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Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

4.09 · Rating details · 59,713 ratings · 3,013 reviews

Psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's investigations of "optimal experience" have revealed that what makes an experience genuinely satisfying is a state of consciousness called flow. During flow, people typically experience deep enjoyment, creativity, and a total involvement with life. Csikszentmihalyi demonstrates the ways this positive state can be controlled, not just ...more

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Paperback, 303 pages

Published January 1st 1990 by Harper Perennial

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Aug 09, 2011 Andy Mitchell added it

My notes, including liberal use of direct quotes:

8 elements of enjoyment:

1. confront challenging but completable tasks
2. concentration
3. clear goals
4. immediate feedback
5. deep, effortless involvement (lack of awareness of worries and frustrations)
6. sense of control over actions
7. concern for self disappears (paradoxically awareness of self is heightened immediately after flow)
8. sense of duration of time is altered

5 elements of happy teenagers' growing up:

1. clarity
2. centering: pare ...more

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Sep 18, 2009 Meg rated it it was amazing

This is quite possibly the most important book I have ever read. Consider it the official "Handbook on Happiness." Part science and part philosophy, it essentially defines happiness itself, then proceeds to explain in detail how we can attain it every waking moment of our lives (hypothetically at least). Although far from a "light read," I found the intense mental concentration the book demanded to be almost physically pleasurable (yes, I am in fact the very definition of a nerd). When I closed ...more

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Jul 14, 2014 Nathan Maharaj rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: abandoned

You know that uncle you have, who doesn't have any kids and loves to talk your ear off every Thanksgiving, and he's a really nice guy, and he seems to know a lot of stuff, but when you look up the stuff he quotes he seems to always have it a bit off, and he never seems to have a book with him so maybe he did all his reading when he was young, but there's no point calling bullshit on him, and you get a sense he's not really listening anyway -- well, this book is written by that guy.

This could ha ...more

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Nov 13, 2013 Rowena rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: psychology

"While humankind collectively has increased its material powers a thousandfold, it has not advanced very far in terms of improving the content of experience."- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Flow

I found this book very intriguing. It made me think a lot, especially on what it means to be happy and satisfied. This is not a self-help manual and the reason I picked it up despite it's self-helpy title and cover is because I had read some of Csikszentmihalyi's stuff in my developmental psychology course an ...more

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Nov 19, 2020 Krishna Chaitanya rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: nonfiction, 2020, psychology, self-help

Flow - The state in which people are so involved in an activity that nothing else seems to matter; the experience itself is so enjoyable that people will do it even at great cost, for the sheer sake of doing it.

The quality of one's life can be determined by the control one has on their consciousness. So, how can one control their consciousness? By developing an autotelic personality, with this one can transform an ordinary experience into flow state. Be cautious about the qualities,
self-conscio ...more

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Oct 18, 2015 Amir Tesla rated it it was amazing

Shelves: productivity, favorites

Flow is the state in which you are so involved in an activity that nothing else seems to matter; the concentration is so intense that there is no attention left to think about anything else, or to worry about any problem.
Full summary of flow: the psychology of optimal experience

I consider myself an obsessive maniac when it comes to productivity. On the pursuit of ways and tools to optimize it, I stumbled on this marvelous book flow: the psychology of optimal experience , and autotelic personal ...more

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Jan 19, 2020 Trevor rated it really liked it

Shelves: education, psychology

I have meant to read this book for years, but then, there are lots of books I’ve meant to read for years – and the longer I seem to have ‘meant to’ read a book, it seems the less likely I am to actually get around to reading it – a case in point is Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid. The inspiration to finally read Flow came from my current interest in the gamification of work, where other books I've read around that topic keep mentioning it.

This book is consciously a kind of footnote I have meant to read this book for years, but then, there are lots of books I’ve meant to read for years – and the longer I seem to have ‘meant to’ read a book, it seems the less likely I am to actually get around to reading it – a case in point is Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid. The inspiration to finally read Flow came from my current interest in the gamification of work, where other books I've read around that topic keep mentioning it.

This book is consciously a kind of footnote to Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics. In that book, Aristotle says that the point of life is to be ‘happy’ – or rather to achieve eudaimonia, which I guess means to be ‘good souled’. To achieve this state involves, in part anyway, achieving Arete – developing your own personal excellence. For Aristotle, actively doing what you are good at doing is what makes life worth living.

This book refers to the experience as ‘flow’ as basically doing whatever it is that is your arete. But this is a book of psychology, so flow is also defined as a mental state with very particular characteristics. For example, you are likely to become less aware of the passage of time when you are in flow (unless the passage of time is a key aspect of whatever it is that you are doing – where getting things done in a particular sequence at just the right time is what is important). All the same, the overall passage of time, in the sense that you look up after starting the task only to be surprised that most of the day has gone, is a key idea here. Other than time-flying, another key idea is that when you achieve a flow-like state you stop thinking about yourself – and this is something I really do agree with. Spending a lot of time thinking about yourself could easily be the definition of a wasted life.

