Psychology books are not very frequent among my reading lists, but this work found it's way into my hands after having read it's sequel. I found the topic to be interesting, but not always the writing which presented it. The effort of being mindful in everyday situations has made a big impact on the amount of joy I experience in daily life. Unfortunately, I would not claim it as an incredible breakthrough, nor as a result of this book.

I think there are some good ideas to be gleaned from this discussion of flow, however it strays too far toward humanistic ends. I suppose that is to be expected from a self-help/psychology book of this nature. ( )

A friend who reads as much as I do was visiting last week. After an evening of drinking beer and catching up, I started to complain about being "off the path." "I've got two books you have to read," he said. "Flow and The Alchemist." He was right. I needed to read those two books.

Flow describes exactly what I feel missing from my life for the past year, and what I definitely felt for the previous 15. When work is not work because you are so involved in it that time passes without being aware of it. I liked the notion of controlling our consciousness and deciding what to do with sensory input. I've been in one of those negative spaces where I think the dishes stacked up on the counter and the sink are a conspiracy by my family to ruin my life. I decided change my attitude a couple of weeks ago, and to keep the kitchen clean just because I like it that way. Whenever I pass though, I pick up anything on the counter and put it away, load the dishwasher, etc. I don't think I am spending any more time doing anything, but the counters are clean, I am happy, and I even think some of it is starting to rub off on the rest of the family. But even if it isn't, this is the road to true bliss. I think I am finding my way back to the path. ( )

This is a two-hour discussion by the author on "flow", as discussed in his book. It is produced by Nightingale-Conant, and is very much in the "self-help" genre. The author discusses the behavioral steps necessary to attain "flow" and states how acquiring these "habits" will enhance one's inner life.

The reverse may be closer to the truth: those who have the inner state of "flow" exhibit the traits the author discusses. It is not certain that the inner state is achieved by developing these traits. "Flow" is more than a "self-help" instruction! ( )

Unique theory of chaos, control of the mind, enjoyment, finite capacity of the mind, alienation of teenagers, and more. I wish I'd read this 15 years ago. ( )

Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, is research based book about scientific study of people when they are in 'flow' or in the 'the zone'.
more @ http://toogood2read.blogspot.com/2009...

Reviewed in my blog at http://www.sea-of-flowers.ca/weblog/s... and at Blogcritics at http://blogcritics.org/archives/2004/...

Flow, The Psychology of Optimal Experience(ISBN 0060162538 , published in 1990, has been influential in several areas of psychology including sports and leisure, game design and theories of creativity. The language of flow has taken hold in business psychology, and flow is coming into vogue as a metaphor of engaged living within the major religions as well as among more alternative thinkers. He wrote a shorter version, more directly aimed at the self-help or popular psychology markets in 1997, Finding Flow (ISBN 0-465-02411-4).

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi was an academic clinical psychologist at the University of Chicago. His approach is based in humanistic psychology, so it impressionistic and oriented to feeling, and not based in neurobiology or cognitive psychology. His research is in the form of analysis of subjective reports and surveys, rather than standardized tests. His field of study was happiness. He gathered data on why some people take great pleasure in some leisure activities, and why some people can be happy in what might seem to be boring jobs and work situations. His answer is that people can become engaged in tasks, finding a pleasant flow in identifying challenges, meeting them, and being positively engaged in tasks.

People who are busy with a meaningful tasks don't have time to be anxious and depressed. Some people don't like their work but they like challenging recreational activities like mountain climbing and organize their lives around fulfilling hobbies.

This seems to be simple common sense, or common experience. Cognitive psychologists and educational psychologists have developed theories of learning based on balancing challenges to accomplishments within a scheme for increasing competence. He has gathered some evidence, albeit in the form of subjective reports, to support his argument. He doesn't seem to pay much attention to the cognitive work, and he presents flow as his own new, modern psychological theory. His theories about why complex and challenging activities are enjoyable and important in leading a healthy, happy life are interesting and useful, but the theory and the book have significant limitations.

The book is reasonably clear, but is not particularly well-written. It sounds naive and romantic, and it is full of the jargon of humanistic psychology (for instance concepts of psychic energy, psychic entropy, autotelic personality). He mentions the theories and main players in humanistic psychology , Maslow, Rogers, Allport, with some debt to Jung. In Finding Flow (the 1997 sequel) he tries to distance his theories from other theories and thinkers in humanistic psychology. I don't think he does that successfully. He mainly presents his theory of flow as method of self-actualization within the main stream of humanistic psychology. He also dives deep into dreamy pool near the end of his book, like all the humastic thinkers since Jung - mysterical insight dressed up as science.

His basic claim is that people are happy in activities that generate flow. He recognizes that people are also happy when basic needs are met in a pleasant way - good food, erotic sex, but he distinguishes between mere pleasure and the enjoyment of a complex experience. The mystical aspect of his work is that he advocates seeking flow in to the point of losing self-consciousness and becoming engaged in the flow of life.

