that the athletes he’s speaking about aren’t pot-smoking knuckleheads who are as likely to be seen on America’s Funniest Home Videos crushing their nads on a handrail as setting a new world record. These men and women are serious people engaged in serious activities, and they give it their all. They do deserve more respect for that than they are probably given by broad sectors of the populace. Perhaps, the importance of what these folks are achieving does need to be conveyed because the demographic that reads books and the one that follows extreme sports probably has wide wings of non-overlapping area. (I’m not saying skateboarders are illiterate or bookworms don’t skate--just that the Venn diagram has substantial areas of mutual exclusivity.)
As I indicated above, in each chapter we get both some insight into the nature of the flow and its triggers and stories of adventure / extreme athletes that serve as examples of what’s being discussed. In chapter 2 we learn what the flow looks like in terms of brain waves (i.e. high theta/low alpha, or between meditation and a relaxed / resting state of wakefulness.) In chapter 3, we learn about the neuroanatomy of the flow in terms of what areas of the brain it lights up, and that it’s at least as important what areas shut down. In chapter 4, we learn about the neurochemistry of the flow and that a cocktail of dopamine, norepinephrine, endorphins, anandamide, and serotonin makes up the chemistry of flow, but, critically, not so much with the adrenaline. The subsequent chapters deal with triggers of the flow, and what conditions best set up achievement of this state of mind.
Chapter 9 stands out as an important, but quite different, portion of the book. It deals with the downside (or dark side) of the flow. This has a lot to do with the fact that the aforementioned internal substances (and the flow state in general) are quite addictive. While it’s unfair to say, and unlikely, that the extreme athletes Kotler writes about (i.e. the ones at the top of their games) are drug addicts as some might assume of skate boarders, snow boarders, and the like, it may not be unreasonable to say that they have a kind of monkey on their backs—albeit a perfectly legal one.
As I’ve said, I recommend this book for anyone who is interested in this state of mind. One needn’t be interested in extreme sports to get a lot out of the book.
August 14, 2018
It's more "history of extreme sports" but I'm ok with that.
"The fight-or-flight response—a.k.a. the adrenaline rush—cocktails adrenaline, cortisol (the stress hormone), and norepinephrine. It’s an extreme stress response. The brain switches to reactive survival autopilot. Options are limited to three: fight, flee, or freeze. Flow is the opposite: a creative problem-solving state, options wide open."
"Studies have found that in professions with less direct feedback loops—stock analysis, psychiatry, and medicine—even the best get worse over time. Surgeons, by contrast, are the only class of physician that improve the longer they’re out of medical school. Why? Mess up on the table and someone dies. That’s immediate feedback."
"I hope you talk a little about how utterly fucked we can become when we get too old or broken or smart to keep it up. Not all of us experience a happy life after doing this shit for a couple of decades. I bet there are some PTSD similarities. It’s funny, I read Sebastian Jungers’s War and I learned something: The guys coming home are all screwed up, not because they saw people die as much as they missed the rush. I would never put myself in the same category as those fighting men, but it can be hard to get excited again. Ever. And that feeling sucks."
"The fight-or-flight response—a.k.a. the adrenaline rush—cocktails adrenaline, cortisol (the stress hormone), and norepinephrine. It’s an extreme stress response. The brain switches to reactive survival autopilot. Options are limited to three: fight, flee, or freeze. Flow is the opposite: a creative problem-solving state, options wide open."
"Studies have found that in professions with less direct feedback loops—stock analysis, psychiatry, and medicine—even the best get worse over time. Surgeons, by contrast, are the only class of physician that improve the longer they’re out of medical school. Why? Mess up on the table and someone dies. That’s immediate feedback."
"I hope you talk a little about how utterly fucked we can become when we get too old or broken or smart to keep it up. Not all of us experience a happy life after doing this shit for a couple of decades. I bet there are some PTSD similarities. It’s funny, I read Sebastian Jungers’s War and I learned something: The guys coming home are all screwed up, not because they saw people die as much as they missed the rush. I would never put myself in the same category as those fighting men, but it can be hard to get excited again. Ever. And that feeling sucks."
December 27, 2015
I am really tempted to say, that "flow" is most probably the meaning or purpose of life. There I said that :-)
All this time this phenomenon has been called by different terms: "mystical experience", "peak awareness" and even "happiness". It has also been approached in different ways: mystical/spiritual traditions, philosophy, arts, collective movements, drugs etc. We caught a glimpse of what it feels when, for example, having a good conversation with friends when time dilates (feels faster or stand still, or just does not matter), seeing jazz band in their groove, etc.