We might as well learn some more Greek – Autotelic is a word that is used throughout this. It means a self-contained activity whose practice is its own end. As such, if you are engaged in an autotelic activity it is likely to feel meaningful for its own sake. For instance, you might be practicing your golf swing. Your desire to be a better player is likely to be the thing that makes this activity so all-consuming. Flow, then, is when your desire to achieve something that is meaning to you consumes the totality of your concentration and being.

I guess my problem with the idea of ‘flow’ is that it seems to me to be a version of Vygotsky’s ZPD (Zone of Proximal Development), if one that is not quite as clear or useful. So, the rest of this review is going to look at my understanding of the relationship of the ZPD to flow.

For Vygotsky, we humans could be known as Homo-Cognita – the learning man – since learning is utterly central to what it means to being human. I think happiness, in the Aristotelian sense, can only be achieved when we still have something left to learn. So, it is lucky the world is constructed in such a way that there is always something else to learn. To really learn we need material that is presented to us in a very particular way. It needs to be directed just over the edge of what we are currently able to do, but not so far over that edge that we fail with every attempt. There is nothing to learn if what we are being taught is too far beyond our current abilities, since if we are never successful, we will be crushed by our inabilities and failings. But this is also true if what we are seeking to achieve is something we already know how to do, since if it is so easy that we succeed with every attempt, we have nothing to learn in that case either and our engagement will be crushed by our own ability.

All of which means that the point of ‘teaching’ someone is for the 'teacher' to help them find what is too easy and what is too hard, and then teach within the zone between those two extremes. That zone what Vygotsky called the Zone of Proximal Development – well, sort of, this is all something of an oversimplification, but then, most things are.

One complicating factor here is that Vygotsky believed that we generally learn from someone who already knows how to do the ring we are seeking to learn. And so, learning is about being in contact with a person who already knows and being open to learn from them, as well as them seeking to teach us things that are a stretch for us to grasp.

This is part of the reason why I think Vygotsky’s idea of the ZPD is a better way to understand ‘flow’ than Csikszentmihalyi’s. I think notions that are as vague as arete (although he doesn’t use that word himself, I think he does use the concept) struggle to compete with the clarity of Vygotsky’s idea of the ZPD. For Vygotsky, flow is an expected outcome of being in the ZPD – where one is learning and being constantly challenged by what is there to be learnt. In fact, Vygotsky helps to explain why we find the challenge that comes with being in the ZPD so compelling. Something that I think is harder to understand with the flow concept, or rather, seems to me to be taken for granted in flow. I read something recently that questioned whether it was possible to be in flow if you are not already an expert in the activity. I think this is a confusion that isn’t possible if ‘flow’ is contained within the notion of the ZPD. Within the ZPD, and so at all stages of learning, there are challenges that are just at and slightly beyond the boundaries of your ability, and if what you are learning is meaningful to you and is just beyond your current ability, then you are likely to be in ‘flow’ - a highly engaged and productive learning state.

This is part of the reason why computer games are so compelling and why people might start playing one at 7pm only to realise with a shock that it has suddenly become 2am. Such games are structured so as to present you with a series of challenges that are always just beyond your current abilities and then to feed you lots of rewards for meeting the various components of those challenges as your skills develop. But I think this is also part of the reason why playing computer games can be ultimately depressing. Because, in the end you might well have built a remarkable civilisation or a whole Minecraft world – but even so it will remain a rather barren place, and the skills you have learnt are unlikely to be of much relevance to any other aspect of your life. Computer games, then, can leave you feeling crushed when you finish them, because in the end the esoteric skills they expect you to develop hardly mean anything at all to any other aspect of your life, and once the game is over, well, it's over. Which is hardly Aristotle’s idea of happiness.

I’m not sure if I would recommend this book or not, to be honest. I guess it is a classic, and so, for that reason alone it is good to have read. But really, I think more people should know about Vygotsky and his ZPD, and so, perhaps reading Mind in Society would be a more productive way for you to spend your time. Hard to know.
...more

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Nov 19, 2015 Joselito Honestly and Brilliantly rated it it was amazing

How must you live your life?

Live it in happiness. But how to be happy? When I was a small boy I would often be missing my father for two straight days only to find out that he had been playing mahjong with friends nonstop for 48 or so hours, not getting tired, or sleepy or even hungry (despite the lack of proper meals). The game is played by a group of four, and when my mother would send me to check my father out from wherever part of the neighbourhood they’ve set up their mahjong table to play,
How must you live your life?

Live it in happiness. But how to be happy? When I was a small boy I would often be missing my father for two straight days only to find out that he had been playing mahjong with friends nonstop for 48 or so hours, not getting tired, or sleepy or even hungry (despite the lack of proper meals). The game is played by a group of four, and when my mother would send me to check my father out from wherever part of the neighbourhood they’ve set up their mahjong table to play, I’d see them still going at it seemingly still with full energy and attention, as if they have just begun their sessions.

