Copyright: 1990

Publisher: Harper

ISBN: 0060162538

Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience is the attempt by positive psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi to explain and encourage the idea of enjoying life.  Much of the field of psychology is concerned with why people don't enjoy life; positive psychologists want to understand why some people do enjoy it, even though in many cases they have similar situations to those who don't.  The concept of Flow is used to describe a state of enjoyment which people in all walks of life can reach regardless of their circumstances.  Flow can be reached in work, sports, relationship and indeed in life in general.  In this book, Csikszentmihalyi explores what Flow means and how it can be reached.

Pleasure vs. Enjoyment

The first thing you can do before figuring out how to have an optimal experience is to understand what you mean by optimal experience.  Think about the wide range of responses you would get if you asked a group of kids what was "fun" to them.  Adults aren't much better, we have a hard time putting our finger on what we mean by "optimal".

Mihaly points out the distinction between pleasure and enjoyment.  Pleasure is when we simply feed a desire.  Eating is pleasurable because it satisfies our hunger.  Sleep is pleasurable if our body is tire. 

Enjoyment however goes a step further.  Enjoyment of an activity is a psychological state.  It requires that we pay attention; or as Mihaly likes to say, it requires psychic energy.  Times of activity or thought where we are pushed to grow through increasing complxity are times that register as truly enjoyable. 

As such, we can all gain pleasure from eating.  It takes a gourmet to truly enjoy eating however as they take the time and invest the energy to differentiate the tastes, smells and even the sight of the food as it is prepared, served and consumed. 

Components of Enjoyable Activities

Mihaly outlines a number of prerequisites for an activity to be an enjoyable one:

• Tasks that can be completed
• Able to concentrate on the task
• Task has clear goals
• Task provides immediate feedback on progress towards the goals
• Actions remove us from awareness of everyday life
• Experience allows a sense of control over actions
• Concern for self disappears; Sense of self emerges stronger
• Sense of duration of time is altered

An important distinction is made about "sense of control". Mihaly points out that it is not the sense of being in control that is important but rather the sense of exercising control.

In addition, just because a task was enjoyable once, doesn't mean it will be again.  In order for one to maintain a sense of enjoyment and reach flow, tasks much become increasingly complex.  Flow is a state in which your skills are matched to the challenges.  Therefore if your skills increase, the complexity of the task must increase in order to maintain flow.

Cultural Relativism

One of the challenges that I have come across numerous times in my reading is this: what determines whether a person or culture is satisfied with their life?  Neo-classical economists tackle this problem by injecting the notion of "utility" into their equations.  Utility isn't a measure of money but rather the measure of "something" that the actor wants.  It might be money, it might be free time, it might be power, it might be pleasure but utility is a simple measure for all of these.

The problem I have seen is that at the end of the day, neo-classical and conservative economists assume that increasing money means increasing utility.  The idea is that no matter what brings you utility, money can bring utility. 

Liberals on the other hand like to talk about ethnocentric thinking and cultural relativism.  The idea here is this: who are we to say whether someone in another culture is better or worse off than us?  A good modern example is those who look at Muslim women and say "we have no right to say they aren't happy with how they are treated, they have a different value system than we do!"  To a liberal, money isn't the be all end all because mnoney can't buy everything.

Mihaly tackles this philosophical mess by saying that all of this debate goes out the window if you make the assumption that optimizing human experience should be the considered universal goal.  Notice, optimizing human experience crosses cultural boundaries with ease AND it cannot be quantified with money or any other measure of utility.

Since these ideas are new to me and I haven't processed them fully yet, I can't say for certain whether this distinction is helpful for my thinking.  I can say however that it is making me rethink much of what I hold with regard to political and economic beliefs!

The  Family

Mihaly put an entire section in his book on how best to help your children and your family have an optimal experience.  He outlines a family context that he feels can best promote optimal experience:

• Clarity: kids know what is expected.  Goals and feedback are unamiguous
• Centering: parents are interested in whatever the kids are doing in the present
• Choice: kids should have choices for their actions and suffer the consequences
• Commitment: kids should have the trust in their family to set aside shield of defenses
• Challenge: parents should provide increasingly complex opportunities for their kids

In the matter of commitment, I wrote down this quote regarding trust: ‎"Unconditional acceptance, the complete trust family members ought to have for one another, is meaningful only when it is accompanied by an unstinting investment of attention. Otherwise it is just an empty gesture, a hypocritical pretense indistinguishable from disinterest."

Amateur Hour

One of the fascinating sections of the book for me was where Mihaly explores the idea of becoming an amateur in some area, as opposed to becoming an expert.  He explains that in Western culture we are programmed to believe that if we aren't going to become an expert in a field, why dabble?  Amateur and dilettante have become slights but they shouldn't be. 

When you consider that life requires complexity in order to be truly enjoyed, there is nothing wrong with becoming an amateur scientist or artist or author.  These activities can provide great enjoyment, far greater than what you will obtain by spending the same amount of time watching television! 

As an example, he points out that writing for the sake of writing (not necessarily for the sake of being published) has the benefit of allowing one to order their experience.  Writing can take the random pieces of information that float about our life and put them in an ordered fashion that allows one to enjoy a greater band of their life than he might otherwise.  For me this is very true as that is the very reason I write these "reviews".  I am simply ordering the information that comes in during my reading!

Conclusion

"It is not the hearing that improves life but the listening."  The many things I read are pleasurable but this book allowed me to see that I must begin to apply them... to truly listen... in order to improve my life.  Mihaly points out so eloquently that an exclusively economic approach to life is truly irrational.  Quality and complexity of experience are the true bottom line.  I encourage anyone to pick this book up and read it thoughfully.