Research of psychological flow has seen major progress within the recent decades, portraying the peak performance associated with this psychological state. Along with its association with optimal performance, flow has been linked to effortless attention. However, recent work suggests that the state of flow can take considerable cognitive effort. In this paper, we lay the foundation for a theory of effortful attention during flow, and how this may be utilized to mitigate the performance decrement associated with highly demanding tasks such as vigilance. We suspect that the state of flow can delay the vigilance decrement, which can be of great benefit for high-stake fields requiring prolonged cognitive performance, such as air traffic management, where vigilance is vital to the safety of air traffic or nuclear plant monitoring.
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