I never learned to play mahjong. But I got into my father’s second favourite game: chess. I’ve experienced playing chess games starting Saturday noontime and stopping only at noontime of the next day, Sunday. Never feeling any discomfort, tiredness or the lack of sleep. This is called THE FLOW—the secret of happiness, a state of concentration so focused that it amounts to absolute absorption in an activity.

Expand the scope of this “flow” and prolong it. Imagine yourself being in the “flow” until the day you die. Then you could say—regardless of your station in life—that you’ve lived life to the fullest. A quote from the book:

“…happiness is not something that happens. It is not the result of good fortune or random chance. It is not something that money can buy or power command. It does not depend on outside event, but, rather, on how we interpret them. Happiness, in fact, is a condition that must be prepared for, cultivated, and defended privately by each person. People who learn to control inner experience will be able to determine the quality of their lives, which is as close as any of us can come to being happy.

“Yet we cannot reach happiness by consciously searching for it. ‘Ask yourself whether you are happy,’ said J.S. Mill, ‘and you cease to be so.’ It is by being fully involved with every detail of our lives, whether good or bad, that we find happiness, not by trying to look for it directly. Viktor Frankl, the Austrian psychologist, summarised it beautifully in the preface to his book ‘Man’s Search for Meaning’: ‘Don’t aim at success—the more you aim at it and make it a target, the more you are going to miss it. For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue…as the unintended side-effect of one’s personal dedication to a course greater than oneself.” ...more

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Nov 13, 2011 Jeff marked it as books-i-didn-t-finish

Given the attention this book has received I had some pretty lofty expectations. Sadly, those expectations weren't met. Part of the problem is that "Flow" is widely cited by the current crop of pop-pscyhology books. For that reason I felt like I got the idea of "flow" long before I even cracked C's book. My "heard it all before" feeling wasn't helped by the redundancy that C builds into his text. Authors and editors take note, one really good example or analogy is usually enough to illustrate a ...more

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Aug 21, 2007 Mark rated it really liked it

Shelves: psychology

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi created the notion of "flow" to describe the experience which we have all had -- but all too rarely for most of us -- of becoming so immersed in and challenged by an experience that we lose track of time, our own self-concsciousness and feel most fully engaged in life. Interestingly, he found, this has little to do with people's most enjoyable leisure activities. Folks love to watch TV and movies, eat dinner with friends and so forth, but rarely does that achieve a state ...more

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Jun 12, 2013 Diem rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: 2013

Csikszentmihalyi's seminal work in the field of positive psychology reveals a man with a ridiculously hard to spell last name. I can't be the first person to posit this as the reason why he became so interested in how people overcome mental chaos (psychic entropy as it is called in the book) to achieve harmony and, I almost typed satisfaction but that would be missing the point. Csikszentmihalyi (hereafter referred to as Mr. C) actually prescribes against a state of perpetual satisfaction becaus Csikszentmihalyi's seminal work in the field of positive psychology reveals a man with a ridiculously hard to spell last name. I can't be the first person to posit this as the reason why he became so interested in how people overcome mental chaos (psychic entropy as it is called in the book) to achieve harmony and, I almost typed satisfaction but that would be missing the point. Csikszentmihalyi (hereafter referred to as Mr. C) actually prescribes against a state of perpetual satisfaction because in order for humans to experience the full measure of life they must find the balance between external challenges and their own skill sets. In pursuing challenges that match your skill set you will continually add to your skill set and thus seek new challenges. This harmony will both be created by and result in what he calls flow: the full immersion of the attention in each moment and action of life.

Well written throughout, I found the end of the book the most compelling. Here, Mr. C shows us the long view and addresses the synthesis of the various aspects of flow into a harmonious life. He focuses one section on life's meaning.

Now, if your life has been infused with meaning by or through religion, you might not find this section as compelling as the others. Me, I've struggled to see the meaning of life. And by struggled, I mean that in my post-adolescence I've been largely satisfied to answer the question, "What is the meaning of life?", with a shrug and a mumble and a, "Please pass the jelly." I don't know and I don't care.

But my kids keep harping on about it. And when they were younger I could get away with things like, "The meaning of life is it is time for your nap." Or, "The meaning of life is pick up your sh!t. I just stepped on another Lego." But now they are getting older and these things don't work. So, it is nice to have options.

Mr. C presents an interesting one. The meaning of life is meaning. Life doesn't come with a universal meaning. But that doesn't mean you can't give it one. So the purpose of your life is to give it some meaning.

I dig that. It speaks to the part of me that likes to do it myself. My kids liked it. Everyone was happy. Then I stepped on a Lego and the moment was over but in that moment the seed of an idea was planted.

I've presented the tiniest fraction of what the book contains. It is worthy of anyone's time and I can't think of a type of person who wouldn't benefit from reading it. Also, there are vampires and they fall in love. See, something for everyone.