What this book offers is a closer look of what "flow" is drawing examples from extreme sports in which the only option is "flow or die", suggesting ways to achieve it and warning us of its pitfalls. This is one of those rare self help/personal development books which is completed with a sanity check.
An inspiring read!
All this time this phenomenon has been called by different terms: "mystical experience", "peak awareness" and even "happiness". It has also been approached in different ways: mystical/spiritual traditions, philosophy, arts, collective movements, drugs etc. We caught a glimpse of what it feels when, for example, having a good conversation with friends when time dilates (feels faster or stand still, or just does not matter), seeing jazz band in their groove, etc.
What this book offers is a closer look of what "flow" is drawing examples from extreme sports in which the only option is "flow or die", suggesting ways to achieve it and warning us of its pitfalls. This is one of those rare self help/personal development books which is completed with a sanity check.
An inspiring read!
July 20, 2017
Um bom livro abordando o Fluxo (flowgenomeproject.com).
Narra as desventuras dos praticantes de esportes radicais e sua ascensão, atribuindo o êxito da superação de marcas ao "Fluxo".
O Fluxo seria um estado da mente conectado ao Universo, com um poder de processamento inconcebível para os não praticantes: raciocínio, percepção, reflexos, ...
O que falta é uma abordagem detalhada de como chegar ao fluxo.
Narra as desventuras dos praticantes de esportes radicais e sua ascensão, atribuindo o êxito da superação de marcas ao "Fluxo".
O Fluxo seria um estado da mente conectado ao Universo, com um poder de processamento inconcebível para os não praticantes: raciocínio, percepção, reflexos, ...
O que falta é uma abordagem detalhada de como chegar ao fluxo.
June 20, 2015
The book potray yhe life and achievements of several incredible extreme athletes and introduce the concept of "being in the flow" as the reason for their amazing achievements. I would have liked a much more elaboration on this flow concept and how we can apply it in our own life.
September 21, 2018
Kotler is a fantastic, talented story teller — must more powerful than watching a “real” video of the described events, especially for surfing and skateboarding. His storytelling extends to the internal experience of the interviewees, of which we obviously can’t have any video, so the engaging descriptions are valuable.
Unfortunately, I believe these stories and internal experiences are both exaggerated for dramatic effect, but also simplified to fit with Kotler’s world view. ESP is absolutely not the brain pattern matching and predicting microseconds ahead of reality. If Flow were ONLY about combinations of neurotransmitters, it wouldn’t be as interesting a phenomenon as Kotler advertises.
Hyperbole abounds: people living in Flow are “the next stage in human evolution”. (p74) “Video game players get into flow so frequently […] explaining the lure of the joystick.” (p98) “a group of people harnessing flow on a regular basis, Silicon Valley” (p98) including a crazy example of Oracle’s software engineers. Ha. Through the FlowGenomeProject Kotler is selling his ability to create flow for people, and certainly he is actively working to expand and maximize his commercial target audience.
As confident as Kotler’s writing sounds, there are detail mistakes, such as on page 189 when he gets delta position of skydiving backwards – it’s head down not feet down. Makes me doubt his biochem and neurophysiological details.
Some interesting quotes and ideas, but overall sweeps too much meaning into his favorite topics: flow and extreme sports. Nevertheless, I didn’t come to love extreme and risky human “adventures” as much as the author needed me to, in order for me to prize the book. Even with biochemical explanations, I still don’t understand flow experiences, but I see them just as likely to arise from the mundane. And superman isn’t just about risk and physical superlatives, at least that is not what is most admirable about him.
A bit more credit for his optimism and positivity, but still, he stretched 60-80pgs of content into 200, and that’s deeply frustrating for me... since it serves him while blocking my flow.
Unfortunately, I believe these stories and internal experiences are both exaggerated for dramatic effect, but also simplified to fit with Kotler’s world view. ESP is absolutely not the brain pattern matching and predicting microseconds ahead of reality. If Flow were ONLY about combinations of neurotransmitters, it wouldn’t be as interesting a phenomenon as Kotler advertises.
Hyperbole abounds: people living in Flow are “the next stage in human evolution”. (p74) “Video game players get into flow so frequently […] explaining the lure of the joystick.” (p98) “a group of people harnessing flow on a regular basis, Silicon Valley” (p98) including a crazy example of Oracle’s software engineers. Ha. Through the FlowGenomeProject Kotler is selling his ability to create flow for people, and certainly he is actively working to expand and maximize his commercial target audience.
As confident as Kotler’s writing sounds, there are detail mistakes, such as on page 189 when he gets delta position of skydiving backwards – it’s head down not feet down. Makes me doubt his biochem and neurophysiological details.
