Mihaly's seminal work on Flow

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

“The best moments in our lives are not the passive, receptive, relaxing times… The best moments usually occur if a person’s body or mind is stretched to its limits in a voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult and worthwhile.” ~ Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (1990, p. 3)
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi discovered that people find genuine satisfaction during a state of consciousness called Flow. In this state they are completely absorbed in an activity, especially an activity which involves their creative abilities. During this “optimal experience” they feel “strong, alert, in effortless control, unselfconscious, and at the peak of their abilities.” In the footsteps of Maslow, Csikszentmihalyi insists that happiness does not simply happen. It must be prepared for and cultivated by each person, by setting challenges that are neither too demanding nor too simple for ones abilities.
The experience of “flow” is strikingly reminiscent of Zhuangzi’s description of “great skill” achieved by Daoist sages such as carpenter P’ien and butcher Ting, the latter finding bliss in the art of chopping up ox carcasses by “going along with the Dao” of the ox. It is no coincidence that these blue-collar sages are situated on the bottom rungs of the social hierarchy. They discover the Dao much more readily than Confucian scholars, who, according to Zhuangzi, are studying the “dregs of wisdom” in lifeless books and have lost touch with the world of concrete affairs.
You are skiing down a mountain trail at Aspen Colorado — one of the expert diamond slopes, with the awe-inspiring, snow-capped Rockies in your view. Though you have skied down this slope before, you have never been able to “dominate” it — until now. You begin to hit your stride, striking every mogul perfectly, effortlessly. Your actions seem frozen in time and every little sound becomes more intense — the crisp slap of your skis against the powder, the scrunch of your knees, and your rhythmic breathing. You are flowing down the slope, and later you might even describe yourself as having become “one with the mountain.” All those years of training and struggling, taking ski lessons and tumbling into the woods, are now finally justified. You have had, quite literally, a peak experience.
If not in skiing, you may have had similar experiences in other activities — some other challenging exercise, working on a difficult project, or even to a certain degree in simpler exercises like reading or conversation with a friend. These are moments in which your mind becomes entirely absorbed in the activity so that you “forget yourself” and begin to act effortlessly, with a heightened sense of awareness of the here and now (athletes often describe this as “being in the zone”). You may be surprised to learn, however, that in recent years this experience has become the focus of much research by positive psychologists. Indeed, the psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi has even given it a name for an objective condition — “flow.”

Some Background: Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi is one of the pioneers of the scientific study of happiness. He was born in Hungary in 1934 and, like many of his contemporaries, he was touched by the Second World War in ways that deeply affected his life and later work. During his childhood, he was put in an Italian prison. It was here, amid the misery and loss of family and friends during the war, that he had his first inkling of his seminal work in the area of flow and optimal experience. In an interview, he noted, “I discovered chess was a miraculous way of entering into a different world where all those things didn’t matter. For hours I’d just focus within a reality that had clear rules and goals” (Sobel, D. (1995, January). Interview: Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. Omni, 73-90.).
During a trip to Switzerland, Csikszentmihalyi heard Carl Jung speak and this sparked an interest in psychology. As a fairly new discipline, there were few options in Europe for further study and so he traveled to the United States. As an artist who had dabbled in painting himself, Csikszentmihalyi started his initial observations and studies on artists and creative types. He noted that the act of creating seemed at times more important than the finished work itself and he was fascinated by what he called the “flow” state, in which the person is completely immersed in an activity with intense focus and creative engagement. He set his life’s work to scientifically identify the different elements involved in achieving such a state.
His now-famous Experience Sampling Study (a.k.a. Beeper Study) was a particularly inventive way to make happiness a measurable phenomenon. A group of teenagers were given beepers that went off during random times throughout the day. They were asked to record their thoughts and feelings at the time of the beeps. Most of the entries indicated that the teens were unhappy, but Csikszentmihalyi found that when their energies were focused on a challenging task, they tended to be more upbeat. This and other studies helped shape his seminal work on flow. His studies and subsequent findings gained still more popular interest and he is today considered one of the founding figures of positive psychology.

Happiness as a Flow-Like State

http://sketchnotesbook.com/
The main thesis of Csikszentmihalyi’s most popular book, Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience (1990), is that happiness is not a fixed state but can be developed as we learn to achieve flow in our lives. The key aspect to flow is control: in the flow-like state, we exercise control over the contents of our consciousness rather than allowing ourselves to be passively determined by external forces. As he writes,

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 we make happen. (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990, p.3)

Unsurprisingly, this Hungarian psychologist comes to a conclusion not unlike those of the great thinkers of the past: that happiness comes from within oneself. He points to ways in which humans have attempted in vain to find happiness through assigning power to things outside of one’s control, and he quotes Marcus Aurelius approvingly when the Stoic philosopher writes, “If you are pained by external things it is not they that disturb you, but your own judgment of them. And it is in your power to wipe out that power now.” (Cskiszentmihalyi, 1990, p.20) The key to happiness consists in how we invest our psychic energy. When we focus our attention on a consciously chosen goal, our psychic energy literally “flows” in the direction of that goal, resulting in a re-ordering and harmony within consciousness.
Cziksentmihalyi defines flow as “a state in which people are so involved in an activity that nothing else seems to matter; the experience is so enjoyable that people will continue to do it even at great cost, for the sheer sake of doing it.” (Cskikszentmihalyi, 1990, p.4) He identifies a number of different elements involved in achieving flow:

• There are clear goals every step of the way.
• There is immediate feedback to one’s actions.
• There is a balance between challenges and skills.
• Action and awareness are merged.
• Distractions are excluded from consciousness.
• There is no worry of failure.
• Self-consciousness disappears.
• The sense of time becomes distorted.
• The activity becomes an end in itself.

As the above qualities indicate, the flow-like state is not primarily characterized by subjective feelings,even positive ones. Rather, the essence of flow is the removal of the interference of the thinking mind. When Michael Jordan is “in the zone” and making that behind-the-back pass, he is not consciously thinking “how can I pass the ball,” and if he did, he would interrupt his flow-like state and probably throw the ball into the stands. Absorption in a task indicates the absence of the self, and a merging of your awareness into the activity you are engaged in. As positive psychologist Martin Seligman puts it, “Consciousness and emotion are there to correct your trajectory; when what you are doing is seamlessly perfect, you don’t need them (Csikszentmihalyi, 2002, p. 116).”
While Csikszentmihalyi’s research focuses on the area of work and creative output, he sees that the state of flow is applicable to relationships and situations; even times of adversity can transform into a challenge rather than a setback. He even concludes that there are people who have developed their flow to such an extent that they are able to translate every potential threat into an enjoyable challenge, and thereby maintain an inner tranquility as a continuous state of mind. He calls such a person an “autotelic self,” someone who “is never bored, seldom anxious, involved with what goes on and in flow most of the time.” Now one might think that such a state is reserved for the few great human beings such as Socrates, Gandhi, or the Dalai Lama; but in fact, the examples that Csikszentmihalyi gives are of ordinary people who are able to find delight in ordinary daily tasks.
Consider the case of “Joe the Welder.” Here is someone who chooses to give up a higher-paying promotion to foreman because he loves his job as a simple welder. Over the years he has come to master every phase of the plant’s operation: he can fix any piece of machinery no matter how complex, and he looks forward to every challenge as an opportunity to test his skills. While the other welders view their jobs as toilsome burdens from which they must escape (typically into booze and television), Joe relishes every moment of the day and hence doesn’t need to escape from anything. Having an autotelic personality, he is able to create flow experiences even in the most barren environment, and hence live a fulfilling life, despite his relatively low salary and social status.
From this example and many others, Csikszentmihalyi points to five ways through which one is able to cultivate one’s self into an autotelic person:

1. Setting goals that have clear and immediate feedback
2. Becoming immersed in the particular activity
3. Paying attention to what is happening in the moment
4. Learning to enjoy immediate experience
5. Proportioning one’s skills to the challenge at hand

As these criteria indicate, flow is created by activities with a specific set of properties: they are challenging, require skill, have clear and immediate feedback (one knows whether one is doing the activity properly or not), and have well-defined success or failure metrics. Flow is a constant balancing act between anxiety, where the difficulty is too high for the person’s skill, and boredom, where the difficulty is too low (see figure 1).
Thus flow is a dynamic rather than static state, since a properly constructed flow activity leads to increased skill, challenge, and complexity over time. Since one’s skill doesn’t remain static, repeating the same activity would fall into boredom; the flow reward inspires one to face harder challenges. This is why sports are extremely well-designed for producing flow; another popular activity that appears to meet these criteria (and thus explains its wide appeal) is the playing of video games. The only problem, Csikszentmihalyi writes, is that these kind of flow activities can easily become addictive, which ultimately results in a loss of the control of consciousness and thus further unhappiness.

Flow as Control of Consciousness

Csikszentmihalyi recounts research on the amount of information the brain can process at a time, and points out the constant tradeoffs that we’re making about what we’re paying attention to out of the huge variety of possibilities. One key aspect of flow is that, while in flow, nearly all of the brain’s available inputs are devoted to one activity. This is why the perception of time changes, discomfort goes unnoticed, and stray negative thoughts don’t enter the mind. The brain is too busy focusing on one thing to keep track of all those other things. We see here an obvious link between flow and the Buddhist concept of mindfulness, or the kind of attention involved in meditation and yoga. Indeed, Csikszentmihalyi argues that Hatha Yoga in particular is one of the best models to describe what happens when psychic energy is flowing along a single channel of consciousness. As he writes,

The similarities between Yoga and flow are extremely strong; in fact it makes sense to think of Yoga as a very thoroughly planned flow activity. Both try to achieve a joyous, self-forgetful involvement through concentration, which in turn is made possible by a discipline of the body. (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990, p.1o5)

