Why Flow made my top 5 (and might deserve a spot in yours)
Plus: my book notes on the classic 'Flow' by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
After 100+ books on personal development, this one book made it to my top 5:
Flow by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi.
You might have heard about the concept of ‘flow’ before. I thought I knew everything I needed to know about flow before reading (not just reading: engaging with!) the book.
But this is a classic example of Dunning-Kruger effect: being highly confident in your knowledge despite, or because, you know very little about a subject. Knowing about a concept is not the same as digesting it: where it comes from, how it matters in your life and those around you, how you can implement it etc.
Yes, chatGPT could give you a good summary. But that’s not the same:
It’s low effort, but it’s effort that makes it a part of you and makes it stick
It’s generic in its perspective; it’s not your perspective (unless you’ve trained the AI with rich, personal context; and even then, can any machine truly capture what even we struggle to put into words?)
So, why is this such an important book for me?
It taught me that attention is my most precious resource, and that struggle is often part of happiness.
It showed me how to create flow, both on a daily basis and in the big picture
It changed how I coach, being more aware of where my clients are at (in flow, anxiety or boredom), and what they need next.
I encourage you to read the book.
For now, these are the highlights that stand out to me:
Book note
Title: Flow. The classic work on how to achieve happiness
Author: Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
In 3 sentences
Flow is an experience of ordered consciousness, directed at an activity that is challenging and demands our full attention and ability. We lose a sense of time and space, and after the flow experience we have grown in complexity
The right environment and personality are conducive to flow experiences
Flow is how we can turn adversity into an enjoyable challenge. When faced with adversity, we can draw on three resources: external support (e.g. friends), personality, coping strategies. Coping strategies are most controllable and can transform adversity in 3 steps: unselfconscious self-assurance, focusing attention on the world, discovery of new solutions
Summary
“No great improvements in the lot of mankind are possible, until a great change takes place in the fundamental constitution of their modes of thought.” - J.S. Mill
If people have known for millennia how to be free and happy, why have we not made more progress? First, this type of knowledge is not cumulative, it cannot be expressed in a formula. It needs to be learnt by every individual and learnt by doing. Second, it must be reformulated to fit the cultural context.
Control of consciousness - and thus control of one’s experience - is key to happiness.
We create ourselves by how and where we invest our attention. Attention shapes the self and vice versa.
Order in consciousness = flow.
After flow experiences, we grow more complex.
Complexity = differentiation and integration.
“A self that is only differentiated - not integrated - may attain great individual accomplishments, but risks being mired in self-centered egotism. By the same token, a person whose self is based exclusively on integration will be connected and secure, but lack autonomous individuality. Only when a person invests equal amounts of psychic energy in these two processes and avoids both selfishness and conformity is the self likely to reflect complexity. The self becomes complex as a result of experiencing flow. Paradoxically, it is when we act freely, for the sake of the action itself rather than for ulterior motives, that we learn to become more than what we were. When we choose a goal and invest ourselves in it to the limits of our concentration, whatever we do will be enjoyable. And once we have tasted this joy, we will redouble our efforts to taste it again. This is the way the self grows.” P 42
Very different people who did very different things reported in very similar terms the experience of enjoyment when performing activities as varied as chess, basketball, rock climbing, playing music.
Enjoyment has 8 components:
Challenging activity that requires skill
Concentration
Clear goals
Immediate feedback
Deep involvement that removes from awareness other, everyday worries
Opportunity to exercise a sense of control:
“what people enjoy is not the sense of being in control, but the sense of exercising control in difficult situations. It is not possible to experience a feeling of control unless one is willing to give up the safety of protective routines. Only when a doubtful outcome is at stake, and one is able to influence that outcome, can a person really know whether she is in control.” P61
Concern for self disappears yet emerges stronger after the experience is over
“When not preoccupied with our selves, we actually have a chance to expand the concept of who we are. Loss of self-consciousness can lead to self-transcendence, to a feeling that the boundaries of our being have been pushed forward.” P64
Sense of duration of time is change
A1 and A4 are flow states. But A4 has higher complexity. And A4 is not where it stops. Even this will turn into boredom or anxiety
A2 (boredom) or A3 (anxiety) are negative experiences that we deal with by moving toward A4
The alternative to moving from A2/A3 to A4 is giving up, removing oneself from the diagram
One of the Indian tribes of British Columbia would move to a new land every 20-30 years. This was to reintroduce challenge to the community that would lead to flow.
