The Canon / Living / Psychology & Science
Living · 1990
Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience
Positive Psychology (flow research)Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience presents Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's account of "flow," the state of complete, energized absorption in a challenging activity, in which attention narrows, self-consciousness falls away, and the sense of time distorts. Its central claim is that this engaged attention, arising when challenge and skill are well matched, is a principal source of intrinsic reward and a good life.
The argument rests on empirical foundations rather than introspection alone. To study subjective experience Csikszentmihalyi helped pioneer the Experience Sampling Method, paging subjects at random to record what they were doing and how they felt, turning momentary states into systematic data.
A signature construct of the positive psychology he later co-founded with Martin Seligman, flow is offered as a documented psychology of attention, motivation, and engagement. The framing is careful: it describes deep absorption, not any claim of mind acting directly upon external matter.
In its words
Contrary to what we usually believe, moments like these, the best moments in our lives, are not the passive, receptive, relaxing times—although such experiences can also be enjoyable, if we have worked hard to attain them. The best moments usually occur when a person's body or mind is stretched to its limits in a voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult and worthwhile.
What I "discovered" was that happiness is not something that happens. It is not the result of good fortune or random chance. It is not something that money can buy or power command. It does not depend on outside events, but, rather, on how we interpret them.
Happiness, in fact, is a condition that must be prepared for, cultivated, and defended privately by each person.
People who learn to control inner experience will be able to determine the quality of their lives, which is as close as any of us can come to being happy.
Control over consciousness is not simply a cognitive skill. At least as much as intelligence, it requires the commitment of emotions and will. It is not enough to know how to do it; one must do it, consistently, in the same way as athletes or musicians who must keep practicing what they know in theory.
Attention is like energy in that without it no work can be done, and in doing work it is dissipated. We create ourselves by how we invest this energy.
Following a flow experience, the organization of the self is more complex than it had been before. It is by becoming increasingly complex that the self might be said to grow.
Practices it teaches
The Autotelic Habit — Making a Boring Task Intrinsically Rewarding
A practice for turning any activity — even a dull, repetitive, or imposed one — into a flow opportunity. "Autotelic" comes from the Greek auto (self) and telos (goal): an autotelic experience is one done for its…
Engineering Flow — Setting the Conditions for Optimal Experience
A practice for designing an absorbing session rather than waiting for absorption to arrive. Csikszentmihalyi's research found that flow — "a state of concentration so focused that it amounts to absolute absorption…
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The author
Mihaly CsikszentmihalyiFlow: optimal experience
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Key terms
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