Table of Contents
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi accomplishes two tasks through this brilliant book. The first is that he redefines the concept of happiness, and the second is to show you how to achieve this state of happiness – Flow. No matter who you are whether you’re an introvert or an extrovert, the CEO of a company or a manual laborer, an eighteen-year-old male, or a sixty-year-old female – this book provides a more robust, pragmatic path to happiness.
Master Consciousness
The first idea is that of mastering one’s consciousness. Think of your consciousness as containing a finite store of energy, and the activities you do throughout the day as consumers of this energy. A skill that few of us ever cultivate is being able to control how our attention (or energy) is spent. You find yourself in a state of constant anxiety, distraction, and frustration. The reason is because you are bad at dealing with chaos. And you use entertainment, drugs, or alcohol to bring some order to that chaos. But dealing with chaos in that way is a clear sign that you have not yet mastered your consciousness – you haven’t cultivated the precious skill of directing your energy in a focused way for extended periods of time.
To master your consciousness – you need to engage in activities that take hours of consecutive practice every day. But you can argue that doing so is impractical, and that it conflicts with your external goals. And there’s nothing wrong with that, but the problem is when “you ignore the present completely for the possibility of a better future.”
It’s easy to fall into the trap of being slaves to your natural desires – such as food or sex – but habitually doing so weakens your ability to control your psyche.
It is estimated that you will – on average – process about 185 billion bits of information over your lifetime. This is an overestimation or underestimation. It can be an underestimation if you take advantage of the time-saving powers of technology to focus your attention on higher quality information. But it is an overestimation if you choose to spend their time mindlessly consuming television. Your quality of life is determined by the type of information you allow into your consciousness.
“Attention is shaped by the self, which in turn is shaped by attention” Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
Living in the Present
The challenge today is for the individual to stop caring about external rewards, but to learn to reward themselves instead. This is easy because it is within your hands, but hard because it requires enormous discipline.
“We are always getting to live, but never living” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
Taking control over what’s important for you today requires you to destroy what you have learned. You are taught that postponing pleasure for future gain is all that matters. In school, and at work, and until you retire, you never get to live the bright future you continually promise yourself.
Breaking the Rules
“The most effective form of socialization is achieved when people identify so thoroughly with the social order that they no longer can imagine themselves breaking any of its rules”
Flow, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
It’s important to control how much you depend on society – otherwise, you can easily be exploited for other people’s goals. When you learn to find pleasure in your everyday experiences, you free yourself from the shackles of society – in that you no longer must conform for the promise of a better tomorrow. You experience bliss in the present.
You are obsessed with social goals such as being fit, wealthy, having sex, and exerting dominance over others. And while these may bring you social standing within your culture at this time, it is a questionable use your resources. It might be better to be like the artist, who constantly evaluates his moves based on the feedback he is getting instead of holding on to rigid preconceived notions of what ought to define an ideal life.
Flow
Psychic entropy is when the self is disrupted. The self is identified by whatever goals you choose to value. There are minor internal disturbances – such as flat tires that distract you from your job, and there are major internal disturbances – such as a traumatic event that removes you completely from the pursuit of your goals.
Flow is the opposite of psychic entropy. People who experience it have achieved their goals successfully without disturbance. This leads them to become confident and powerful. The fight to gain flow is the ultimate battle for the self.
What constitutes flow can be broken down into eight parts.
- Confront tasks you have a chance of completing.
- Be able to concentrate on activity.
- Clear goals
- Immediate feedback
- Deep and effortless involvement that removes worries and frustrations
- Enjoyable experiences allow people to exert deep control over their activities
- Concern for self disappears
- Experience of time is distorted.
The surgeon is someone who experiences flow routinely, and he would never want to go into internal medicine – he would rather earn ten times less money doing surgery than doing something without immediate feedback.
But Flow isn’t supposed to be limited to a profession, but a new way to approach life. Of course, the first step is to cultivate a state of Flow at work or through your favorite hobby, but the final objective is to find Flow in everything that you do.
The Autotelic
Autotelic activity is activity that is done for its own sake – not for a reward. In Greek, “auto” means the “self”, and “telic” is “telos” or “goal.” The financial trader who plays the stock market can do so for financial gain but can also do so to hone their skill for predicting the future. Likewise, the teacher can choose to teach to earn money, but also because she enjoys interacting with children.