...more

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Mar 11, 2011 Grant rated it did not like it

I love the idea of Flow - I was introduced to it as a college student performing in a large auditioned choir, and while I feel that the idea of flow is very real, I am completely put off by the way in which the author chose to discuss it.

He spends way too much time belittling other groups opinions of how to achieve happiness. If Dr. Csikszentmihalyi's method is so scientifically superior, then he should have the confidence to let his methods and viewpoints stand on their own merit. The whole of ...more

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May 01, 2009 Tomio rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: poppsych, owned

Flow was a interesting look into the titular state, that of being "in the zone" or the slightly more dated "on fire". Flow is the mental and physical state of being where one is completely absorbed in the task at hand, and so well matched to the task, that everything else disappears from awareness. Csikszentmihaly makes a distinction here between "fun" and "enjoyment", claiming that something does not have to be fun to be enjoyable, and the latter is ultimately preferable to the former. While a Flow was a interesting look into the titular state, that of being "in the zone" or the slightly more dated "on fire". Flow is the mental and physical state of being where one is completely absorbed in the task at hand, and so well matched to the task, that everything else disappears from awareness. Csikszentmihaly makes a distinction here between "fun" and "enjoyment", claiming that something does not have to be fun to be enjoyable, and the latter is ultimately preferable to the former. While a large portion of the book is dedicated to examples of how one can achieve this state in all aspects of life and how this can lead to a more pleasant and fulfilling life, from a game developer perspective I found the requirements for such a state much more interesting than the anecdotal evidence.

Csikszentmihaly describes eight aspects of an enjoyable experience, though in terms of requirements, there are really four:

1) Skill must match challenge, and vice versa. From my own experience, this is utmost in creating a state of flow. If skill exceeds the challenge of the task, then one falls into boredom and distraction, and if the challenge is too great for one's skill, there is only frustration. Attaining goals, therefore, must be difficult, but not impossible.

2) Goals must be clear. Without clearly defined markers of achievement, an activity can easily fall into frustration. They grant direction and purpose to the task, and a way of knowing when one is done. The goal need not be anything more than completing the task at hand (such as hiking a mountain), so long as the goal is well defined.

3) Feedback. There must be feedback that one is approaching one's goals. One needs feedback frequently enough to gauge how well one is doing, so that one can either feel good about the progress, or adjust tactics, depending on the content of the feedback.

4) Concentration. If a task can be accomplished without explicit attention, then it is merely a distraction. The feedback should always guide attention to the next task.

The other four aspects the author presents (that the activity removes awareness of factors outside the task, that one feels in control of the activity, that one's sense of self dissipates during the activity, and that one's sense of time is altered) to me all seem like effects rather than causes of flow.

Csikszentmihaly was fairly strongly against "passive" flow activities like watching television, because he argued it required no skill and did not improve the self. However, having read Everything Bad is Good For You I'm not sure I can entirely agree. If you accept his posit that social interactions can also be valid flow activities, then there is no particular reason observing and analyzing the interactions of others (televised or not) would not also be enjoyable and beneficial, if not always pleasant, per se. There must be a reason we watch bad television even when we know it to be bad.

So, round about, it is a decent book, and the first half at least is well worth the read for anyone working in interactive media. ...more

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Feb 07, 2010 Will rated it did not like it

It took months to finish this book because there's only so much of Mihaly's BS that I can take at a time. The last chapter is a real piece of work, containing (a) an apology for Adolf Eichmann and (b) a call to eugenics as a foundation for a new religion: "The reality of complexification [sic:] is both an *is* and an *ought*: it has happened...but it might not continue unless we wish it to go on. The future of evolution is now in our hands." Is Csikszentmihalyi an insidious repressed Nazi or jus ...more

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Jul 10, 2013 Mario Tomic rated it it was amazing

One of the best books you will ever read, if you can pick only 5 books to read in your life this would be one of those! The author simply asked "What makes a life worth living?" It's clearly nothing that money can buy. The book is about how people find pleasure and lasting satisfaction in activities that bring them in a state the author calls "flow." Super interesting book, can't recommend it enough. ...more

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Feb 22, 2016 Lars rated it did not like it · review of another edition

Shelves: materialism, superficial, imprecise, old-man-rambling, the-art-of-contradicting-oneself

Recipe for self-help book:
1. Use big words that sound smart
2. Make lists of what people are supposed to do
3. Tell them why modern life sucks (bad TV, etc.)
4. Compile anecdotes from 'happy' people
5. Throw in quotations from a lot of smart people
6. Be repetitive (why tell people just once how 'happy' surgeons are, or how bad TV is)

To be fair to Csikszentmihakyi, I have to say that writing to a general audience about such topics is never easy. But this book is riddled with oversimplifications and s ...more

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Feb 19, 2019 Sato rated it really liked it

Cal Newport's reference to Flow state in Deep work was a potential motive to pique my curiosity. Although if you've already read Deep Work, you may find identical premises all along this book and Deep Work in different terms. I try not to elaborate further but share some of my interesting parts instead.

