Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience

by Mihály Csíkszentmihályi

psychic entropy, a disorganization of the self that impairs its effectiveness. Prolonged experiences of this kind can weaken the self to the point that it is no longer able to invest attention and pursue its goals.

The outside event appears in consciousness purely as information, without necessarily having a positive or negative value attached to it.

It is the self that interprets that raw information in the context of its own interests, and determines whether it is harmful or not.

Every piece of information we process gets evaluated for its bearing on the self. Does it threaten our goals, does it support them, or is it neutral?

When the information that keeps coming into awareness is congruent with goals, psychic energy flows effortlessly.

The reason is that he approaches his task in the same way an Olympic athlete approaches his event: How can I beat my record?

It is enough to know that he can do it, because when he is working at top performance the experience is so enthralling that it is almost painful for him to slow down.

situations in which attention can be freely invested to achieve a person’s goals, because there is no disorder to straighten out, no threat for the self to defend against. We have called this state the flow experience,

those who attain it develop a stronger, more confident self, because more of their psychic energy has been invested successfully in goals they themselves had chosen to pursue.

When a person is able to organize his or her consciousness so as to experience flow as often as possible, the quality of life is inevitably going to improve,

In flow we are in control of our psychic energy, and everything we do adds order to consciousness.

“It’s exhilarating to come closer and closer to self-discipline. You make your body go and everything hurts; then you look back in awe at the self, at what you’ve done, it just blows your mind. It leads to ecstasy, to self-fulfillment. If you win these battles enough, that battle against yourself, at least for a moment, it becomes easier to win the battles in the world.”

It is really a battle for the self;

struggle for establishing control over attention.

Differentiation implies a movement toward uniqueness, toward separating oneself from others. Integration refers to its opposite: a union with other people, with ideas and entities beyond the self.

The self becomes more differentiated as a result of flow because overcoming a challenge inevitably leaves a person feeling more capable, more skilled.

Complexity is often thought to have a negative meaning, synonymous with difficulty and confusion.

a second dimension—the integration of autonomous parts.

Flow helps to integrate the self because in that state of deep concentration consciousness is unusually well ordered.

A self that is only differentiated—not integrated—may attain great individual accomplishments, but risks being mired in self-centered egotism. By the same token, a person whose self is based exclusively on integration will be connected and secure, but lack autonomous individuality.

it is when we act freely, for the sake of the action itself rather than for ulterior motives, that we learn to become more than what we were.

When we choose a goal and invest ourselves in it to the limits of our concentration, whatever we do will be enjoyable. And once we have tasted this joy, we will redouble our efforts to taste it again. This is the way the self grows.

THERE ARE TWO MAIN STRATEGIES we can adopt to improve the quality of life. The first is to try making external conditions match our goals. The second is to change how we experience external conditions to make them fit our goals better.

Changing external conditions might seem to work at first, but if a person is not in control of his consciousness, the old fears or desires will soon return, reviving previous anxieties.

Yet people keep hoping that changing the external conditions of their lives will provide a solution. If only they could earn more money, be in better physical shape, or have a more understanding partner, they would really have it made.

the reality is that the quality of life does not depend directly on what others think of us or on what we own.

To improve life one must improve the quality of experience.

This is not to say that money, physical fitness, or fame are irrelevant to happiness. They can be genuine blessings, but only ...

“Money can increase or decrease happiness, depending on how it is used.”

Pleasure is a feeling of contentment that one achieves whenever information in consciousness says that expectations set by biological programs or by social conditioning have been met.

Pleasure is an important component of the quality of life, but by itself it does not bring happiness.

Enjoyment is characterized by this forward movement: by a sense of novelty, of accomplishment.

None of these experiences may be particularly pleasurable at the time they are taking place, but afterward we think back on them and say, “That really was fun” and wish they would happen again.

enjoyment happens only as a result of unusual investments of attention.

pleasure is so evanescent, and that the self does not grow as a consequence of pleasurable experiences.

But if one gets to be too complacent, feeling that psychic energy invested in new directions is wasted unless there is a good chance of reaping extrinsic rewards for it, one may end up no longer enjoying life, and pleasure becomes the only source of positive experience.

To gain personal control over the quality of experience, however, one needs to learn how to build enjoyment into what happens day in, day out.

phenomenology of enjoyment has eight major components.

First, the experience usually occurs when we confront tasks we have a chance of completing.

Second, we must be able to concentrate on what we are doing.

Third and fourth, the concentration is usually possible because the task undertaken has clear goals an...

Fifth, one acts with a deep but effortless involvement that removes from awareness the worries and f...

Sixth, enjoyable experiences allow people to exercise a sense of contr...

Seventh, concern for the self disappears, yet paradoxically the sense of self emerges stronger after...

Finally, the sense of the duration of ti...

overwhelming proportion of optimal experiences are reported to occur within sequences of activities that are goal-directed and bounded by rules—activities that require the investment of psychic energy, and that could not be done without the appropriate skills.

“He who wrestles with us,” wrote Edmund Burke, “strengthens our nerves, and sharpens our skill. Our antagonist is our helper.”

how enjoyable an activity is depends ultimately on its complexity.

Enjoyment appears at the boundary between boredom and anxiety, when the challenges are just balanced with the person’s capacity to act.

When all a person’s relevant skills are needed to cope with the challenges of a situation, that person’s attention is completely absorbed by the activity.