One Sunday I was helping at my church nursery. I design loudspeakers, so I was thinking about how sound reflects off walls. I picked up a three inch foam ball and bounced it off the wall, left to right, catching it each time. I watched the angles. The ball left the wall at the same angle it arrived. Hit it head-on and it came straight back. Hit it at a glancing angle and it skimmed away. It is the same law of reflection that sound follows. I was bouncing a ball, but I was watching a sound path I normally can’t see.

Then I started slapping it back with an open hand. Then with a closed fist. Then I was having fun.

The ball was light, soft and small. I thought, if only I had a better ball.

I built the ball before I had words for it. Later I came across the OODA Loop, the decision cycle John Boyd developed: observe, orient, decide, act. It described exactly what the ball asks of you, a live read and respond with no script.

Then I came across flow, the state Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi described. Researchers such as Steven Kotler and the Flow Research Collective have since mapped the triggers that appear to lead into it. I started wondering how those triggers connect to the loop, because running the loop seemed to line up with several of them.

I can’t tell you the ball reliably produces flow. I think the connection is worth testing. That is the category I am building: Tactical Flow State Training.