Some interesting quotes and ideas, but overall sweeps too much meaning into his favorite topics: flow and extreme sports. Nevertheless, I didn’t come to love extreme and risky human “adventures” as much as the author needed me to, in order for me to prize the book. Even with biochemical explanations, I still don’t understand flow experiences, but I see them just as likely to arise from the mundane. And superman isn’t just about risk and physical superlatives, at least that is not what is most admirable about him.
A bit more credit for his optimism and positivity, but still, he stretched 60-80pgs of content into 200, and that’s deeply frustrating for me... since it serves him while blocking my flow.
November 10, 2017
This is now my favorite book on flow, mastery, and finding and staying in your zone ever.
It explores the history of ultimate performance from the work of William James, to Maslow's deeper work on human thriving, to Jung's Analytical Psychology, to David Eagleman's work in time dilation after fear states during exhilaration.
It explores the role of imagination, visualization, mental rehearsal, letting go of ego so that the part of your brain telling you limiting identity stories can shut off creating that hypofrontality, know-nothing state the neurolinguistic programming folks are always reminding us is key to modeling without projection of our own intentions and tainting our observation with culturally conditioned values.
It explores the power of being able to be present to the truth here, now while also holding the model of your ideal future in mind long enough to cue your unconscious into its natural action.
It talks about training intuition through enhanced and precise, goal-specific practicing in an environment where you are fully attentive to and fully immersed in the feedback loop and not being distracted into negative emotional states based on self-consciousness and prior trauma and emotional wounds.
It digs into Carol Dweck's mindset work and how it fits into the bigger picture of willingness to perceive and process the entire truth about a given moment and what it says about your deeper self.
It even puts that marshmallow study about willpower and self control in the proper context so that those of us who would have eaten the fucken marshmallow know that there is a path to success for us hedonistic, sensation-seekers.
I repeat: This is the best researched and most clearly communicated body of work around fully transforming your self and life through embracing your passion and going bawlZ 2 da windows and walls. How to overcome the fear you will inevitably encounter and use it as your signal guiding you to your sweet spot beyond your cramping and constraining comfort zone.
It explores the history of ultimate performance from the work of William James, to Maslow's deeper work on human thriving, to Jung's Analytical Psychology, to David Eagleman's work in time dilation after fear states during exhilaration.
It explores the role of imagination, visualization, mental rehearsal, letting go of ego so that the part of your brain telling you limiting identity stories can shut off creating that hypofrontality, know-nothing state the neurolinguistic programming folks are always reminding us is key to modeling without projection of our own intentions and tainting our observation with culturally conditioned values.
It explores the power of being able to be present to the truth here, now while also holding the model of your ideal future in mind long enough to cue your unconscious into its natural action.
It talks about training intuition through enhanced and precise, goal-specific practicing in an environment where you are fully attentive to and fully immersed in the feedback loop and not being distracted into negative emotional states based on self-consciousness and prior trauma and emotional wounds.
It digs into Carol Dweck's mindset work and how it fits into the bigger picture of willingness to perceive and process the entire truth about a given moment and what it says about your deeper self.
It even puts that marshmallow study about willpower and self control in the proper context so that those of us who would have eaten the fucken marshmallow know that there is a path to success for us hedonistic, sensation-seekers.
I repeat: This is the best researched and most clearly communicated body of work around fully transforming your self and life through embracing your passion and going bawlZ 2 da windows and walls. How to overcome the fear you will inevitably encounter and use it as your signal guiding you to your sweet spot beyond your cramping and constraining comfort zone.
February 3, 2018
This was sort of a disappointing book. It started well but seemed to focus on how to achieve state of flow in sports. It seemed like author tried to go deeper into topic but somehow it always came back to athletes or just people involved in sports... So I find title quite misleading. Decoding ultimate athlete performance would have been a better name.
If you haven't read Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, skip this and read the original one because Csikszentmihalyi nails it all. This...nothing new. Nothing useful, same old same old...well I can't decide whether it's good or not and for that I've rated this 2 stars. Don't waste your time with this.
If you haven't read Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, skip this and read the original one because Csikszentmihalyi nails it all. This...nothing new. Nothing useful, same old same old...well I can't decide whether it's good or not and for that I've rated this 2 stars. Don't waste your time with this.
February 28, 2019
I wasn’t expecting flow to be the major theme in this book. The stories about the extreme sport athletes were interesting and inspiring. They really do know how to take things to the next level! They are constantly improving and coming up with new variations to tricks, new routes in climbs, and even new kinds of sports. Flow is the tool these athletes use to accomplish this and finding happiness in the process.
