Csikszentmihalyi Flow Quotes & Sayings

Enjoyment appears at the boundary between boredom and anxiety, when the challenges are just balanced with the person's capacity to act. — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Csikszentmihalyi identified four "preconditions" of flow: first, each moment of the activity must have a little goal; second, the rules for attaining that goal must be clear; third, the activity must give immediate feedback so that one has certainty, from moment to moment, on where one stands; fourth, the tasks of the activity must be matched with operational skills, bestowing a sense of simultaneous control and challenge. — Natasha Dow Schull

The tremendous leisure industry that has arisen in the last few generations has been designed to help fill free time with enjoyable experiences. Nevertheless, instead of using our physical and mental resources to experience flow, most of us spend many hours each week watching celebrated athletes playing in enormous stadiums. Instead of making music, we listen to platinum records cut by millionaire musicians. Instead of making art, we go to admire paintings that brought in the highest bids at the latest auction. We do not run risks acting on our beliefs, but occupy hours each day watching actors who pretend to have adventures, engaged in mock-meaningful action. — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Wealth, status, and power have become in our culture all too powerful symbols of happiness ... And we assume that if only we could acquire some of those same symbols, we would be nuch happier. — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

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. Optimal experience is thus something that we
make happen. For a child, it could be placing with trembling fingers the last blockon a tower she has built, higher than any she has built so far; for a swimmer, it could be trying to beat his own record; for a violinist, mastering an intricate musical passage. For each person there are thousands of opportunities, challenges to expand ourselves. — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

A typical day is full of anxiety and boredom. Flow experiences provide the flashes of intense living against this dull background. — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Few would argue that a simpler consciousness, no matter how harmonious, is preferable to a more complex one. While we might admire the serenity of the lion in repose, the tribesman's untroubled acceptance of his fate, or the child's wholehearted involvement in the present, they cannot offer a model for resolving our predicament. The order based on innocence is now beyond our grasp. Once the fruit is plucked from the tree of knowledge, the way back to Eden is barred forever. — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Theory of optimal experience based on the concept of flow - the state in which people are so involved in an activity that nothing else seems to matter; the experience itself is so enjoyable that people will do it even at great cost, for the sheer sake of doing it. — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

It is the full involvement of flow, rather than happiness, that makes for excellence in life. When we are in flow, we are not happy, because to experience happiness we must focus on our inner states, and that would take away attention from the task at hand. — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Other things equal, a life filled with complex flow activities is more worth living than one spent consuming passive entertainment. — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

A paycheck is a sufficient impetus to motivate some employees to do the minimum amount to get by, and for others, the challenge of getting ahead in the organization provides a satisfactory focus for a while. But these incentives alone are rarely strong enough to inspire workers to give their best to their work. For this a vision is needed, an overarching goal that gives meaning to the job, so that an individual can forget himself in the task and experience flow without doubts or regrets. The most important component of such a vision is an ingredient we call soul. — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Competition is an easy way to get into flow. — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Flow is the process of achieving happiness through control over one's inner life. The optimal state of inner experience is order in consciousness. This happens when we focus our attention (psychic energy) on realistic goals and when our skills match the challenges we face. — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

They make us dependent on a social system that exploits our energies for its own purposes ... If a person learns to enjoy and find meaning in the ongoing stream of experience, in the process of living itself, the burden of social controls automatically falls from one's shoulders. — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

One of the most frequently mentioned dimensions of the flow experience is that, while it lasts, one is able to forget all the unpleasant aspects of life. — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

To transform the biological necessity of feeding into a flow experience, one must begin by paying attention to what one eats. It is astonishing - as well as discouraging - when guests swallow lovingly prepared food without any sign of having noticed its virtues. What — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

The task is to learn how to enjoy everyday life without diminishing other people's chances to enjoy theirs. — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Flow is hard to achieve without effort. Flow is not 'wasting time. — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

But religions are only temporarily successful attempts to cope with the lack of meaning in life; they are not permanent answers. — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

However, by Sunday noon
not coincidentally, the unhappiest hour in America
you may have run through your options and wind up slumped on a couch, suffering from the Sabbath existential crisis. It's at just such unfocused, unproductive times, says Csikszentmihalyi, that people start ruminating and feeling that their lives are wasted and so forth. — Winifred Gallagher

We are always getting to live, as Ralph Waldo Emerson used to say, but never living. Or as poor Frances learned in the children's story, it is always bread and jam tomorrow, never brad and jam today. — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

But it is impossible to enjoy a tennis game, a book, or a conversation unless attention is fully concentrated on the activity. — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience BY MIHALY CSIKSZENTMIHALYI — Daniel H. Pink

Most of us become so rigidly fixed in the ruts carved out by genetic programming and social conditioning that we ignore the options of choosing any other course of action. Living exclusively by genetic and social instructions is fine as long as everything goes well. But the moment bioloical or social goals are frustrated- which in the long run is inevitable - a person must formulate new goals, and create a new flow activity for himself, or else he will always waste his energies in inner turmoil. — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

The last great attempt to free consciousness from the domination of impulses and social controls was psychoanalysis; as Freud pointed out, the two tyrants that fought for control over the mind were the id and the superago, the first a servant of a genes, the second a lackey of society - both representing the "Other". — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

The concentration is usually possible because the task undertaken has clear goals and provides immediate feedback. — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