It is this dynamic feature that explains why flow activities lead to growth and discovery. One cannot enjoy doing the same thing at the same level for long. We grow either bored or frustrated; and ...more

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Jul 10, 2008 Herbie added it

I read this for a class called "Human Pursuit of Euphoria" during the winter of 2003 at Exeter. That was my senior year, and I was primarily concerned with finding other outlets for my desire to do drugs. Now I am re-reading it. It helps me think about the nitty gritty of everyday self-motivation. I really like this book, even though it seems like a cheesy self-help book. The footnotes in the back and the constant references to psychology research disarm my usual skepticism. At the same time tha I read this for a class called "Human Pursuit of Euphoria" during the winter of 2003 at Exeter. That was my senior year, and I was primarily concerned with finding other outlets for my desire to do drugs. Now I am re-reading it. It helps me think about the nitty gritty of everyday self-motivation. I really like this book, even though it seems like a cheesy self-help book. The footnotes in the back and the constant references to psychology research disarm my usual skepticism. At the same time that the book has an aura of scholarly dryness, it is not afraid to reference, in a loose and almost associative way, everything and anything - modern life, ancient cultures, philosophies from every corner of the world, sports, games, etc. The ubiquity of the television is often discussed. I would like to put this book's perspective on TV up against Don't Let Me Be Lonely and see what ensues.

Some quotes:

"The largest part of free time - almost half of it for American adults - is spent in front of the television set... although watching TV requires the processing of visual images, very little else in the way of memor, thinking, or volition is required. Not surprisingly, people report some of the lowest levels of concentration, use of skills, clarity of thought, and feelings of potency when watching television. The other leisure activities people usually do at home are only a little more demanding. Reading most newspapers and magazines, talking to other people, and gazing out the window also involve processing very little new information, and thus require little concentration." (30)

"Olympians do not have an exclusive gift in finding enjoyment in pushing performance beyond existing boundaries. Every person, no matter how unfit he or she is, can rise a little higher, go a little faster, and grow to be a little stronger. The joy of surpassing the limits of the body is open to all." (97)

On the "institution of 'drinking buddies:'"

"In the congenial atmosphere of tavern, pub... they grind the day away playing cards, darts, or checkers while arguing and teasing one another. Meanwhile everyone feels his existence validated by the reciprocal attention paid to one another's ideas and idiosyncracies. This... keeps at bay the disorganization that solitude brings to the passive mind, but without stimulating much growth. It is rather like a collective form of television watching, and although it is more complex in that it requires participation, its actions and phrases tend to be rigidly scripted and highly predictable." (186)

"When average people are asked to name the individuals they admire the most, and to explain why these men and women are admired, courage and the ability to overcome hardship are the qualities most often mentioned as a reason for admiration." (200)

"The future will belong not only to the educated man, but to the man who is educated to use his leisure wisely." - C.K. Brightbill, quoted on p 163. ...more

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Apr 05, 2017 Saeed rated it liked it

Shelves: road-to-wealth, life-style

A good book but can be more condensed.
After reading this book, I hardly got more than the above points. I was looking for a "how to" book about creating the flow experience. However, this book is really a life philosophy book, which uses "flow" as a paradigm to describe various aspects of life. The general point is very good: we need to create order in mind. And the way is to have a goal and an "autotelic mindset", mainly, focus on the effort, not on external reward or punishment. Such mindset ...more

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Apr 06, 2015 Karan Bajaj rated it really liked it · review of another edition

This book has a lot of parallels with Eastern mysticism which I've studied for some years. I love the fundamental thesis: your only true moments of transcendental happiness in life are when the "I"--the mind-intellect-ego complex--is completely dissolved. You're so absorbed in an activity that you forget yourself. This is consistent with Eastern thought where the complete dissolution of the self is the goal of human endeavor. I was very impressed with how well researched and how clearly presente ...more

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Oct 22, 2017 Pradnya K. rated it it was amazing

Shelves: psychology, favorites, drive-list, nonfiction, want-to-re-read, 2017, self-help, inspirational

It's been some time I was reading it. It's one of those books that read focus and makes you not feel but think. The book gets condensed at times, compelling the reader to think, sometimes ponder on his personal life and on human behavior throughout the history. (whatever we know of that) Many a times it brings back solutions or rather a promise to the nagging questions like what is happiness? Why I'm feeling something is amiss in my life though everything is in order? What is the greatest joy on ...more

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Jun 17, 2007 Alex Hasha rated it liked it

Shelves: philosophy

This book has a sometimes annoying pedantic tone, but is basically an interesting repackaging of Buddhist ideas with a view to providing concrete recommendations for how to enjoy your life more. I don't think the author specifically aligns himself with Buddhism, but the parallels are clear to me. ...more

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Jan 30, 2008 Layla rated it really liked it

Shelves: self-improvement

This book is filled with insight. The author explains the personality type possessed by those who experience flow often, the "autotelic" personality. He says that these individuals interpret their negative circumstances in a positive way, continually challenge and enrich themselves, and take ownership of their choices making them more dedicated to their goals. He discusses how to experience flow - that one must become immersed in the activity and perform it for its own sake, in a manner that is ...more

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Dec 12, 2020 Moeen Sahraei rated it it was amazing

Flow is a must read book for every one, feeling happy and satisfied in life is not only based on money, physical pleasures or job status, is mostly depends on how we feel experiences in our mind. Flow is a condition which you can concentrate totally on what you are doing and enjoy controlling your consciousness. Author has explained the concept of flow, the conditions to achieve it and its obstacles.

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Feb 04, 2013 Chris Shank rated it it was amazing

Every once in a while I read a book that I think some people I know might like or should read, and other times I read a book that I think everyone should read. This is one of those books. It can profoundly change or fortify the way you look at life and happiness…in a good way! I am SO impressed. I wasn’t two chapters in when I was buying a copy for my wife, starting a weekly video-chat with my brother as we read through it together, and telling other friends about it. It did not disappoint. I tr ...more

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Feb 14, 2021 David Laing rated it really liked it

I don't know why I waited so long to read this book. I've been interested in flow since high school, when I first experienced it while recording music. I had told my mom about how twelve hours could fly by in what felt like minutes, and she said "that's called 'flow'—I experience it when I do surgery." I later learned in a positive psychology course at university that not only is there a word for this phenomenon, but there are people who study it. Csikszentmihalyi is the foremost flow researcher I don't know why I waited so long to read this book. I've been interested in flow since high school, when I first experienced it while recording music. I had told my mom about how twelve hours could fly by in what felt like minutes, and she said "that's called 'flow'—I experience it when I do surgery." I later learned in a positive psychology course at university that not only is there a word for this phenomenon, but there are people who study it. Csikszentmihalyi is the foremost flow researcher, and he's the one who named the concept.

I thought this book would be about the narrowly defined state I used to experience when recording music, but it's actually about happiness. Different activities are 'flow-y' to different degrees, and according to Csikszentmihalyi, happiness mainly consists of spending more time in relatively flowier states. That doesn't necessarily mean we should spend all our lives in a state of intense, obsessive focus. It means that generally we should spend more time doing things that bring order to consciousness—or that "reduce psychic entropy", as he puts it. The more you are focused, actively engaged, and challenged by your experience, the more likely you are to be in flow, and the more likely you are to lead a happy life.

People who experience the most flow are those who have an autotelic personality, i.e. their sense of purpose comes from within. They have the desire and the ability to bring order to their own consciousness, without external help. Csikszentmihalyi discusses crossword puzzles, and says that while they can be a great source of flow for those who solve them, they are even better for those who create them, because the experience is shaped by the constraints inherent to the activity itself, rather than by another person.

Many of Csikszentmihalyi's conclusions are drawn from experience sampling studies, in which participants carry around a pager for several weeks. At random points throughout the day, the pager buzzes and the particpant stops to report what they're doing and how they feel. One observation I found interesting was that for people who live alone and don't attend church, the lowest point in the week is Sunday morning. As Csikszentmihalyi explains, it's the time of the week that is the least likely to be structured by external forces. This means the onus is on the individual to bring order to their own consciousness, which, it turns out, many people are pretty dismal at. He quotes the American sociologist Robert Park: "It is in the improvident use of our leisure, I suspect, that the greatest wastes of American life occur."

I'm coming away from this book feeling motivated to reflect on how I might bring more order to my consciousness, especially by tweaking how I spend my leisure time. I also feel inspired by the examples of highly autotelic people Csikszentmihalyi described in the book.

I'd like to give the book five stars, but it's pretty dated in a lot of ways. E.g. it belabors points that many modern secular readers would take for granted, like the idea that the universe doesn't care about human happiness. It also talks about gender and sex in ways that wouldn't fly today. It's occasionally shallow, boring, judgy, or grandiose. So, parts of it will probably annoy you, but even still, I highly recommend it. ...more

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Feb 28, 2011 King rated it it was ok

Flow is the state where all mental energies are concentrated on an event which results in the person attaining "optimal experience," which is basically happiness. C(I refuse to spell this authors insane surname), states that to be happy we need to lessen our mental chaos by providing/creating a structure for our mental energies to play in. He identifies certain conditions required to achieve flow:

1. The person must be engaged in an activity that requires skill.
2. There is a convergence of Acti Flow is the state where all mental energies are concentrated on an event which results in the person attaining "optimal experience," which is basically happiness. C(I refuse to spell this authors insane surname), states that to be happy we need to lessen our mental chaos by providing/creating a structure for our mental energies to play in. He identifies certain conditions required to achieve flow:

1. The person must be engaged in an activity that requires skill.
2. There is a convergence of Action and Awareness
3. Clear goals and feedback
4. The activity has structure
5. Focus
6. The loss of self consciousness
7. The loss of the awareness of time

To be honest I was disappointed with this book. After reading Haidt's "The Happiness Hypothesis," I had such high expectations for one of the pioneers of the Positive Psychology movement. I can see why some critics claim the movement is merely neo-humanism. A rehashing of what Adler, Maslow, Erickson et al have said.

