Nick DiMaggio’s Reviews > The Art of Impossible: A Peak Performance Primer > Status Update

Autonomy is a flow trigger because autonomy and attention are coupled systems. When we’re in charge of both our mind (freedom of thought) and our destiny (freedom of choice), our whole being gets involved.

Autotelic Experience: The experience is intensely and intrinsically rewarding or, in technical parlance, “autotelic” — meaning the activity is its own reward. The thing we’re doing is so pleasurable and meaningful that we will go to great lengths to do it again, even at enormous personal risk and expense.

“Sometimes it’s necessary to go a long distance out of the way to come back a short distance correctly”.

“Millions of items are presented to my senses which never properly enter my experience. Why? Because they have no interest to me. My experience is what I agree to attend to. Only those items which I notice shape my mind — without selective interest, experience is an utter chaos.” - WJ

What should we learn? Learn to sharpen your sword. Learn to use your strengths to advance your cause. If what we’re learning completely aligns with who we are, we speed the plow. The work gets done faster, and you’ll reap a more bountiful harvest in the end.

“We don’t rise to the level of our expectations, we fall to the level of our training.”

Recovery is critical to sustained peak performance, but peak performers can become a little obsessive, getting into workaholic mode and never getting out. So knowing how to stop working without feeling bad about stopping is key for long-term success. It’s not just that you need to recover, it’s that feeling bad about taking time to recover, even if you are taking the time, actually hampers recovery.

Yes, it may be considered unfortunate to learn that peak performance is an infinite game. But it’s also why a specific quartet of skills (motivation, learning, creativity, and flow) matters so much. Motivation is what gets you into the game; learning is what helps you continue to play; creativity is how you steer; and flow is how you turbo-boost the results beyond all rational standards and reasonable expectations

“When you’re young, your potential is infinite. You might do anything, really. You might be Einstein. You might be DiMaggio. Then you get to an age when what you might be gives way to what you have been. You weren’t Einstein. You weren’t anything. That’s a bad moment.”