Maybe now you can understand why some people choose to spend so many hours contorted in such strange bodily positions: they are achieving a deep flow-like state and hence a strong sense of inner control and harmony. And indeed, the ultimate goal of Yoga is to achieve a state called moksha, a liberation from the self, described as combining three main qualities: sat-chit-ananda, or being, consciousness, and bliss. Using the flow model to describe spiritual practices such as yoga may help to explain why people who engage in such practices seem to be so happy and peaceful.
Csikszentmihalyi is quick to point out, however, that flow can be achieved by many other activities that don’t require such elaborate commitments. One can achieve such a state while skiing, fishing, playing the guitar, cooking, reading, or even having a conversation and eating food. Furthermore, while Yoga represents the ultimate state as liberation from the self, Csikszentmihalyi sees flow as producing a stronger self. Indeed, Csikszentmihalyi often uses Freudian terms to explain what is happening, even though he is not himself a Freudian psychologist.
According to Freud, the self is composed of three different parts: 1) the “Id” which represents instinctual drives or our “nature;” 2) the “Superego” which represents values or expectations imposed on us by society, our “nurture,” and 3) the “Ego,” which is the part of consciousness we are aware of and which can take control over the other parts (see Figure 2). For example, the Id may give you an impulse to have that extra beer even though you know you have to get up early for work in the morning. The Superego could reinforce that impulse through peer pressure from your buddies at the bar. However, you still have the ability to reject these demands and choose to do what is best for yourself. Your Ego is what enables you take conscious control over the contents of your mind and hence achieve mastery over external forces. In these terms, then, flow can be described as the developed capacity of the Ego to master our instinctual/animal sides and the external pressures of the Superego.
Given his adoption of Freud’s theory of the self and the emphasis on flow as a kind of control, we can see that Csikszentmihalyi is operating well within a set of assumptions common to western philosophy and science. These assumptions include the idea that “progress” and even “enlightenment” is a matter of Man emancipating himself from the power of Nature. Thus Csikszentmihalyi claims that flow is a matter of overcoming the “natural” state of the mind which is one of chaos and “psychic entropy.” As he writes,

Contrary to what we tend to assume, the normal state of the mind is chaos … when we are left alone, with no demands on attention, the basic order of the mind reveals itself … Entropy is the normal state of consciousness — a condition that is neither useful nor enjoyable. (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990, p.119)

As we shall see, this is one of the main differences between Csikszentmihalyi’s concept of flow and the Taoist tradition, which sees flow as regaining the natural harmony of the mind as oneness with Tao or the Way. For now, it is enough to point out that flow is not simply a matter of “letting go” or passively accepting things as they are. Indeed, Csikszentmihalyi expresses a particular dislike for television, since he believes it is primarily a way of distracting the brain from psychic entropy without creating a challenge and feedback loop that could lead to flow. Reading is a much better flow activity, since it often requires complex skills of imagination and interpretation; furthermore, there are increasing stages of complexity as one graduates from the pleasures of young romance novels to high literature like Shakespeare or Tolstoy.

Pleasure and Flow

Another consequence of this concept of flow is the confirmation of the Greek philosopher Aristotle’s view that happiness cannot be identified with pleasure. While a pleasurable experience is typically a passive state, like watching television, enjoying a massage, or ingesting a pill, the flow experience is an active state that is completely within the control of the person. The effortlessness that is achieved during the flow experience is only arrived at after engaged focus and goal-directed behavior. In our opening example, the effortlessness and pleasure of flowing down the ski slope was made possible only by years of perfecting and honing that particular skill. As the New York Times review article of Csikszentmihalyi’s book succinctly put it, “the way to happiness lies not in mindless hedonism, but in mindful challenge” (Tavris, 1990). Indeed, flow experiences often consist of painful bodily sensations, as when an athlete pushes himself beyond his normal limits in order to win a race, or rounds the bases to score the winning run. Despite the pain, these are the moments that people often recall as being the peak moments of their lives.
Martin Seligman has drawn on Csikszentmihalyi’s work to mark a distinction between pleasures and gratifications. While pleasures are states that have clear sensory and emotional components, gratifications are marked by energies that demand your strengths and allow you to lose self-consciousness. A lot of research indicates that pleasurable experiences, including enjoying food, sex, and even relaxation states (taking a nap, for example), are strong components of happiness, in addition to the “mindful challenge” states of flow. Seligman proposes that the aspect of happiness that can be voluntarily obtained is a matter of the appropriate balance between pleasure and flow. Eating a sirloin steak, for example, can produce a highly pleasurable state, but it is doomed to be temporary, as proven by the fact that eating two such steaks would produce pain. Pleasure reaches its limit surprisingly fast, and this is where flow should enter in, as a way to obtain gratifications that are less volatile and longer lasting than subjective feelings (Seligman, 2002, p. 119).
[1] From http://www.makingthemodernworld.org.uk/

Bibliography

Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly, & Csikzsentmihalyi, Isabella Selega (Eds.). (1988). Optimal Experience: Psychological studies of flow in consciousness. Cambridge, United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press.
Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly (1990). Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. New York, NY: Harper and Row.
Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly (1996). Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention. New York, NY: Harper Perennial.
Seligman, Martin (2002). Authentic Happiness. New York, NY: Free Press.
Tavris, C. (1990, March 18). Contentment is hard work. The New York Times.

