Finding Flow

Customer Reviews

• What is a good life?  Oct 31, 2001 (133 of 138 found this helpful)

  `What is a good life?', is basically the question addressed by this book. Well, isn't a good life just about being happy? Ok, but that is not the complete answer. For how do we become and stay happy? Not by watching TV, eating, or relaxing all day! In small doses these things are good and improve your daily life, but the effects are not additive. In other words: a point of diminishing returns is quickly reached. Also you don't become happy by having to do nothing. Csikszentmihalyi's research shows that both intrinsic motivation (wanting to do something) and extrinsic motivation (having to do something) are preferable to not having any kind of goal to focus your attention.

  Csikszentmihalyi argues that a life filled with `flow activities' is more worth living than one spent consuming passive entertainment. He says, the point is to be happy while doing things that stretch your goals and skills that help you grow and fulfil your potential. In other words: the content of your experiences over a lifetime determines the quality of your life. Then what exactly ìs `flow'? Is it just some vague new New Age concept? Not at all! It is precisely defined and well-researched. The experience if flow is the sense of effortless action we feel in moments that we see as the best in our lives. In order to have flow experiences you need clear goals/demands, immediate and relevant feedback and a balance between your skills and the demands. Then your attention becomes ordered and fully invested. Because of the total demand on you psychic energy you become completely focused, your self-consciousness disappears, as does your sense of time, yet you feel strong and competent. When in flow, you are not exactly happy, because you are not focused on your inner states (that would take away your attention from the task at hand). But looking back you are happy. Having flow experiences leads to growth and learning and improving your life becomes a question of making flow as much as possible a constant part of your everyday experience.

  Csikszentmihalyi describes how you can find flow in several important life domains. One domain is work. Often we short-sightedly spend a lot of energy to take the easy way and cut corners, trying to do as little as possible in our jobs. If we would spend the same amount of energy trying to accomplish more we would probably enjoy our work more and be more successful as well. To improve your work you can try to take the whole context of your job into account. Doing this you can better understand your contribution to the whole and understand and value your role more. This enables you to invest more energy and withdraw more meaning from your work. Further, to use flow at work you can try to establish a situation in which your job (an other people's jobs) provides clear goals, unambiguous feedback, a sense of control, few distractions and challenges that match your skills. Just as much as in work you can create flow in your family and other relationships according to Csikszentmihalyi. He says it is particularly important to give attention to building harmony between participant's goals and to find ways to balance the meaningfulness of the rewards you get from work and relationships.

  This book is definitely worth reading. Csikszentmihalyi's answer to the question `What is a good life?' is practical and convincing.

• Whatever You Call It, Flow is Real  Jan 17, 2000 (26 of 26 found this helpful)

  Csikszentmihalyi defines "flow" as the feeling of effortlessness of action we experience at the best moments in our lives. People in flow are completely focused; self-consciousness and the awareness of time give way to full immersion in the moment. We usually attain flow when faced with clear and challenging goals that stretch our abilities without overtaxing them. Most often people have "flow experiences" when they engage in their favorite activities, whether playing or working. Csikszentmihalyi suggests that by paying close attention to what we do every day, and how we feel doing it, we can learn to maximize these positive moments and thus improve our psychic well-being.

  FINDING FLOW is not a sappy, vacuous self-help book for the masses--it reminds us intelligently, without cheerleading or condescension, that complaining about a lack of time is a common excuse for not taking control of our lives. It also tells us something we have often heard, but love to forget: flow comes when we have goals, not because achieving them is necessarily important, but because a lack of goals leads to a struggle to concentrate and avoid distractions. This passage reminded me of what my favorite classics professor once told us: "Without Ithaka, there is no Odyssey."

  Many great thinkers of the past (Homer, Carlyle, Dr. Seuss) have one way or another said what Csikszentmihalyi says; few have focused on happiness as happiness so successfully, and in so few pages. Find your flow!

• How to experience more enjoyment in life.  Jan 11, 2000 (99 of 114 found this helpful)

  This is a simpler, more practical book than Csikszentmihalyi's other popular work on the subject (Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience). He explains how you can apply the insights from his teams' experiments at the University of Chicago. They've been studying enjoyment for over thirty years -- what it is and how people create it. They are not studying simple pleasure, but real, enjoyable absorption in a task.

  Csikszentmihalyi originally studied artists and noticed it wasn't the end-product most good painters were after, it was the process of painting. He was surprised to see painters finish a painting and immediately set up another canvas to continue painting -- without even looking at the masterpiece they had just created. This intrigued him and so he has spent his lifetime exploring this interesting and enjoyable state he calls "flow", and he knows something about how we can have more of it in our lives.

  I'm the author of the book, Self-Help Stuff That Works, and I'm an expert on what is effective. Csikszentmihalyi's work is in that category. You can apply his insights and truly experience more enjoyable flow in your life.

• Match tasks with skills for best use of time  Aug 14, 2000 (26 of 28 found this helpful)

  "Finding Flow" is an easy-read paperback subtitled "the psychology of engagement with everyday life". The thesis cut back to its core is that optimal experiences happen when you are highly challenged and have the skills to match, and that too many people spend their lives of quiet despiration being frustrated, anxious, apathetic or bored when the tasks that fill their day don't match up. Mihaly describes this state of "Flow" as a period of complete focus on the task, no distractions or irrelevant feelings, and a distorted sense of time. "In the harmonious focusing of physical and psychic energy, life finally comes into its own".

  You would hope that a book like this would be a pretty engaging read, or else it would have failed its stated purpose, and for the most part I was engaged while reading it. It tries to be a self-help book too, which I suppose is fair enough -- if you believe that this state of being is superior to being lazily happy sitting on the couch watching TV, then you might well want to preach its virtues.

• A scientific approach to "The pursuit of happiness"  Dec 20, 2005 (17 of 17 found this helpful)

  Several books have been written on the subject of happiness, good life, meaningful life etc. Typically, writers unravel their "philosophy of life" without backing up their theories with facts. Most of the self help books are full of clichés like "Have a positive attitude", "Never give up" etc. Mihaly takes a very different approach. Armed with a scientific approach to measure experiences (ESM - Experience Sampling Method) Mihaly goes on to show the correlation between the choices people make and the quality of their lives. Again, what is propounded by the author is not "coffee table philosophy" but inference drawn on the basis of statistical data collected in several experiments. ESM study clearly shows that people feel at their best when they indulge in high- challenge, high skill activities (like demanding work, playing a game, pursuing a hobby) and feel at their worst when they indulge in low challenge - low skill activities (like watching TV). As one of the reviewers has written, some argue that this can be deduced from "common sense". There is a huge difference between the conventional wisdom attributed to common sense and inferences drawn on the basis of research. As one of the experiments described by Mihaly indicates a myth (attributed to "common sense") that people "know" how to use leisure falls flat on its face. (More on this in next paragraph)
  The book touches upon a variety of interesting and important topics. Of all the topics discussed in the book, the one I that I like best is the chapter on Risks and Rewards of Leisure. As Mihaly points out, we are some how supposed to possess skills required for the effective use of leisure. As the ESM based research indicates, people feel good when they do things they want to do or do things that they have to do. People feel at their worst when they do certain things because there is nothing else to do - mostly in their leisure. It turns out that we are not really all that skilled in using leisure effectively. Mihaly then goes on to show how the people who have been successful in leading a meaningful life use their leisure.
  What sets this book apart from the league of self help books is the presentation of scientifically collected data in conjunction with the insights of a brilliant psychologist.
  The book provides a great value for what it costs in dollars.