Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience

These notes are old and were written while reading — they don’t necessarily reflect my current views.

There are 8 symptoms of flow: You know exactly what your goal is, get immediate feedback and the task matches your ability (connection to Peterson). You focus on something single-mindedly and have no distractions. There is a loss of self-consciousness and a loss of the feeling of time.

The goal is to get into flow in every situation (Zen-like). Also there is a connection to Camus Myth of Sisyphus.

Csikszentmihalyi believes flow to be a way to live your life and find joy and meaning in it. The connections to meditation are extremely strong. He devotes own chapters to meditation and yoga, but the similarities to the rest of the book are omni-present.

He makes the point that paradoxically we experience flow in this age more at work than at home. This leads us to workaholism and to depression when faced with unfulfilling free-time.

He further points out that activities become more enjoyable when we do them actively. This works for things like watching TV, eating or learning.

Refers to the death of Ivan Illitsch and points out that we are more likely to experience things in flow when we are children. (Connection to Nietzsche?)