Video:

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi talks about Flow (TED Talks)

Recommended reading:

Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly, & Csikzsentmihalyi, Isabella Selega (Eds.). (2006).
A Life Worth Living: Contributions to Positive Psychology (Series in Positive Psychology). New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

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CONTENTMENT IS HARD WORK

By CAROL TAVRIS; Carol Tavris, a social psychologist, is the author of ''Anger: The Misunderstood Emotion'' and the editor of a forthcoming book on emotional well-being.
Published: March 18, 1990

FLOW
The Psychology of Optimal Experience.
By Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi.
303 pp. New York: Harper & Row. $21.95.

Years ago I came upon a melancholy fact: As the popularity of television increased in the 1950's and 60's, the number of inventors and do-it-yourselfers declined precipitously. This sad phenomenon reflects the paradox of the pursuit of happiness. Given a choice, many people choose narcotic pleasures that dull the mind and quell its restless search for meaning. Yet in so doing, those people give up the very activities that, in their complexity and challenge, offer the promise of real satisfaction.
For 20 years, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, a professor of psychology at the University of Chicago, has been investigating the concept he calls flow - the state of involved enchantment that lies between boredom and anxiety. A person in flow is mentally involved in the challenge and intrinsic pleasure of the activity (and hence is not bored), yet lacks self-consciousness and apprehension about performance (the hallmarks of anxiety). Flow takes energy and effort; it is not the same as fun, the teen-ager's grail, nor one of those moments of pure joy that seem to spring from nowhere. And it is not the same as the passive selflessness of ''going with the flow.'' Usually, says Mr. Csikszentmihalyi, people experience flow while pursuing a goal, in the context of a set of rules. The goal may be a paramount ambition (building a better mousetrap), an interim ambition to improve a specific skill (walking a little farther on the exercise program today), or a temporary goal to keep from being bored to death (getting through a dull lecture by thinking of 436 uses for a brick).
Most people, Mr. Csikszentmihalyi argues, spend their lives alternating between work they dislike but feel obliged to do, and passive leisure activities that require no work but likewise offer no stimulation. ''As a result,'' he says, ''life passes in a sequence of boring and anxious experiences over which a person has little control.'' With flow, in contrast, ''Alienation gives way to involvement, enjoyment replaces boredom, helplessness turns into a feeling of control, and psychic energy works to reinforce the sense of self, instead of being lost in the service of external goals.''
As a theory of optimal experience, flow is a big improvement over Abraham Maslow's notion of self-actualization. Maslow regarded optimal experiences as frosting on the cake of life - possible only after one had met material needs for safety and security. The popular idea that basic needs must be met before people can pursue ''higher order'' needs for self-fulfillment has never been validated by research. On the contrary, many who endure poverty, tragedy and abuse nonetheless manage to find contentment and fulfillment.
The reason, Mr. Csikszentmihalyi argues, is not that misery builds character, but that the secret of contentment lies in controlling one's consciousness, and anybody can learn to do this. People have described having had flow experiences in every conceivable setting - climbing a mountain, working on an assembly line, living alone in the wilderness, enduring prolonged imprisonment. Flow doesn't require education, income, high intelligence, good health or a spouse. It requires a mind: one that is willing to set challenges for itself and make the effort to meet them. In this respect, flow is another part of the cognitive revolution in psychology and psychotherapy: as scores of studies are finding, it is not so much what happens to people but how they interpret and explain what happens to them that determines their emotional well-being, their actions, their hopes, their ability to recover from adversity.
Mr. Csikszentmihalyi regards flow as the antidote to the twin evils of boredom and anxiety in all realms of experience, including education, work, sexuality, religion and child rearing, and as a cure for social problems and psychological malaise. Flowlessness certainly does describe much of modern American life. But because Mr. Csikszentmihalyi does not specify how society would have to change in order to get everyone flowing, he implies that the solution to our complex problems lies in millions of individuals learning to flow on their own. To expect such a miraculous cognitive transformation seems as dreamy, and unlikely, as counting on a mass religious conversion.
Mr. Csikszentmihalyi's enthusiasm for flow occasionally carries him away. Some of his examples of people who live their whole lives in a state of flow - never a passive moment! never a mindless conversation! never a dull activity that is not enhanced with mental exercises! - made me self-consciously anxious and in need of my own escapist solution, a nap.
As an analysis of individual psychology, flow is important, for it illuminates the accuracy of what philosophers have been saying for centuries: that the way to happiness lies not in mindless hedonism but in mindful challenge, not in having unlimited opportunities but in focused possibilities, not in self-absorption but in absorption in the world, not in having it done for you but in doing it yourself. The unexamined life may not be worth living, but the unlived life is not worth examining.

