It turns out that one of the keys to personal motivation lies in a force just barely outside the activity itself. It lies in the mastery of increasingly challenging goals. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, a researcher at Claremont Graduate School, has devoted his career to what he has come to call “flow,” or the feeling of enjoyment that comes from losing yourself in an engrossing activity (something, he suggests, we all should be seeking with dogged determination). Dr. Csikszentmihalyi has discovered that almost any activity can be made engaging if it involves reasonably challenging goals and clear,
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flow, reasonably challenging goals and clear and frequent feedback