In both cases, an event is occurring, but the experience of the event changes based on the agent’s motivations. You cannot enjoy an activity that is only externally motivated for very long.
In contrast to the schizophrenic who Is forced to contend with unwelcome information, the autotelic personality can block out all irrelevant stimuli and focus on the task at hand. While an autotelic personality is in part a “gift of biological inheritance – it is also an ability that is open to cultivation.”
A person who pays attention to an interaction instead of being concerned about their self attains a “paradoxical result. They do not feel like an individual, yet their self grows stronger.” The opposite also seems to be true. One who is overly concerned with the self feels too much like an individual and yet their self grows weaker.
Impediments to Flow
The state of flow happens in the balance between boredom and anxiety. Too much challenge produces anxiety, while too little produces boredom. And flow can either be good or bad depending on how you use it.
The self-conscious and self-centered will find it difficult to achieve to flow. Both lack the attentional fluidity necessary. If you are constantly worried about what others are thinking, and how they are evaluating you – you will be unable focus your attention on a single activity for very long. Likewise, the self-centered individual only thinks about the functional utility of new information and would thus be unable to experience anything for its own sake. And the self-centered personality cannot achieve growth because all their psychic energy is directed towards accomplishing current tasks – rather than discovering new ones.
“Drugs reduce your ideas of what is possible, and what you can do – until they are in balance.” They effectively destroy your ambition. Under the influence of substances, you cannot think clearly enough to make art or to work or become sufficiently complex.
Without an autotelic personality, the job itself is useless to achieving Flow. But a surgeon might be miserable despite being at a job that is highly conducive to achieving Flow while the welder who has an autotelic personality can derive endless enjoyment from his work.
Dangers of Flow
Like any flow activity, taken to the extreme, even writing can become dangerous. When you develop an addiction to writing, and can no longer exert conscious control over it, you will tend to try to solve all your problems through it. This becomes dysfunctional and counter-productive. But when it is used as a tool to control experience, and not let it control your mind, it becomes a tool of “infinite subtlety and rich rewards.”
Gambling is a dangerous flow activity. “It is a form of masochistic behavior.” Any form of direct experience is preferable to the state of internal chaos that ensues from activity that is unstructured – such is the case with drugs or gambling. They give you an illusory, momentary sense of control but you are not really in control, and you will not gain mastery of your consciousness through these activities.
The Myth of Valuable Leisure Time
“The future will belong not only to the educated man, but to the man who is educated to use his leisure wisely”
– C.K. Brightbill
The value of leisure time is a myth. Most people report feeling dull and bored by leisure while reporting engaged and energized while in a state of flow. Instead of listening to their direct sensory feelings, people’s opinions of work are shaped by cultural stereotypes that frame work as something to be avoided at all costs.
The counter argument is that people would prefer to not maintain a high level of focus always and need a few hours a day to relax and unwind, but evidence points to the contrary. There are farmers who after a long day’s work, prefer to engage in demanding, active leisure activities. The idea that we need to be disengaged seems to be a perception problem more than anything else.
“People waste their free time vicariously living through other people. Watching athletes, musicians perform instead of doing it themselves. Looking for art and tv shows of adventure instead of creating art and going on their own adventures.”
Flow, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
Dealing with free time through activities that require concentration, that increase skills, and lead to the development of the self, is not like watching TV or taking drugs. Both activities are ways of dealing with threats of chaos, and defences against ontological anxiety. But the former leads to growth, while the latter just keeps the mind from unravelling. “A person who rarely gets bored, who does not constantly need a favourable external environment to enjoy the moment, has passed the test for having achieved a creative life.”
In a thorough investigation into the nature of optimal experiences, Csikszentmihalyi shows us why it is imperative to achieve Flow by clearly pointing towards the carrot and the stick – in case we are unwise enough to ignore his advice. Achieving Flow means you become a master of your consciousness, experience constant growth, derive meaning, and enjoyment from the activities that you do every day. Fail to achieve Flow, and you are condemned to a life of helplessness, anxiety, frustration, and stagnation. Ignore the call to finding Flow at your peril.