Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience

by Mihály Csíkszentmihályi

Control over consciousness is not simply a cognitive skill. At least as much as intelligence, it requires the commitment of emotions and will.

Progress is relatively fast in fields that apply knowledge to the material world, such as physics or genetics. But it is painfully slow when knowledge is to be applied to modify our own habits and desires.

Routinization, unfortunately, tends to take place very rapidly.

if the conditions in which we live change that rapidly—it becomes necessary to rethink and reformulate what it takes to establish autonomy in consciousness.

As suggested before, the way is through control over consciousness, which in turn leads to control over the quality of experience.

person wasn’t fully human unless he or she learned to master thoughts and feelings.

In other historical periods, such as the one in which we are now living, the ability to control oneself is not held in high esteem. People who attempt it are thought to be faintly ridiculous, “uptight,” or not quite “with it.”

it seems that those who take the trouble to gain mastery over what happens in consciousness do live a happier life.

it is self-directed. In other words, consciousness has developed the ability to override its genetic instructions and to set its own independent course of action.

Without consciousness we would still “know” what is going on, but we would have to react to it in a reflexive, instinctive way. With consciousness, we can deliberately weigh what the senses tell us, and respond accordingly.

A person can make himself happy, or miserable, regardless of what is actually happening “outside,” just by changing the contents of consciousness.

But phenomenology assumes that a mental event can be best understood if we look at it directly as it was experienced, rather than through the specialized optics of a particular discipline.

information theory as being relevant for understanding what happens in consciousness. These principles include knowledge about how sensory data are processed, stored, and used—the dynamics of attention and memory.

simply means that certain specific conscious events (sensations, feelings, thoughts, intentions) are occurring, and that we are able to direct their course.

when we are dreaming, some of the same events are present, yet we are not conscious because we cannot control them.

The events that constitute consciousness—the “things” we see, feel, think, and desire—are information that we can manipulate and use.

consciousness corresponds to subjectively experienced reality.

Intentions arise in consciousness whenever a person is aware of desiring something or wanting to accomplish something.

They act as magnetic fields, moving attention toward some objects and away from others, keeping our mind focused on some stimuli in preference to others.

Unfortunately, the nervous system has definite limits on how much information it can process at any given time. There are just so many “events” that can appear in consciousness and be recognized and handled appropriately before they begin to crowd each other out.

We cannot run, sing, and balance the checkbook simultaneously, because each one of these activities exhausts most of our capacity for attention.

In the roughly one-third of the day that is free of obligations, in their precious “leisure” time, most people in fact seem to use their minds as little as possible.

people report some of the lowest levels of concentration, use of skills, clarity of thought, and feelings of potency when watching television.

the information we allow into consciousness becomes extremely important; it is, in fact, what determines the content and the quality of life.

It is attention that selects the relevant bits of information from the potential millions of bits available.

The mark of a person who is in control of consciousness is the ability to focus attention at will, to be oblivious to distractions, to concentrate for as long as it takes to achieve a goal, and not longer. And the person who can do this usually enjoys the normal course of everyday life.

The shape and content of life depend on how attention has been used. Entirely different realities will emerge depending on how it is invested.

Attention can be invested in innumerable ways, ways that can make life either rich or miserable.

Because attention determines what will or will not appear in consciousness, and because it is also required to make any other mental events—such as remembering, thinking, feeling, and making decisions—happen there,

energy. Memories, thoughts, and feelings are all shaped by how we use it.

attention is our most important tool in the task of improving the quality of experience.

If attention, or psychic energy, is directed by the self, and if the self is the sum of the contents of consciousness and the structure of its goals, and if the contents of consciousness and the goals are the result of different ways of investing attention, then we have a system that is going round and round, with no clear causes or effects.

we invest psychic energy—on the structure of attention.

related to goals and intentions.

are connected to each other b...

These are the pieces that must be maneuvered if we wish ...

must take their place in consciousness, and be connected in positive ways to our self, before they can affect the quality of life.

One of the main forces that affects consciousness adversely is psychic disorder—that is, information that conflicts with existing intentions, or distracts us from carrying them out.

pain, fear, rage, anxiety, or jealousy.

attention to be diverted to undesirable objects, leaving...

distracted

struggling,

slows down

snaps back ir...

All through the day he worried:

intruding in his mind,

disrupting concentration

some information that conflicts with an individual’s goals appears in consciousness.

Depending on how central that goal is to the self and on how severe the threat to it is, some amount of attention will have to be mobilized to eliminate the danger,

leaving less attention free to deal with ...