Flow in Everyday Life: Activity Domains, Individual Differences, and Wellbeing Outcomes

The purpose of this study is to provide a comprehensive examination of how individuals experience flow in everyday life and how these experiences translate into wellbeing, using four complementary analytic approaches applied to the same two-wave dataset. In doing so, we explicitly distinguish between where flow is most likely to occur in daily life and where it is most consequential for wellbeing. First, consistent with flow theory, we test whether individuals experience different levels of flow across physical, academic, and maintenance activities (domains that vary naturally in challenge–skill balance, clarity of goals, and environmental structure) and assess which domain-specific flow experiences are most strongly associated with wellbeing. Second, we evaluate a conditional process model in which strengths use and playfulness facilitate flow, flow proneness strengthens these effects as a dispositional capacity for entering flow, and vitality functions as a state-based energetic resource that determines how strongly flow promotes wellbeing. Third, we examine individual differences by testing whether baseline personality, self-regulation, and flow proneness predict changes in flow and wellbeing over time, and whether vitality moderates the degree to which flow contributes to wellbeing gains. Finally, we investigate activity-specific goal engagement as a pathway into flow, testing whether individuals who engage more deeply with their goals experience more flow within each domain, and whether vitality moderates the conversion of goal engagement into flow. Collectively, these analyses offer an integrated account of how personal strengths, playful engagement, trait capacities, energetic resources, and goal-directed behaviour shape flow and wellbeing in everyday life.