Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention

by Mihály Csíkszentmihályi

First, we must raise children to be peacemakers; second, we must understand how families can achieve internal harmony; third, we must link harmonious families into neighborhoods and communities; and finally, people so linked should be made aware of their global identity, of their mutual interdependence:

Our lives become drab and impoverished. We never experience the feeling of exhilaration that one has when acting at the fullness of one’s capacities, the kind of feeling that an Olympic athlete may have when running her personal best, or a poet may have when turning a perfect phrase—what I call flow.

The second consequence is that people who are both

badly paid and have dull jobs eventually become alienated from the fortunate few. With time, this tension necessa...

His current interest is the study of community, because he feels that neither the fulfillment

of one’s potentialities nor the self-organizing power of groups can be achieved if people live in anomic neighborhoods that lack the values and inner rules that make a community an organic, self-correcting system.

Living with a Sense of Responsibility What made Gardner able to put aside the power and success he had achieved and devote his energies to helping re-create forms of representative government? Obviously, a superior intellect helped; he blazed through school always a few years ahead of his agemates. But being very smart doesn’t explain his intrinsic motivation. He could have used the same intelligence to make money on Wall Street, or to advance even higher in government. Instead, he chose to do whatever helped mos...

d...

In fact, I really had the impression that she felt if you were popular, maybe there was something wrong with you, that, you know, you were accommodating too much and weren’t standing up for your views and so forth.

we all have much deeper reserves than we know we have and that generally it takes an outside challenge or opportunity to make us aware of what we can actually do. A lot of our potential, he believes, is buried, hidden, imprisoned by fears, low self-esteem, and the hold of convention.

If I meet with a group of business executives, which I often do, and if we get on this subject, I tell them that my estimate is that when they have completed their careers, they will have realized about half of what is in them. The other half will have remained dormant, because life didn’t pull it out of them. Or because they concluded very early that that was not something they were good at. They capped their own abilities. The older they get, the more they avoid the risk that

growth involves. You start out early with little failures that lead you to believe, don’t try that again. And that list grows and grows. By the time you’re middle-aged, there’s a long list of things you will never try again. Some of them you might be very good at but have written them off. You’ve selected the little area in which you know you can win, you know you’re gonna make it. You stay within that safe area. What crises and emergencies do i...

Gardner has kept learning and growing. He started out reserved, aloof, and detached. This persona worked well as long as he was an academic researcher, but as the head of a large foundation it was intimidating, so he developed a more friendly demeanor. Similarly, t...

settings is not as effective when it comes to motivating large groups of people: I suppose I was forty before I began to think that I could reach people in other than a rational way, which you have to do if you’re going to influence them. If you’re going to move them, you have to reach their motivations, you have to get below the surface of their thinking into what moves them, what affects their enthusiasms, their concerns. And I had a number of jobs, several of them self-assigned, in which my capacity to persuade, my capacity to evoke action, was of the essence. In other words, Gardner realized that to influence the new fields in whic...

part. “To get the things done that I had to get done, I had to be more open and more interested. I enjoyed it, and the fruits of it.” The ability to discover what one can do well, and enjoy doing it, is the hallmark of all creative people. It is particularly fortunate when this also happens t...

All four mentioned repeatedly their constant shifting from action to reflection, from passion to objectivity. In each case, this alternation allowed them to keep learning, to keep adjusting to new situations. Their creativity unfolded organically from idea to action, then through the evaluation of the outcomes of action back to ideas—a cycle

that repeated itself again and again.

None of them seems to be motivated by money and fame. Instead, they are driven by a feeling of responsibility for the common good, a feeling that sometimes borders on traditional religious values but more often seems to depend on a spiritual sense for the order...

The world would be a very different place if it were not for creativity. We would still act according to the few clear instructions our genes contain, and anything learned in the course of our lives would be forgotten after our death. There would be no speech, no songs, no tools, no ideas such as love, freedom, or democracy. It would be an existence so mechanical and impoverished that none of us would want any part of it. To achieve the kind of world we consider human, some people had to dare to break the

thrall of tradition. Next, they had to find ways of recording those new ideas or procedures that improved on what went on before. Finally, they had to find ways of transmitting the new knowledge to the generations to come. Those who were involved in this process we call creative. What we call culture, or those parts of our selves that we internalized from the social environment, is their creation.

CREATIVITY AND SURVIVAL There is no question that the human species could not survive, either now or in the years to come, if creativity were to run dry. Scientists will have to come up with new solutions to overpopulation, the depletion of nonrenewable resources, and the pollution of the environment—or the future will indeed be brutish and short. Unless humanists fi...

going on with the enthusiasm necessary to overcome the obstacles along the way. Whether we like it or not, our species has become dependent on creativity. To say the same thing in a more upbeat way, in the last few millennia evolution has been transformed from being almost exclusively a matter of mutations in the chemistry of genes to being more and more a matter of changes in memes—in the information that we learn and in turn transmit to others. If the right memes are selected, we survive; otherwise we do not. And those who select the knowledge, the values, the behaviors that will either lead into a brighter future or to ext...

This is the evolution that Jonas Salk calls metabiological, or E. O. Wilson and others call biocultural. The idea...

depends on biological equipment alone but on the social and cultural tools we choose to use. The inventions of the great civilizations—the arts, religions, political systems, sciences and technologies—signal the main stages along the path of cultural evolution. To be human means to be creative. At the same time, it does not take much thought to realize that the main threats to our survival as a species, the very problems we hope creativity will solve, were brought about by yesterday’s creative solutions. Overpopulation, which in many ways is the core problem of the future, is the result of ingenious improvements in farming and public health. The loss of community and increasing psychological isolation are in part due to the enormous advances in mobility, brought about by the discovery of self-pro...

reason, for instance, that Robert Ornstein calls human inventions “the axemaker’s gift,” referring to what happens when a steel axe is first introduced to a preliterate tribe that knows no metals: It leads to easier killing, and it shreds the existing fabric of social relations and cultural values. In a sense, every new invention ...