To be fair though, he did write in the preface that he had written this edition in laymen's terms. I think he watered it down too much. It read like a run of the mill self-help book, with the usual "its not the situation, it's your interpretation of it," that determines your feelings, etc. etc. etc.

I feel like the book merely points out things that, on some level, we all intuitively know already. The book is content in merely observing and categorizing human behavior, an attribute of popular psychology, which I feel gives psychology demerits in credibility. The book is content with saying aim for this but barely touches the surface of the important thing which is: how?

I also have qualms in C's method of data collection. He uses a method he calls the ESM or Experience Sampling Method. The method involves giving subjects a pager that will sound at certain points of the day. The subject is then suppose to write down their feelings at that time. Basically a sporadic interviewing of the subjects. This poses a problem as what people write are not really what they mean. For example, in Cacioppo and Patrick's "Loneliness," they presented a subject who overtly showed and expressed that he was a happy person. But when the subject was asked to answer a questionnaire used to determine if someone is depressed, his answers revealed that he was indeed the opposite of what he was telling people. He was depressed and he agreed to the findings of the questionnaire. Of course in any science, our measurements are only as good as the tools we use to measure with. In psychology, this becomes convoluted.

I do however, think of the postulates much. Particularly when I am working with my client who is cognitively impaired, I think, "How can I get this person into flow?" So there is definitely something there. I just wish he hadn't buried the paradigm with glitter. ...more

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Apr 22, 2017 Katherine Addison rated it it was amazing

Shelves: creativity

I'm a little disheartened to learn that Csikszentmihalyi has gone on to become "the world's foremost producer of personal development and motivational audio programs," because that makes his work sound like exactly the kind of self-help bullshit that he says, in Flow, doesn't do any good. But I can see where, from what he wrote in 1990, he could have become a proselytizer for his theory, and, yeah, that is going to lead you into "personal development" and similar dreadful sounding things.

Csiksze I'm a little disheartened to learn that Csikszentmihalyi has gone on to become "the world's foremost producer of personal development and motivational audio programs," because that makes his work sound like exactly the kind of self-help bullshit that he says, in Flow, doesn't do any good. But I can see where, from what he wrote in 1990, he could have become a proselytizer for his theory, and, yeah, that is going to lead you into "personal development" and similar dreadful sounding things.

Csikszentmihalyi's theory may not be everybody's dish of tea, and the stronger he comes on the more nervous he makes me, but nevertheless I found this book extremely illuminating and helpful, as it explained to me something about myself that I've noticed for years without having the words to describe.

Csikszentmihalyi says that what makes people happy are activities which have (a) clear goals, (b) clear rules, (c) clear challenges that are neither too difficult (leading to frustration) nor too easy (leading to boredom). He points out that for all we have been socially conditioned to prize unstructured leisure time in which to do nothing (i.e., watch TV), it provides only passive pleasure and does not actually make anyone happy. Unless, of course, you turn your TV into an activity that involves what he calls "flow," which is a possibility that doesn't seem to have occurred to him. He says that people who are good at "flow" (what most athletes call being "in the zone") are able to create these activities for themselves out of jobs that other people find boring or in fact out of boredom itself. He cites the charming example of Herr Doktor Meier-Leibnitz (yes, a descendant of the Leibnitz who was Newton's rival), who invented a complicated finger-tapping pattern game to amuse himself during boring conference presentation. Not only does this game alleviate his boredom without taking away too much of his attention, it allows him, because he knows how long it takes him to go through an iteration, to time how long a problem-solving train of thought lasts. Csikszentmihalyi says that these criteria for flow activities remain the same across differences of class, race, nationality, sex, and age, and that people describe the feeling of "flow" in ways that are recognizably the same, whether they are blind Italian nuns or teenage Japanese gang members.

And it explains to me my fondness for translation, for algebra, for crossword puzzles, logic puzzles, jigsaw puzzles, and all kinds of puzzle-solving games, for rock climbing (several of his interview subjects are rock climbers), and for dressage, because--as widely disparate as they are when considered as activities--they all meet Csikszentmihalyi's criteria for "flow." I can even recognize that I have invented a flow activity out of my day job, which explains a great deal why I like it.

And I can see that writing used to be a flow activity, but that I've somehow lost the unconscious ability to set goals, so that now I veer wildly between "I've done this before, the puzzle is solved" (boredom), or "omg this is impossible, I'll never be able to do it" (frustration and despair). And Csikszentmihalyi gives me objective guidelines that show what's gone wrong and that offer, if not a solution, at least an avenue of exploration more promising than I've had in a while.

