Fluir (Flow): Una psicologia de la felicidad (original 1990; edition 2005)

Got a bit repetitive in places, but on the plus side the content was spectacular. ( )

Very interesting book. I admit I was skeptical earlier with some pseudo-scientific terminology, but I become more convinced the more I read. Discusses the nature of happiness, by becoming totally focused in an action/thought, and a less of self-consciousness. Very interesting indeed. ( )

Flow is essentially a how-to book on improving your quality of life and becoming happier. Csikszentmihalyi states that the number one way to create happiness in one's life is to experience flow, which he describes as the sensation one gets when they're so involved in an activity that nothing else seems to matter. In the long run, the more you experience flow, the more your overall quality of life will increase. After establishing this theory, Csikszentmihalyi basically just uses the rest of the book to describe real world examples of people whose lives have improved because of his theory.
Although I agree with most of what Csikszentmihalyi says in the book, I didn't really love it. To me, his philosophy seems rather simple: spend time doing things you love and you'll be happier. Everyone knows this, so the fact that he tried to give it a name and sell it as a new revolutionary concept just seemed cheap. ( )

There a lot of internal contradictions in this book that annoyed me. I wrote a lot of marginal comments. C. talks mostly about flow in extraordinary situations and seems to derive his description of it from the extraordinary. Then he suggests we cultivate the same level of challenge and intense concentration in everything we do. He once cited dishwashing as an example. He calls flow an optimal experience but found that sometimes when people are technically (by his definition) in flow at work that they would rather be doing something else. In other words, flow is not providing them with the enjoyment it's supposed to. Does C. examine this to see if there is some element he is leaving out of the equation? Only to essentially blame it on the people reporting, saying that they simply have an overriding negative association with work. He denigrates mere pleasure (which is less intense) and can't understand why maybe people need periods of flowless rest.

While I applaud C. for looking into positive experiences as a subject of study, I certainly don't think he has discovered enough to live up to the NY Times Book Review's comment on the cover: "illuminates the way to happiness." ( )

"Flow," as the author of this book defines it, is what happens when we experience the right kind of challenge in the right frame of mind so that our whole being focuses on what we're doing, and worry, distraction, self-consciousness, even our perception of time all disappear. He believes that it is this flow state that constitutes real and substantial happiness, the "optimal experience" of the subtitle.

This "flow" experience is a familiar one to me, but also mysterious and fascinating and very much worth investigating. But while most of what the author has to say about it here seems sensible enough, I think this is a rather flawed exploration of the subject. For one thing, he sometimes seems to define the concept of "flow" so broadly that its meaning becomes blurred. For another, I'm highly dubious about the idea of anything, however broadly defined, being presented as the one and only key to happiness. But the biggest problem, I think, is that the book doesn't really seem to know whether it wants to be a scientifically-based explanation of a particular aspect of psychology, or a philosophical consideration of what it is to live a meaningful life, or a sort of self-help volume meant to encourage readers to live more satisfying lives of their own. As a result, it's not terribly successful at being any of them, and far too much of it is taken up by somewhat repetitious examples of various areas in which people can find fulfilling challenges. I have a few other quibbles with it, as well, including a dislike for some of the terminology he uses, but those are comparatively minor.

So, kind of a disappointing read. And yet, it was still a fairly thought-provoking one, as I frequently found myself, especially in the earlier parts of the book, wanting to argue certain points, or coming up with my own examples of things, or pondering how our relationship to "flow" has changed in the 22 years since this book was published. (For instance, what does it mean that we're increasingly living in a world where not only are interruptions and intrusions increasingly unavoidable, but where failing to concentrate completely on any one thing (aka "multitasking") is regarded as a sort of virtue?) That's a good thing, at least, but it just makes me think that this could have been a lot better than it was. ( )