His effort to distinguish between ordinary pleasure and enjoyable flow is largely semantic and largely unconvincing, and this false dichotomy is probably the key flaw in his philosophy. Flow is simply a feeling of pleasure. It rewarding, and like the other pleasures, it can be addictive. It is not an absolute good.

He tries to build a system of thought and live around flow. He holds that the complex pleasures of creating art, writing books, making music and climbing mountains are better than the simple pleasures of working people, and his project is the improvement of the lower classes by teaching them to find flow instead of watching TV. His biases are transparent. Like the other humanistic psychologists, he is working within a system of thought which aspires to imitate Stoic philosophy but seems more influenced by neo-Platonism, European Romanticism, some Indian and Oriental religiion and neo-hippie consciousness-altering mysticism. He basically implies that humanity will be enlightened if more people can be led from the low pleasures of common culture to the higher enjoyment of living in a state of flow.

I agree with much of what he says about living an examined and purposeful life. (I am obviously less enchanted with humanistic psychology which mainly a recycling of Romantic ideas and Eastern religion under the pretext of science). I think popular culture had become fragmented by the commercialization of sports and art, and by fluffy thinking. We are living in an era of bread and circuses. My criticism is that his system undervalues the simple pleasures of shelter, food, intimacy, drama, ritual and social living and values altered consciousness as a higher pleasure.

The Stoics felt that virtue is its own reward, while flow theorists seem to believe that anything that produces pleasurable flow is good. The author is more of a hedonist than a Stoic.

I think this book is useful in its discussion of the role of leisure and the importance of being engaged in fulfilling leisure activities. While his claims for the moral importance of flow are overstated, he is very persuasive in identifying the importance of using leisure time in challenging activities, and engaging in life with people, instead of sitting on the couch alone.

At the same time, ironically, his noble project has been subverted as his theories have been applied to design video games that are full of nearly addictive faux flow experiences, which remorsely consume precious time. The Playstation was released in 1994 and the psychology of flow has been a central concept of game design. ( )

I find this book somewhat straggly. Ostensibly, this book is about the "flow"-feeling, but his definition of flow gradually becomes so wide as to be almost indistinguishable from general happiness (could the situation of a mother reading stories to her child be thought of in terms of an adequate challenge for her mothering skill? Or is there another form of satisfaction involved? When some ordinary people gather for a Friday evening dinner, are they using their social skills to engage in challenges of socialising? Is his diagram from the beginning of chapter 4 applicable to that situation?). The book becomes a general self-help book with advice on everything from parenting to how to handle stress and catastrophic life changes.

In chapter 8, he describes ordinary people playing cards, throwing darts and playing checkers as a waste of time, yet those activities might well be flow-creating. He seems somewhat condescending - normal people don't experience flow because they're lazy. Friendships between ordinary people are not as good as the friendships he describes.

I also dislike the way he organized the references (though I do like the full and thorough comments in the reference list - not just an austere list of works). There are no inline citations. If you're interested in a certain paragraph, you'll have to turn to the reference list at the end of the book and just hope that he wrote something about that section.

I've also read "Finding Flow", by the same author, and the two works are largely overlapping. If you haven't read either of them, I suggest you read that book instead of this one, as that book is somewhat more to-the-point. ( )

“In work, sport, conversation, hobby, or spirituality, you have experienced, yourself, the suspension of time, the freedom of complete absorption in activity. This is “flow,” an experience that is at once demanding and rewarding—an experience that [the author] demonstrates is one of the most enjoyable and valuable experiences a person can have.”
—Amazon.com editorial

In a nutshell: Over 25 years of well researched behavioral science (written on a non-academic level) meets the pursuit of happiness.

This really connected with me and made sense on a level that few other self-help books (which this is not) or psychology books (pop or academic) have done. Highly recommended. ( )

I'm not yet finished reading this book, so my feelings regarding it are as yet incomplete. I have to say I'm a little disappointed so far; I think that disappointment stems from my expectations that the book would have a little more "meat" to it. I realize now that this isn't a fair assessment, since this is not meant to be a strictly academic work (but rather a popular distillation of decades of work on the topic of optimal experience).

Simply put, according to Csikszentmihalyi "flow" is the state in which one's skills are matched well with the challenges one is meant to face when armed with those skills, and both skills and challenges are high. If one's skills are inadequate to meet the challenges one is met with, one will tend to feel anxious, overwhelmed, terrified. If one's skills overmaster one's challenges, one will instead feel bored and stultified. If skills and challenges match but are of a low order, one may feel eager to raise the stakes and proceed to a higher "flow" state. Csikszentmihalyi's thesis is that in order to perform this increase in stakes, one must become adept at focusing one's attention consciously in rule-bound, goal-oriented activities that require a high degree of skill and result in a "complexification" of the individual self as one gains greater, more well-refined skills.

