Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience

by Mihály Csíkszentmihályi

The best moments usually occur when a person’s body or mind is stretched to its limits in a voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult and worthwhile. Optimal experience is thus something that we make happen.

ails their elders, sometimes in an even more virulent form.

relinquish the control of consciousness and become helpless playthings

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

Others have invested so much in being liked that the only feedback they take into account is approval and admiration.

Altius, citius, fortius

wonder—which is the seed of knowledge—is the reflection of the purest form of pleasure. Just as there are flow activities corresponding to every physical potential of the body, every mental operation is able to provide its own particular form of enjoyment.

“will belong not only to the educated man, but to the man who is educated to use his leisure wisely.”