And I appreciate the way that he points out that activities we undertake for their own sake, not because we "ought" to or because they will make us "successful," are the activities we find most enjoyable and most enriching, and thus the activities that are actually more likely to bring us a feeling of satisfaction and success--and more likely to produce poetry, art, music, scientific breakthroughs, etc. He gives a quote from one of his respondents, someone who is both a rock-climber and a poet, which I have added to my collection of quotes that I keep around my desk where they will provide a sanity check: "The act of writing justifies poetry."

I do, yes, find him a little smug, and his understanding of evolution is woefully unnuanced and kind of wrong--not surprising for someone who coined the term "autotelic" to describe people who create flow out of the materials to hand. He is decidedly a teleological thinker who sees evolution as a steady advance toward more complex and therefore better and therefore humans are the current pinnacle of evolution and must take their own evolution in their autotelic hands to make the species advance rather than stagnate or regress. So take his somewhat megalomaniacal concluding chapter with a liberal application of salt, but if you recognize yourself in anything I've said, you might want to give Flow a look. ...more

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Aug 26, 2008 Guillaume added it

This book explains that true happiness is obtained by achieving an optimal state of mind called "Flow".

This state of mind can be best described as one where the participant's consciousness is so involved in its activity that self-consciousness disappears, in a way similar to meditation.

This state is most commonly achieved in situations where a goal that participant(s) feel skilled to achieve is set clearly, and for which constant feedback on how close participants are getting. Such Flow experien This book explains that true happiness is obtained by achieving an optimal state of mind called "Flow".

This state of mind can be best described as one where the participant's consciousness is so involved in its activity that self-consciousness disappears, in a way similar to meditation.

This state is most commonly achieved in situations where a goal that participant(s) feel skilled to achieve is set clearly, and for which constant feedback on how close participants are getting. Such Flow experiences lead to personal growth and true happiness.

These very simple recommendations can be applied to one's life, to educating children, to manage people in a corporate environment, or to define a country's policies.

Some quotes I found interesting:

"If we assume, however, that the desire to achieve optimal experience is the foremost goal of every human being, the difficulties of interpretation raised by cultural relativism become less severe. Each social system can then be evaluated in terms of how much psychic entropy it causes, measuring that disorder not with reference to the ideal order of one or another belief system, but with reference to the goals of the members of that society. A starting point would be to say that one society is "better" than another if a greater number of its people have access to experiences that are in line with their goals. A second essential criterion would specify that these experiences should lead to the growth of the self on an individual level, by allowing as many people as possible to develop increasingly complex skills."

"The Isé Shrine [south of Kyoto, Japan] was built about fifteen hundred years ago on one of a pair of adjacent fields. Every twenty years or os it has been taken down from the field it was standing on and rebuilt on the next one. By 1973, it had been reerected for the sixtieth time. The strategy adopted by the monks of Isé resembles one that several statesmen have only dreamed about accomplishing. For example, both Thomas Jefferson and Chairman Mao Ze-dong believed that each generation needed to make its own revolution for its members to stay actively involved in the political system ruling their lives"

Things that go against Flow:
- "Anomy: the norms of society have become muddled"
- "Alienation: people are constrained by the social system to act in ways that go against their goals."

"Family context promoting optimal experience could be described as having five characteristics. The first one is clarity: teenagers feel that they know what their parents expect from them - goal and feedback in the family interaction are unambiguous. The second is centering, or the children's perception that their parents are interested in what they are doing in the present, in their concrete feelings and experiences, rather than preoccupied with whether they will be getting into a good college or obtaining a well-paying job. Next is the issue of choice: children feel that they have a variety of possibilities from which to choose, including that of breaking parental rules - as long as they are prepared to face the consequences. The fourth differentiating characteristic is commitment, or the trust that allows the child to feel comfortable enough to set aside the shield of his defenses and become unselfconsciously involved in whatever he is interested in. And finally there is challenge, or the parents' dedication to provide increasingly complex opportunities for action to their children" ...more

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Jul 10, 2007 Dianne rated it really liked it

Recommends it for: just about anyone

this book makes a lot of sense. it's about happiness, consciousness, work, relationships, and purpose--and basically, the thesis is that people are happiest when they have clear goals and well-defined perimeters to work within to achieve those goals.

sounds a little dry, but I found it both interesting and relevant. as someone who is still working out what my "ideal" career or life model looks like, I enjoyed seeing my typical questions examined by a research psychologist, and applied to a large ...more

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About Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

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A Hungarian psychology professor, who emigrated to the United States at the age of 22. Now at Claremont Graduate University, he is the former head of the department of psychology at the University of Chicago and of the department of sociology and anthropology at Lake Forest College.

He is noted for both his work in the study of happiness and creativity and also for his notoriously difficult name, i ...more

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“To overcome the anxieties and depressions of contemporary life, individuals must become independent of the social environment to the degree that they no longer respond exclusively in terms of its rewards and punishments. To achieve such autonomy, a person has to learn to provide rewards to herself. She has to develop the ability to find enjoyment and purpose regardless of external circumstances.” — 185 likes

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