“Without interest in the world, a desire to be actively related to it, a person becomes isolated into himself. Bertrand Russell, one of the greatest philosophers of our century, described how he achieved personal happiness: "Gradually I learned to be indifferent to myself and my deficiencies; I came to center my attention increasingly upon external objects: the state of the world, various branches of knowledge, individuals for whom I felt affection." There could be no better short description of how to build for oneself an autotelic personality.” P93
Some jobs are designed to create the flow conditions. But even then, enjoyment also requires an autotelic personality, ie a person to really seek and find enjoyment in the task. So 2 avenues to work that gives flow: conditions of the job and developing personality that can seize the enjoyment.
Paradox: we think we want more leisure, i.e. less work. But often while having free time, we feel less satisfied than while working. What we actually do in leisure or work, and whether these activities bring us into flow, is what determines our satisfaction. And yet, we are culturally conditioned to (say that we) prefer leisure over work.
“keeping order in the mind from within is very difficult. We need external goals, external stimulation, external feedback to keep attention directed. And when external input is lacking, attention begins to wander, and thoughts become chaotic--resulting in the state we have called ‘psychic entropy’” p169
In the ancient Greek usage, "politics referred to whatever involved people in affairs that went beyond personal and family welfare. In this broad sense, politics can be one of the most enjoyable and most complex activities available to the individual, for the larger the social arena one moves in, the greater the challenges it presents. A person can deal with very intricate problems in solitude, and family and friends can take up a lot of attention. But trying to optimize the goals of unrelated individuals involves complexities an order of magnitude higher.” P190
Flow theory is not just for individuals. It could also guide public action to supporting conditions that enable people to experience flow:
“But no social change can come about until the consciousness of individuals is changed first. When a young man asked Carlyle how he should go about reforming the world, Carlyle answered, "Reform your self. That way there will be one less rascal in the world." The advice is still valid. Those who try to make life better for everyone without having learned to control their own lives first usually end up making things worse all around.” P191
Coping ability is how people handle stress. The types of resources people draw on:
External support (eg friends), but also requires the person to know how to use it
Personality (eg extrovert more easily able to make new friends)
Coping strategies - most controllable
“Of all the virtues we can learn no trait is more useful, more essential for survival, and more likely to improve the quality of life than the ability to transform adversity into an enjoyable challenge.” P200
Three steps involved in such transformation:
Unselfconscious self-assurance: when one no longer sees oneself in opposition to the environment, to not insist on one’s goals or intentions above anything else, to operate within a system
Focusing attention on the world: “People who know how to transform stress into enjoyable challenge spend very little time thinking about themselves.” P 204
Discovery of new solutions: rather than aiming for goal and getting rid of obstacles is to be aware of entire situation and whether alternative goals may not also be viable
Flow is not just a moment-to-moment experience. It can also characterise your whole life, so that each flow moment hangs together in an overall picture of your life that has meaning.
Two ways to create inner harmony:
vita activa: flow through being engaged in external challenges
vita contemplativa: detached reflection
“Action helps create inner order, but it has its drawbacks. A person strongly dedicated to achieving pragmatic ends might eliminate internal conflict, but often at the price of excessively restricting options.” P226
“Activity and reflection should ideally complement and support each other. Action by itself is blind, reflection impotent.” P226
“But complexity consists of integration as well as differentiation. The task of the next decades and centuries is to realize this underdeveloped component of the mind. Just as we have learned to separate ourselves from each other and from the environment, we now need to learn how to reunite ourselves with other entities around us without losing our hard-won individuality. The most promising faith for the future might be based on the realization that the entire universe is a system related by common laws and that it makes no sense to impose our dreams and desires on nature without taking them into account. Recognizing the limitations of human will, accepting a cooperative rather than a ruling role in the universe, we should feel the relief of the exile who is finally returning home. The problem of meaning will then be resolved as the individual's purpose merges with the universal flow.” P240
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