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The Flow Model

Balancing Challenge and Skills

Flow is when tasks seem effortless, challenging, and rewarding - all at the same time.

© iStockphoto/sandsun

Have you ever been so involved in doing something that you lost track of time? Everything around you – from the ringing of phones to the people passing in the hallways – seemed to fade away. Your attention was focused entirely on what you were doing, and you were so engaged that you might even have missed lunch. You felt energized, even joyful, about what you were doing.
Most of us have had this experience at one time or another. Psychologists call this "flow." When it happens, we lose our sense of self, and move forward on instinct, completely devoted to the task before us.
In this article, we'll examine flow in detail by looking into the Flow Model. We'll review how the model can help us understand why we find some tasks much easier than others. We'll also look at how you can use the ideas behind the Flow Model to experience flow more often, so that you can be more productive.

The Flow Model

The Flow Model (see Figure 1) was first introduced by positive psychologist Mihaly Csíkszentmihályi. He wrote about the process of flow in his book "Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience."

Note:

Csíkszentmihályi published his book in 1990, but didn't publish this version of the model until 1997.

The model shows the emotional states that we're likely to experience when trying to complete a task, depending on the perceived difficulty of the challenge, and our perceptions of our skill levels.
For example, if the task isn't challenging and doesn't require a lot of skill, we're likely to feel apathy towards it. But facing a challenging task without the required skills could easily result in worry and anxiety.
To find a balance, and to perform at our best, we need a challenge that is significant and interesting, and we need well-developed skills, so that we're confident that we can meet the challenge. This moves us to a position where we can experience "flow" (being totally involved and engaged in the activity).
This state of flow is often observed in people who have mastered their business, art, sport, or hobby. They make whatever they're doing look easy, and they're totally engaged with it.

10 Components of Flow

How do you know when you're experiencing flow? Csíkszentmihályi identified 10 experiences that go with the state of being in flow:

1. Having a clear understanding of what you want to achieve.
2. Being able to concentrate for a sustained period of time.
3. Losing the feeling of consciousness of one's self.
4. Finding that time passes quickly.
5. Getting direct and immediate feedback.
6. Experiencing a balance between your ability levels, and the challenge.
7. Having a sense of personal control over the situation.
8. Feeling that the activity is intrinsically rewarding.
9. Lacking awareness of bodily needs.
10. Being completely absorbed in the activity itself.

Remember that all of these factors and experiences don't necessarily have to be in place for flow to happen. But you're likely to experience many of them when flow occurs.

Three Conditions

Csíkszentmihályi also identified three things that must be present if you want to enter a state of flow:

1. Goals – Goals add motivation and structure to what you're doing. Whether you're learning a new piece of music or creating a presentation, you must be working towards a goal to experience flow.
2. Balance – There must be a good balance between your perceived skill and the perceived challenge of the task. If one of these weighs more heavily than the other, flow probably won't occur.
3. Feedback – You must have clear, immediate feedback, so that you can make changes and improve your performance. This can be feedback from other people, or the awareness that you're making progress with the task.

Using the Flow Model

To improve your chances of experiencing flow, try the following:

• Set goals – Goal setting   is important in experiencing flow. Learning to set effective goals can help you achieve the focus you need.
• Improve your concentration – Many things may distract you from your work, and achieving flow is more difficult when your focus is interrupted. Use strategies to improve your concentration   so that you're more productive and focused during the day.
• Build self-confidence – If you don't have confidence in your skills, tasks may seem much harder than they actually are. Our article Building Self-Confidence   will show you how to develop yourself for success.
• Get feedback – Remember, feedback is an important requirement for flow. Make sure that appropriate technical feedback systems are in place, and learn how to give and receive feedback   so that you can help yourself – and others – to improve.
• Make your work more challenging – Consider strategies such as job crafting  , and explore ways of creating more job satisfaction  .

  Tip:

  Remember that simply increasing the amount of challenge doesn't guarantee flow. Csíkszentmihályi stressed that you experience flow only when you perceive the right opportunities. It happens because you're in the right mindset, not because you have "perfect conditions."
  
• Improve Your Skills – Doing a personal SWOT Analysis  , can help you identify the skills that you need to work on to be successful. You can then develop a plan for improving your skills to help you complete more challenging tasks. Our Personal Development Plan Workbook guides you through this process in more detail.
• Coach yourself – If you don't have a mentor or coach to help you through challenging tasks, learn how to coach yourself  .

Note:

No matter how much you love your job, it's almost impossible to experience flow in every task that you do! Our articles Overcoming Procrastination  , Motivating Yourself  , and Is This a "Morning Task"?   explore strategies to help you complete less desirable, yet essential, tasks.