Read for what it is, the book is solid and provides good insight into the ways in which one can train oneself to get more out of life. Moreover, the book has already given me a number of pointers to more specific (and more academic) references I may be able to use to hone my pedagogy. For instance, the references on pp. 88-89 to Kevin Rathunde's work with optimal experience in the context of the family should lead to concrete measures for constructing a classroom environment conducive to "flow" experiences.

I'll check back in once I've finished this book, and once we've had discussions on it in the faculty learning circle of which I'm a part this summer. ( )

Csikszentmihalyi explains, better than anyone else has done to date, what factors contribute to meaning and enjoyment in life. His findings are based on solid research and show that all situations provide opportunities for individuals to cultivate flow for themselves. These autotelic people do so by having goals, discovering purpose, engaging in relevant pursuits, keeping challenge in their life, and being fully involved in the resulting experiences. Pity the soul who never discovers their own source and experience of flow. ( )

A practical psychology/self-help book. For some reason, i don't like self-help books that just give out advices left and right and spit out words like "you can achieve whatever you can think of...blah...blah". But i do like pragmatic, practical and books with a philosophical bent. I would categorize this book under that.

quite enlightening read. very good references and style. ( )

This book came out quite a few years ago (1990) and I've been meaning to read it for some time. The topic? How to achieve Flow, that state of enjoyable concentration, of focus, of absorption in an activity that engrosses you.

This book covers a fascinating topic, but reaches only a certain depth. It mainly tells you what it feels like to be in "Flow", what the difference is between pleasure and the "optimal experience", so that you can recognize it and enhance those moments. The book talks about extending that type of experience into worklife, homelife, choosing hobbies that create greater complexity of being (such as playing an instrument or tinkering with machines) rather than less complexity of being (such as passively watching television).
Of course, a lot of this I know already. I have never been sick of learning and I feel boredom is one of the great evils of the universe. I enjoy rich and complex hobbies, that in fact challenge me more than anything else in my life. But it was good to be reminded of what it feels like. Not just what it feels like to be doing alright, but what it feels like when you are completely "in the zone", when details sharpen, when you are engraving memories. At this time in my life I mostly feel this when I perform music. I become unified with the creation of something greater while at the same time I have a heightened awareness of the details, of how the conductor's expressions convey the emotion we are trying to achieve, of the way the violin bows rise and fall in unison, of how the volume of sounds rocks and shakes my body from within. Csikszentmihalyi's thesis is that this can be achieved in many aspects of one's life, that this state of being is precisely what gives meaning to life.

Although much of the book is devoted to anecdotes of individual's experiences, it also provides some advice. This includes creating goals, finding a way of getting immediate feedback, motivating towards progress, and controlling attitudes towards crisis. He speaks a lot about control for a book called "Flow". I think for myself Flow is not just a matter of internal control, but also of being aware of the current of life. I certainly wouldn't want to change plans at every change of current, but there is also something to be said for being flexible and ready to change when circumstances provide new and different opportunities. Csikszentmihalyi does mention this as well, but it is not his focus. It's all very well to say "pick appropriate goals and pursue them and you will be happy" but the hard part is choosing what goals to pursue, understanding one's own nature well enough to pick goals that are (a) achievable given your skills and potential and (b) produce the best end result for you. I could say "I want to do a triathlon" and be pretty satisfied with my achievement, but it provides no where near the joy and sense of completeness that performing a symphony does.

It was not in the purview of this book, but I do want to explore the topic of Flow in the sense of the Eastern religions as well. Flow for me is when I am moving along the Right Path. When I veer away from that path, as my life's center of mass moves away from the balance point, I introduce instability and doubt. What I need to explore is the concept of Flow not just in terms of single activities, but in terms of my life. This is not the sort of thing one gets out of one book or learns in a year. It will be a lifelong process. But I don't want to give up on progressing with self-knowledge, wisdom, and spiritual centeredness just because it's a difficult topic to nail down. I need to keep coming back to it.

The main boon of this book was that it made me think about the topic of Flow for a little time each day for the two weeks I was reading it. The book itself suffers from Best Seller Syndrome: it has a 50 page topic that is stretched into 150 pages for publishing purposes. But it still has some interesting points and is worth a read for anyone interested in such things.

Flow -- the state in which people are so involved in an activity that nothing else seems to matter; the experience itself is so enjoyable that people will do it even at great cost, for the sheer sake of doing it. ( )

Incredible ideas about happiness, productivity and the way people work and motivate themselves. I recommend this book to everyone. And I will read it again and again. ( )

A bit "Reader's Digest", very light on. ( )

This book describes the experience defined as "flow". Rather than summarize it here, I refer you to the excellent article in Wikipedia.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_%28...

The book is a challenging read, but worth it. Chapter 2 "The Anatomy of Consciousness" is the worst. I would recommend skipping it and reading the rest of the book, before coming back to it.

The book is also challenging because of the idea; in the end, you are responsible for how you respond to the environment you are in. The book contains practical suggestions for how to promote conditions which are conducive to creating a flow experience. ( )