Prism Decision Systems

  • Email
  • RSS
  • HOME
  • THE EIGHT KEYS
    • Buy Now
    • Reader Praise for the Eight Keys
  • BLOG
    • Papers
    • Readings
You are here: Home / Simply fascinating / Flow, Keith Smart and a national championship

03/28/2013 by Sean Brady

Flow, Keith Smart and a national championship

USA Today columnist Mike Lopresti called Keith Smart to ask him what he remembered about his last-second shot to beat Syracuse in the 1987 National Championship game in the New Orleans Superdome. Smart’s description of the moment is a great example of the psychological experience referred to as flow.

“What does he remember 26 years later? The silence. Syracuse led 73-72, and there was one chance left, and the crowd in the New Orleans Superdome was 64,959. He had just scored 10 of his team’s last 13 points to keep the Hoosiers afloat. Yet all he heard was silence. ‘The game seemed to have slowed down for me,’ Smart said. ‘Players talk about how they get into a zone. You don’t get that very often. That zone is when you have all the time in the world to make a shot. I didn’t hear anything in the arena. I didn’t see anything. It was like I was playing basketball by myself. I didn’t hear noise again, until the shot went in.’

In his seminal work Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi describes the phenonomen as follows: “One of the most common descriptions of optimal experience is that time no longer seems to pass the way it ordinarily does. The objective, external duration we measure with reference to outside events like night and day, or the orderly progression of clocks, is rendered irrelevant by the rhythms dictated by the activity. Often hours seemed to pass by in minutes; in general, most people report that time seems to pass much faster.” The safest generalization to make about this phenomenon is to say that during the flow experience the sense of time bears little relation to the passage of time as measured by the absolute convention of the clock.”

The subject of flow is fascinating and I highly recommend Csikszentmihalyi’s book.

Share this post:

  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • LinkedIn
  • Reddit
  • Pocket
  • Pinterest
  • Print

Related

Filed Under: Simply fascinating

Like What You’re Reading? Subscribe Today!

Contact

[email protected]

Buy Now!

You Are What You Decide is now available in paperback and for all e-Readers.

BLOG: SUBSCRIBE TODAY!

Blog: recent posts

Prism Decision Systems, LLC: 25 fulfilling years

Resilience in three steps: endure, adapt & thrive

How to run successful virtual decision-making meetings

The power of Amazon’s press release and FAQ protocol

Leadership during a pandemic: Joseph McShane, S.J.

Blog: all posts

BLOG: SUBSCRIBE TODAY!

Contact

Sean Brady
President
Prism Decision Systems, LLC
[email protected]

 

Search this website

Connect

  • Email
  • RSS

Copyright © 2022 · Prism Decision Systems, LLC · [email protected]