The Inverted-U Model

There's a potential conflict of ideas between the Flow Model and the Inverted-U Model – a popular and widely respected model that helps explain the relationship between performance and pressure.
In the inverted-U graph, the vertical axis represents someone's level of performance, while the horizontal axis represents the pressure that he or she is under. According to the model, there's a "perfect medium" of pressure where people perform at their best.
The Flow Model doesn't explain the loss of performance that occurs when pressure is too high – for example, when we're scared, or when we're overwhelmed by work. At these times, your productivity can drop and negative emotions like anxiety will increase dramatically.
By using both of these models together, you're most likely to be able to enter and enjoy the state of flow.

Key Points

Flow is a state we reach when our perceived skills match the perceived challenge of the task that we're doing. When we're in a state of flow, we seem to forget time. The work we do may fill us with joy, and we lose our sense of self as we concentrate fully on the task. This is the state that we're in when we're doing our best work, and when we're at our most productive.
The Flow Model shows the relationship between task complexity and your perceived skill level. You can use the model to discover why you're not achieving flow. It can also help you discover whether you need to improve your skills, or increase the challenge or certain tasks, to help achieve flow.

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Finding Flow

Reviews the book 'Finding Flow,' by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi.

By Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, published on July 01, 1997 - last reviewed on June 14, 2012

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We all are capable of reaching that stateof effortless concentration and enjoyment called "flow." Here, the man who literally wrote the book on flow presents his most lucid account yet of how to experience this blissful state.
IMAGINE THAT YOU ARE SKIING DOWN A SLOPE and your full attention is focused on the movements of your body and your full attention is focused on the movements of your body, the position of the skis, the air whistling past your face, and the snow-shrouded trees running by. There is no room in your awareness for conflicts or contradictions; you know that a distracting thought or emotion might get you buried face down in the snow. The run is so perfect that you want it to last forever.
If skiing does not mean much to you, this complete immersion in an experience could occur while you are singing in a choir, dancing, playing bridge, or reading a good book. If you love your job, it could happen during a complicated surgical operation or a close business deal. It may occur in a social interaction, when talking with a good friend, or while playing with a baby. Moments such as these provide flashes of intense living against the dull background of everyday life.