You are definitely onto a rather large problem," Csikszentmihalyi told me. He has found discrepancies for women, not only in the actual opportunity to have time for flow but also for allowing themselves to get there in the first place. "When I lecture about flow, in the question-and-answer period, there is always the same question: 'But doesn't one feel guilty when you are in flow because you forget everything except what you are doing? Isn't that giving up on the rest of your responsibilities - giving in to total involvement in what you are doing and not caring about anything or anyone else?' That question, almost 100 percent of the time, is asked by a woman. It's clear that it's much more difficult for women to feel that they can get immersed in something and forget themselves, forget time, forget everything around them." Csikszentmihalyi — Brigid Schulte

As long as one strives to become a gourmet or a connoisseur of wines because it is the "in" thing to do, striving to master an externally imposed challenge, then taste may easily turn sour. But a cultivated palate provides many opportunities for flow if one approaches eating - and cooking - in a spirit of adventure and curiosity, exploring the potentials of food for the sake of the experience rather than as a showcase for one's expertise. — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

If we know what that set point is, we can predict fairly accurately when you will be in flow, and it will be when your challenges are higher than average and skills are higher than average. — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

The flow experience, like everything else, is not "good" in an absolute sense. It is good only in that it has the potential to make life more rich, intense, and meaningful; it is good because it increases the strength and complexity of the self. — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

The key to flow is to pursue an activity for its own sake, not for the rewards it brings."
(psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi on the state of being he calls "flow") — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

To know oneself is the first step toward making flow a part of one's entire life. But just as there is no free lunch in the material economy, nothing comes free in the psychic one. If one is not willing to invest psychic energy in the internal reality of consciousness, and instead squanders it in chasing external rewards, one loses mastery of one's life, and ends up becoming a puppet of circumstances. — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

The mystique of rock climbing is climbing; you get to the top of a rock glad it's over but really wish it would go on forever. The justification of climbing is climbing, like the justification of poetry is writing; you don't conquer anything except things in yourself ... . The act of writing justifies poetry. Climbing is the same: recognizing that you are a flow. The purpose of the flow is to keep on flowing, not looking for a peak or utopia but staying in the flow. It is not a moving up but a continuous flowing; you move up to keep the flow going. There is no possible reason for climbing except the climbing itself; it is a self-communication. — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

It was found that the more often people report reading books, the more flow experiences they claim to have, while the opposite trend was found for watching television. — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

In his book Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi refers to flow as the time when you become lost in your actions, whether climbing a mountain peak, painting or playing soccer. — Beth Whitman

The names we use to describe personality traits - such as extrovert, high achiever, or paranoid - refer to the specific patterns people have used to structure their attantion. At the same party, the extrovert will seek out and enjoy interactions with others, the high achiever will look for useful business conacts, and the paranoid will be on guard for signs of danger he must avoid. Attention can be invested in innumerable ways, ways that can make life eihther rich or miserable. — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

A Web site that promotes flow is like a gourmet meal. You start off with the appetizers, move on to the salads and entrees, and build toward dessert. Unfortunately, most sites are built like a cafeteria. You pick whatever you want. That sounds good at first, but soon it doesn't matter what you choose to do. Everything is bland and the same. — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

On the job people feel skillful and challenged, and therefore feel more happy, strong, creative, and satisfied. In their free time people feel that there is generally not much to do and their skills are not being used, and therefore they tend to feel more sad, weak, dull, and dissatisfied. Yet they would like to work less and spend more time in leisure.
What does this contradictory pattern mean? There are several possible explanations, but one conclusion seems inevitable: when it comes to work, people do not heed the evidence of their senses. They disregard the quality of immediate experience, and base their motivation instead on the strongly rooted cultural stereotype of what work is supposed to be like. They think of it as an imposition, a constraint, an infringement of their freedom, and therefore something to be avoided as much as possible. — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Flow is being completely involved in an activity for its own sake. The ego falls away. Time flies. Every action, movement, and thought follows inevitably from the previous one, like playing jazz. — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

But to change all existence into a flow experience, it is not sufficient to learn merely how to control moment-by-moment states of consciousness. It is also necessary to have an overall context of goals for the events of everyday life to make senseTo create harmony in whatever one does is the last task that the flow theory presents to whose who wish to attain optimal experience; it is a task that involves transforming the entirety of life into a single flow activity, with unified goals that provide constant purpose. — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Pain and pleasure occur in consciousness and exist only there — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

During this kind of highly structured, self-motivated hard work, Csikszentmihalyi wrote, we regularly achieve the greatest form of happiness available to human beings: intense, optimistic engagement with the world around us. We feel fully alive, full of potential and purpose
in other words, we are completely activated as human beings. — Jane McGonigal

You yourself are in an ecstatic state to such a point that you feel as though you almost don't exist. I've experienced this time and again. My hand seems devoid of myself, and I have nothing to do with what is happening. I just sit there watching in a state of awe and wonderment. And it just flows out by itself. — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Repeatedly we question the necessity of our actions and evaluate critically the reasons for carrying them out. But in flow there is no need to reflect, because the action carries us forward as if by magic. — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

But anyone who has experienced flow knows that the deep enjoyment it provieds requires an equal degree of disciplined concentration. — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

What the social environment told them to want ... — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

The essence of socialization is to make people dependent on social controls, to have them respond predictably to rewards and punishments. — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

To realize the body's potential for flow is relatively easy. It does not require special talents or great expenditures of money. Everyone can greatly improve the quality of life by exploring one or more previously ignored dimensions of physical abilities. Of — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Creating meaning involves bringing order to the contents of the mind by integrating one's actions into a unified flow experience. — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi