2026-05-16 –, ENUM
Language: English
We all know what it feels like to be fully absorbed in something: time dissolving, effort becoming effortless, the rest of the world gone quiet. Researchers call this mental state of sustained attention the “flow state.” It is also, for many people, frustratingly rare. Why is it so hard to get there? This talk starts from that question and refuses the easy answers.
Many people complain that they can't focus anymore, and there are explanations that are worth taking seriously: tech platforms are built to grab our attention, social media keeps pulling us back, and our feeds are designed to keep us scrolling, not thinking.
Drawing on the research on flow experience, this talk explores how attention is at the center of a mess where the personal and the political are genuinely tangled.
I am a doctoral candidate in Cognitive Psychology at the University of Konstanz, where I study what happens to our sense of time and body when we are completely absorbed in something. In other words: I research flow. I use virtual reality, and behavioural experiments to understand the temporal and bodily dynamics of this state.