My Review 5/5

This audiobook is formatted as an interview with the author which is an interesting take. Like having a conversation with him about “Flow”.
Most important, he states “This book is no good to merely listen, only good if you take action”.

Life is roughly split into thirds. 1/3 “work”, 1/3 “maintenance”, 1/3 “leisure activities”. Everyone agrees that doing whatever you want is good. But what about the other 2/3 of your life? Could there be a way to maximize the pleasure gained from these otherwise ‘routine’ activities. Much research has been written about how man is never satisfied with a set level of material wealth. That given a set point a person becomes accustomed to it and the desires more. This is most evident by the “if I only had X I would be happy”. One car, turns into two, Fords turn into Mercedes.

As learned from Man’s Search for Meaning material possessions do not even have to exist for one to find a calling. As author puts it, man-kind has an inner drive to achieve something beyond material wealth. Call it spiritual or moral matters not. Man will pursue a passion in which he can escape from the reality of life.

Important note. You can “escape backwards” with drugs, alcohol and other vices, or you can “escape forward” with art, passion, states of flow. People who report experiencing a state of flow come out of it with heightened sense of self worth and respect.

8 Important aspects of “Flow”
1. Clarity of large goal, and every small goal in-between. Immediate feedback on each movement.
2. High level of concentration on the task at hand. All other concerns fade away
3. Balance between skills and challenge at hand. Too much challenge and experience anxiety/frustration, too little and boredom/loss of interest
4. Feeling of control. Every movement/decision is within your control. No action escapes you.
5. Effortlessness. Knowing what to do and implementing this action takes no action.
6. altered perception of time. Time either stops or flies. Two seconds in a heightened state takes hours, hours in a height stated feels like seconds
7. melting together of action and consciousness
8. auto-telic quality of experience. Reward from doing and accomplishing the goal

5 C’s of flow
1. Clarity - know thyself. know the goals
2. Centering - be in balance. stress is a blocker to flow
3. Choice - if you could do anything, make sure you are doing the thing you want to be doing
4. Commitment - See through your goals
5. Challenge - the path should not be so easy nor so hard. See above.

Date Read

2016/04/20

Date Added

2016/05/31

Goodreads book information

Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience by Mihály Csíkszentmihályi

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2897682

Bookshelves: psychology

Author’s Note

Initial md Generated using https://github.com/jsr6720/goodreads-csv-to-md

Mihály Csíkszentmihályi, Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, Simon Schuster Audio/Nightingale-Conant 2002 (Audio CD)1

Significant revisions

tags: 2016, book, review, Csíkszentmihályi, psychology

  • Apr 22nd, 2024 Converted to jekyll markdown format and copied to personal site
  • Apr 20th, 2016 Originally published on goodreads

EOF/Footnotes

  1. ISBN: =”0743525043” ↩