October 8, 2020
Simple science explained alongside stories of extreme courage and the extreme risk (the dark side) of Flow. It’s an easy read and very good for a beginner looking to learn more about Flow States and consciousness, extreme sports and other sciences.
February 10, 2018
Fascinating and entertaining!!!! Our brains are amazing
Read
January 16, 2022Gave up, could not finish, very slow pace
But i’ll try again
But i’ll try again
February 2, 2020
A combination of extreme sport stories and an examination of “flow”. The author uses some interesting science to describe various aspects of flow. The stories are iconic moments in extreme sports history which he uses as examples of flow, and would be entertaining to the action/adventure/extreme sport enthusiast.
July 16, 2020
Super awesomeness about the athletic abilities. The flow state is something else. I know when you drop into it for a hour focus is amazing!
March 9, 2021
This is an incredible read—made me think and reflect more than any other book in recent memory. Well done! Highly recommend.
October 24, 2023
Half heartedly listened in the car because our cousin recommended it. It was repetitive. I did get the point. Flow . . .
April 2, 2015
The author wrote a fascinating account on how the concept of flow has pushed the limits of man, especially in extreme sports like base-jumping, mountain skiing, or extreme kayaking. He goes into the theory of flow and on how it allows people to do the unthinkable. The theoretical part of flow is well described using the work of Professor Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, who is one of the most famous psychologists in the area of positive psychology.
In extreme sports, people are put into the state of flow immediately because of the danger of the sport. And because flow allows them to do amazing things, a positive cycle ensues where athletes are constantly pushing the edge to reach the state of flow because it allows them to do amazing things besides providing a chemical rush when they reach flow that mimics how drugs impact dopamine and serotonin in the brain. Flow is addictive, athletes seek it, and despite the dangers, it pushes man past its normal limits.
My criticism of the book is that the author is not a scientist but wrote a book that centers on how flow affects athletes. People doing crazy things in extreme sports is interesting but the concept of flow could have been explained in 2 pages.
In the book,I think the author stretched it a bit and implied a causal connection between flow and performance that is not so apparent. I would argue that flow has always been around and the reason why athletes have made such strides in athletic feats is in part to several factors, one of which is just more people participating in the sport or event, like in skateboarding or surfing. This was an entertaining read but not very scientific.
In extreme sports, people are put into the state of flow immediately because of the danger of the sport. And because flow allows them to do amazing things, a positive cycle ensues where athletes are constantly pushing the edge to reach the state of flow because it allows them to do amazing things besides providing a chemical rush when they reach flow that mimics how drugs impact dopamine and serotonin in the brain. Flow is addictive, athletes seek it, and despite the dangers, it pushes man past its normal limits.
My criticism of the book is that the author is not a scientist but wrote a book that centers on how flow affects athletes. People doing crazy things in extreme sports is interesting but the concept of flow could have been explained in 2 pages.
In the book,I think the author stretched it a bit and implied a causal connection between flow and performance that is not so apparent. I would argue that flow has always been around and the reason why athletes have made such strides in athletic feats is in part to several factors, one of which is just more people participating in the sport or event, like in skateboarding or surfing. This was an entertaining read but not very scientific.
December 23, 2014
I enjoy Steven Kotler's writings. In true Kotler journalism style, this book is written in an intriguing and convincing manner with lots of references to and examples of death defying extreme sports as the baseline theme to support the scientific merit to the concept of “Flow” – which is the state in which people are so involved in an activity that nothing else seems to matter; the experience itself is so enjoyable that people do it even at great cost, for the sheer state of doing it, or in short, "Flow" is roughly the equivalent to what most people refer to as being "in the zone" or "in the groove".
If seeing extreme adventure sports heroes do death defying stunts makes you want to get out there and live a life of greatness or get your heart racing and adrenalin pumping, then you will enjoy this book. If this is not you but the topic of “Flow” is still of interest to you, then rather read the works from the original scientist behind this concept – Dr. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi – as published in his 1990 perennial bestselling book “Flow - The Psychology of Optimal Experience”, his 1993 book “The Evolving Self: A Psychology for the Third Millennium”, and his 1996 book “Creativity, Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention”.
If seeing extreme adventure sports heroes do death defying stunts makes you want to get out there and live a life of greatness or get your heart racing and adrenalin pumping, then you will enjoy this book. If this is not you but the topic of “Flow” is still of interest to you, then rather read the works from the original scientist behind this concept – Dr. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi – as published in his 1990 perennial bestselling book “Flow - The Psychology of Optimal Experience”, his 1993 book “The Evolving Self: A Psychology for the Third Millennium”, and his 1996 book “Creativity, Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention”.
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