It is not only the clearly dangerous discoveries—distilled alcohol, tobacco, firearms, nuclear reactors—that threaten to wipe out entire populations. Even apparently beneficial inventions have unintended negative consequences. Television is a fantastic tool for increasing the range of what we can experience, but it can make us addicted to redundant information that appeals to the lowest common denominator of human interests. Every new meme—the c...

potentially dark side that often reveals itself only when it is too late, after we have resigned ourselves that...

A similar pattern of initial success leading to eventual failure holds for memes that shape human energy through ideas. The promises of Nazism, Marxism, and the various religious fundamentalisms give people a simple set of goals and rules. This liberates a wave of psychic energy that for a while makes the society that adopted the creed seem purposeful and powerful. In Germany,

Hitler eliminated unemployment when the rest of the industrial world was still in the throes of the Great Depression. In Italy, Mussolini for the first time made the trains run on time. Stalin transformed a backward rural continent into a leading industrial giant. Soon, however, the downside appears: Intolerance, repression, rigidity, and xenophobia usually leading to wars or worse are just some of the usual consequences when social energies are focused by memes that promise superiority to one group at the expense of the others.

Similarly, American ingenuity has produced a standard of living and a political stability that are the envy of the world. The result is that Americans—as well as most Europeans—see no reason to work long hours at cheap wages. And who can blame them? But much of the rest of the world is eager to toil hard in undesirable conditions. As a result, productive activity increasingly shifts into the hands of people who have the lowest expectations. When was the last time that you wore clothes made in the USA? Or used domestic TV or video equipment? The reason why the number of immigrants keeps growing is that they are the only ones left willing to do menial jobs. But even engineers and technically trained workers are steadily getting scarcer in the industrialized

nations. Everyone wants to be a professional, or at least a clerical worker sitting behind a desk. The optimists argue that our children are preparing themselves for the jobs of the future, based on information and creative flexibility. But the fact is that the number of new patents being taken out in the United States is also decreasing, and computer literacy is more a question of learning to be a consumer of information than knowing how to generate or use the information acquired. If necessity is the mother of invention, secure affluence seems to be its dysfunctional stepparent.

Mass-produced commodities are especially vulnerable to being chosen on the basis of short-term

term benefits. Fast food is more profitable when it satisfies the most basic taste needs, which were established in our genetic past when fat and sugar were in short supply. A hamburger with fries and a milkshake would make an exquisite banquet for a caveperson but is not particularly healthful for sedentary citizens. Private-sector television is similarly vulnerable to criticism. The kind of spectacles we are genetically programmed to watch have not changed much since the Romans flocked to the arena to see gladiators disembowel each other on the sand. It is difficult to imagine beneficial contributions to evolution from watching soap operas and MTV on the home screen.

For billions of years, evolution has proceeded blindly, shaped by random selective forces. We were created by chance. Now, however, humans have become one of the most powerful, and therefore

the most dangerous, forces operating on the planet. Therefore, if we wish evolution to continue in a way that corresponds with our interests, we must find ways to direct it. And this involves developing mechanisms for monitoring new memes, so that we can reject those that are likely to be harmful in the long run and encourage alternatives that are more promising.

We have seen that central among the traits that define a creative person are two somewhat opposed tendencies: a great deal of curiosity and openness on the one hand, and an almost obsessive perseverance on the other.

Both of these have to be present for a person to have fresh ideas and then to make them prevail.

Is it possible to increase the number of people who have the...

But biological inheritance is only part of the story, as we discussed before. Early background has a significant effect. Interest and curiosity tend to be stimulated by positive experiences with family, by a supportive emotional environment, by a rich cultural heritage, by exposure to many opportunities, and by high expectations. In contrast, perseverance seems to develop as a response to a precarious emotional environment, a dysfunctional family, solitude, a feeling of rejection and marginality. Most people experience either one or the other of these early environments, but not both of them.

Parents and educators should know that a milieu that encourages both solitude and gregariousness may add, even

if infinitesimally, to the chances of a child being able to express his or her creativity.

Children who have not learned to tolerate solitude are especially at risk in terms of never developing enough in-depth involvement in a domain and lacking opportunities to reflect and incubate ideas. On the other hand, children who are too shy and reclusive need selfless intermediaries, such ...

Above all else, it helps to become involved in a domain early.

The role of the parent was limited to providing opportunities, taking seriously the child’s interest after it showed itself, and then supporting the child’s involvement,

they were all directed by curiosity to master some symbolic form to a degree rare in other children.

So while specializing in a particular domain can wait until late adolescence, an intense involvement in some domain might be necessary if a person is to become creative. Without developing a skill he or she is confident in, without having the experience of acquiring a knowledge base, a young person may never get up enough nerve to change the status quo.

most breakthroughs are based on linking information that usually is not thought of as related.

Probably very few creative persons are motivated by money. On the other hand, very few can be indifferent to it entirely. Money gives relief from worries, from drudgery, and makes more time available for one’s real work. It also enlarges the scope of opportunities: One can buy necessary

materials, hire help if needed, and travel to meet people from whom one can learn. Artists are supposed to be above financial concerns, but in reality they can use money just as much as anyone else: first, in order to buy supplies, and, second, to evaluate their own success.

Creative persons