These exceptional moments are what I have called "flow" experiences. The metaphor of flow is one that many people have used to describe the sense of effortless action they feel in moments that stand out as the best in their lives. Athletes refer to it as "being in the zone," religious mystics as being in "ecstasy," artists and musicians as "aesthetic rapture."
It is the full involvement of flow, rather than happiness, that makes for excellence in life. We can be happy experiencing the passive pleasure of a rested body, warm sunshine, or the contentment of a serene relationship, but this kind of happiness is dependent on favorable external circumstances. The happiness that follows flow is of our own making, and it leads to increasing complexity and growth in consciousness.
WHERE TO FIND FLOW
Flow tends to occur when a person faces a clear set of goals that require appropriate responses. It is easy to enter flow in games such as chess, tennis, or poker, because they have goals and rules that make it possible for the player to act without questioning what should be done, and how. For the duration of the game the player lives in a self-contained universe where everything is black and white. The same clarity of goals is present if you perform a religious ritual, play a musical piece, weave a rug, write a computer program, climb a mountain, or perform surgery. In contrast to normal life, these "flow activities" allow a person to focus on goals that are clear and compatible, and provide immediate feedback.
Flow also happens when a person's skills are fully involved in overcoming a challenge that is just about manageable, so it acts as a magnet for learning new skills and increasing challenges. If challenges are too low, one gets back to flow by increasing them. If challenges are too great, one can return to the flow state by learning new skills.
How often do people experience flow? If you ask a sample of typical Americans, "Do you ever get involved in something so deeply that nothing else seems to matter and you lose track of time?" roughly one in five will say that this happens to them as much as several times a day, whereas about 15 percent will say that this never happens to them. These frequencies seem to he quite stable and universal. For instance, in a recent survey of 6,469 Germans, the same question was answered in the following way: Often, 23 percent; Sometimes, 40 percent; Rarely, 25 percent; Never or Don't Know, 12 percent.
A more precise way to study flow is the Experience Sampling Method, or ESM, which I developed at the University of Chicago in the early 1970s. This method provides a virtual filmstrip of a person's daily activities and experiences. At the signal of a pager or watch, which goes off at random times within each two-hour segment of the day, a person writes down in a booklet where she is, what she is doing, what she is thinking about, and whom she is with, then she rates her state of consciousness on various numerical scales. At our Chicago laboratory, we have collected over the years a total of 70,000 pages from about 2,300 respondents. Investigators in other parts of the world have more than tripled these figures.
The ESM has found that flow generally occurs when a person is doing his or her favorite activity--gardening, listening to music, bowling, cooking a good meal. It also occurs when driving, talking to friends, and surprisingly often at work. Very rarely do people report flow in passive leisure activities, such as watching television or relaxing.
Almost any activity can produce flow provided the relevant elements are present, so it is possible to improve the quality of life by making sure that the conditions of flow are a constant part of everyday life.
FLOW AT WORK
Although adults tend to be less happy than average while working, and their motivation is considerably below normal, ESM studies find more occasions of flow on the job than in free time. This finding is not that surprising: Work is much more like a game than most other things we do during the day. It usually has clear goals and rules of performance. It provides feedback either in the form of knowing that one has finished a job well done, in terms of measurable sales or through an evaluation by one's supervisor. A job tends to encourage concentration and prevent distractions, and ideally, its difficulties match the worker's skills.
Nevertheless, if we had the chance most of us would like to work less. One reason is the historical disrepute of work, which each of us learn as we grow up.
Yet we can't blame family, society, or history if our work is meaningless, dull, or stressful. Admittedly, there are few options when we realize that our job is useless or actually harmful. Perhaps the only choice is to quit as quickly as possible, even at the cost of severe financial hardship. In terms of the bottom line of one's life, it is always better to do something one feels good about than something that may make us materially comfortable but emotionally miserable. Such decisions are notoriously difficult and require great honesty with oneself.
Short of making such a dramatic switch, there are many ways to make one's job produce flow. A supermarket clerk who pays genuine attention to customers, a physician concerned about the total well-being of patients, or a news reporter who considers truth at least as important as sensational interest when writing a story, can transform a routine job into one that makes a difference. Turning a dull jot into one that satisfies our need for novelty and achievement involves paying close attention to each step involved, and then asking: Is this step necessary? Can it be done better, faster, more efficiently? What additional steps could make my contribution more valuable? If, instead of spending a lot of effort trying to cut corners, one spent the same amount of attention trying to find ways to accomplish more on the job, one would enjoy working--more and probably be more successful. When approached without too many cultural prejudices and with a determination to make it personally meaningful, even the most mundane job can produce flow.
The same type of approach is needed for solving the problem of stress at work. First, establish priorities among the demands that crowd into consciousness. Successful people often make lists or flowcharts of all the things they have to do, and quickly decide which tasks they can delegate or forget, and which ones they have to tackle personally, and in what order. The next step is to match one's skills with whatever challenges have been identified. There will be tasks we feel incompetent to deal with. Can you learn the skills required in time? Can you get help? Can the task be transformed, or broken into simpler parts? Usually the answer to one of these questions will provide a solution;that transforms a potentially stressful situation into a flow experience.
FLOW AT PLAY
In comparison to work, people often lack a clear purpose when spending time at home with the family or alone. The popular assumption is that no skills are involved in enjoying free time, and that anybody can do it. Yet the evidence suggests the opposite: Free time is more difficult to enjoy than work. Apparently, our nervous system has evolved to attend to external signals, but has not had time to adapt to long periods without obstacles and dangers. Unless one learns how to use this time effectively, having leisure at one's disposal does not improve the quality of life.
Leisure time in our society is occupied by three major sorts of activities: media consumption, conversation, and active leisure--such as hobbies, making music, going to restaurants and movies, sports, and exercise. Not all of these free-time activities are the same in their potential for flow. For example, U.S. teenagers experience flow about 13 percent of the time that they spend watching television, 34 percent of the time they do hobbies, and 44 percent of the time they are involved in sports and games. Yet these same teenagers spend at least four times more of their free hours watching TV than doing hobbies or sports. Similar ratios are true for adults.
Why would we spend four times more of our free time doing something that has less than half the chance of making us feel good? Each of the flow-producing activities requires an initial investment of attention before it begins to be enjoyable. If a person is too tired, anxious, or lacks the discipline to overcome that initial obstacle, he or she will have to settle for something that, although less enjoyable, is more accessible.
It is not that relaxing is had. Everyone needs time to unwind, to read trashy novels, to sit on the. couch staring into space or watching TV What matters is the dosage. In a large-scale
study in Germany, 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.
