Flow Book Summary

Book Summary

15 min

Brief Summary

A meaningful life is within reach for everybody, and can be achieved by entering flow: a highly focused mental state resulting in productivity and growth. By ignoring external rewards or opinions, practicing activities for their inherent value allows every moment to feel joyful and important. Learning to turn our attention towards activities that support our goals allows us to spend more time lost in a state of growth and play. This can be achieved by developing a heightened appreciation for the small details in the environment around us, and by facing difficult challenges without fear. By learning how to enter flow states in all aspects of our lives, we grow more efficiently as people and as citizens of the world. Finding meaning starts with turning off the television and finding ways to break a sweat and get creative.

About the Author

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi is a Hungarian psychology professor, researcher, and leader of the positive psychology movement. He is the former head of psychology at the University of Chicago. Currently he is the Distinguished Professor of Psychology and Management at Claremont Graduate University. He is a notable researcher of happiness and creativity. He is the author of many books and over 120 articles and book chapters. His works are highly influential and widely cited.

Topics

Psychology

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Flow by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Key Insights

In the modern age, many wonder why they feel stuck in a rut, and wonder from a distance about the secrets of those with happy and fulfilling lives. After studying thousands of people, Hungarian psychologist Mihaly Cszikszentmihalyi found a simple distinction: the happiest people were those able to immerse themselves deeply in their activities, enjoying the challenge of practicing a skill for its own sake rather than for external rewards like money or recognition. In this book, Cszikszentmihalyi introduces this state of total attention as flow and explains how achieving this state in regular life can transform both our daily and longterm selves. .

We turn to material goods, religion, and external rewards to find meaning in an indifferent world, but these things will never produce the gratification we seek.

When we feel unhappy in our lives, we tend to look to our world for solutions. Around us, we see people accumulating things like money and recognition, and we envy these results, considering them the means to a happier life. We may look to religion as an answer to the meaning that we cannot find in our secular lives.

However, all of these things have not proven to deliver on the fulfillment we need. Many of the main principles of religion have been unfounded, while many wealthy and famous people could tell you that their status hasn’t satisfied them for very long. To be sure, mental health professions see many wealthy patients who continue to struggle with feelings of emptiness and dissatisfaction.

Cszikszentmihalyi explains that we tend to want to change the environment around us because biologically, human beings evolved to seek out basic pleasures— these pleasured restored order. The instant gratification from buying something new or getting attention online may make us feel good and are easier than practicing a skill that requires effort. For example, instead of spending a few hours engrossed in a book, many would choose to watch videos or Netflix instead because the latter is easier and instantly pleasurable. Often, we feel we deserve this pleasure as compensation for the difficult grinding pace of our lives— escapism feels good.

The rewards we get from this pleasure, however, are not comparable to the rewards we get from truly enjoying an activity. Feeling joy involves stretching ourselves, testing our limits by concentrating on a task, and feeling immersed in the process of improvement. Unfortunately, our genetic preference for pleasure over this enjoyment prevents us from experiencing it more often.

Cszikszentmihalyi states that with some effort and intention, we can control our attention and begin to privilege enjoyment over pleasure intellectually and then in practice. He asks the reader to consider that the time we spend on pleasure, like when watching TV, drinking alcohol, or scrolling through social media, is us at our most passive and can damage our ability to concentrate in the future. We should admit that although pleasure arises from the path of least resistance, enjoyment can come...