The task is achievable (often rule-bound), and the degree of challenge is balanced with our skillfulness (physical and/or mental)Ģ.
Here are four key features of a flow activity:ġ. This is the recipe to flow, investing our attention in a challenging goal, to the limits of our concentration and skill. According to his research, Csikszentmihalyi argues that our most enjoyable moments occur when a person’s body or mind is stretched to its limits in a voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult and worthwhile. The difference between pleasure and enjoyment is that enjoyment is characterized by the sense of novelty and accomplishment. This would suggest that passive pleasure is the ideal experience. We can’t wait to relax on the weekend, or on vacation. Many of us fall into the trap of believing that enjoyment means relaxation. Flow is the state we achieve when our attention is optimally directed, and so creates the optimal experience of reality – the most enjoyable way to live your life. Csikszentmihalyi argues that flow experiences are the most desirable episodes of directed attention. In this way, you are created by what you pay attention to. Attention determines what enters consciousness, and it is the contents of consciousness that determine who we are. It’s intuitive to us that we direct our attention, but this also cuts the other way. The gatekeepers to the quality of our lived experience are then, necessarily, intention and attention – what we intend to do, and the focus we apply in doing it. The contents of consciousness determine the quality of life. But our consciousness can only process so much information at any one time, so what we allow in becomes of critical importance. Whatever exists in our consciousness is the totality of who we are. Finally, we’ll tether optimal experience to purpose and fulfillment: how to use flow to create meaning. We’ll first examine why flow is important and what the characters of flow are, and then we’ll review how to bring more of it into our lives. How, instead, we can find true fulfillment and enjoyment in what we’re doing, and how this can give our lives meaning. “Flow” answers the question “how can I enjoy my life more?” Importantly, it tells us how not to waste our time – how to live a life that doesn’t feel passive or boring. This is a book about optimal experience, what Csikszentmihalyi calls flow – “a state in which people are so involved in an activity that nothing else seems to matter… the experience is so enjoyable that people will continue to do it even at great cost, for the sheer sake of doing it.” Flow is genuine satisfaction with your present experience.
“Flow – The Psychology of Optimal Experience” by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi seeks to answer the question: “When do people feel most happy?” But this is not a superficial happiness how-to book.
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