To make the best use of free time, one needs to devote as much ingenuity and attention to it as one would to one's job. Active leisure that helps a person grow does not come easily. In fact, before science and the arts became professionalized, a great deal of scientific research, poetry, painting, and musical composition was carried out in a person's free time. And all folk--art the songs, fabrics, pottery, and carvings that give each culture its particular identity and renown--is the result of common people striving to express their best skill in the time left free from work and maintenance chores. Only lack of imagination, or lack of energy, stand in the way of each of us becoming a poet or musician, an inventor or explorer, an amateur scholar, scientist, artist, or collector.
SOCIAL FLOW
Of all the things we do, interaction with others is the least predictable. At one moment we experience flow, the next apathy, anxiety, relaxation, or boredom. Over and over, however, our findings suggest that people get depressed when they are alone, and that they revive when they rejoin the company of others. The moods that people with chronic depression or eating disorders experience are indistinguishable from those of healthy people as long as they are in company and doing something that requires concentration. But when they are alone with nothing to do, their minds begin to be occupied by depressing thoughts, and their consciousness becomes scattered. This is also true, to a less pronounced extent, of everyone else.
The reason is that when we have to interact with another person, even stranger, our attention becomes structured by external demands. In more intimate encounters, the level of both challenges and skills can grow very high. Thus, interactions have many of the characteristics of flow activities, and they certainly require the orderly investment of mental energy. The strong effects of companionship on the quality of experience suggest that investing energy in relationships is a good way to improve life.
A successful interaction involves finding some compatibility between our goals and those of the other person or persons, and becoming willing to invest attention in the other person's goals. When these conditions are met, it is possible to experience the flow that comes from optimal interaction. For example, to experience the simple pleasures of parenting, one has to pay attention, to know what the child is "proud of" or "into"; then to share those activities with her. The same holds true for any other type of interaction. The secret of starting a good conversation is to find out what the other person's goals are: What is he interested in at the moment? What is she involved in? What has he or she accomplished, or is trying to accomplish? If any of this sounds worth pursuing, the next step is to utilize one's own experience or expertise on the topics raised by the other person--without trying to take over the conversation, but developing it jointly. A good conversation is like a jam session in jazz, where one starts with conventional elements and then introduces spontaneous variations that create an exciting new composition.
OVERCOMING OBSTACLES
A deprived childhood, abusive parents, poverty, and a host of other external reasons may make it difficult for a person to find joy in everyday life. On the other hand, there are so many examples of individuals who overcame such obstacles that the belief that the quality of life is determined from the outside is hardly tenable. How much stress we experience depends more on how well we control attention than on what happens to us. The effect of physical pain, a monetary loss, or a social snub depends on how much attention we pay to it. To deny, repress, or misinterpret such events is no solution either, because the information will keep smoldering in the recesses of the mind. It is better to look suffering straight in the eye, acknowledge and respect its presence, and then get busy as soon as possible focusing on things we choose to focus on.
To learn to control attention, any skill or discipline one can master on one's own will serve: meditation and prayer, exercise, aerobics, martial arts. The important thing is to enjoy the activity for its own sake, and to know that what matters is not the result, but the control one is acquiring over one's attention.
It is also important to develop the habit of doing whatever needs to be done with concentrated attention. Even the most routine tasks, like washing dishes, dressing, or mowing the lawn, become more rewarding if we approach them with the care it would take to make a work of art. We must then transfer some psychic energy each day from tasks that we don't like doing, or from passive leisure, into something we never did before, or something we enjoy doing but don't do often enough because it seems too much trouble. This sounds simple, but many people have no idea which components of their lives they actually enjoy. Keeping a diary or reflecting on the past day in the evening are ways to take stock systematically of the various influences on one's moods. After it is clear which activities produce the high points in one's day, it becomes possible to start experimenting, by increasing the frequency of the positive ones and decreasing that of others.
To make a creative change in the quality of experience, it might be useful to experiment with one's surroundings as well. Outings and vacations help to clear the mind, to change perspectives, to look at one's situation with a fresh eye. Taking charge of one's home or office environment--throwing out the excess, redecorating to one's taste, making it personally and psychologically comfortable--could be the first step in reordering one's life.
With time of day as with the other parameters of life, it is important to find out what rhythms are the most congenial to you personally. There is no day or hour that is best for everyone. Experimenting with various alternatives--getting up earlier, taking a nap in the afternoon, eating at different times--helps one to find the best set of options.
Many people will say that this advice is useless to them, because they already have so many demands on their time that they absolutely cannot afford to do anything new or interesting. But more often than not, time stress is an excuse for not taking control of one's life. As the historian E. P. Thompson noted, even in the most oppressive decades of the Industrial Revolution, when workers slaved away for more than 80 hours a week, some spent their few precious free hours engaging in literary pursuits or political action instead of following the majority into the pubs. Likewise, we don't have to let time run through our fingers. How many of our demands could be reduced if we put some energy into prioritizing, organizing, and streamlining the routines that now fritter away our attention? One must learn to husband time carefully, in order to enjoy life in the here and now.
FINDING A GOAL
Flow is a source of mental energy in that it focuses attention and motivates action. Like other forms of energy, it can be used for constructive or destructive purposes. Teenagers arrested for vandalism or robbery often have no other motivation than the excitement they experience stealing a car or breaking into a house. War veterans say that they never felt such intense flow as when they were behind a machine gun on the front lines. Thus, it is not enough to strive for enjoyable goals, but one must also choose goals that will reduce the sum total of entropy in the world.
How can we find a goal that will allow us to enjoy life while being responsible to others? Buddhists advise us to "act always as if the future of the universe depended on what you did, while laughing at yourself for thinking that whatever you do makes any difference." This serious playfulness makes it possible to be both engaged and carefree at the same time. We may also discover the foundations on which to build a good life from the knowledge scientists are slowly accumulating. The findings of science makes us increasingly aware of how unique each person is. Not only in the way the ingredients of the genetic code have been combined, but also in the time and place in which an organism encounters life. Thus each of us is responsible for one particular point in space and time in which our body and mind forms a link within the total network of existence. We can focus consciousness on the tasks of everyday life in the knowledge that when we act in the fullness of the flow experience, we are also building a bridge to the future of the universe.
From Finding Flow by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. Copyright 1997 by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. Reprinted by arrangement with BasicBooks, a division of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc.