Flow is often misunderstood as a matter of accumulating skills through repetition. In reality it is a transformation from deliberate conscious action toward ease and autopilot. Skill at the highest level stops feeling like work because it no longer requires active management of every detail.

This change from effort to instinct is explained by the Four Stages of Competence as summarized below.

Stage 1 / Unconscious Incompetence: In this first stage, individuals are unaware of what they do not know. They may feel confident simply because they have not yet encountered the complexity of the task. Ignorance is quite literally bliss.