Name: Flow
Rating: 4.152542372881356 (118 reviews)
ISBN: 9780060920432

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

An introduction to "flow," a new field of behavioral science that offers life-fulfilling potential, explains its principles and shows how to introduce flow into all aspects of life, avoiding the interferences of disharmony

Flow

I truly enjoyed this book, and how the insights were drawn from a longitudinal study of a decently sized sample. A reminder to blend leaning into challenges and building competence. 

Goldy Y

Tim Pendry

I read this expecting a serious book of psychological research into human happiness. Silly me! What I got was a self help book which might be renamed the Book of Platitudes based on a rehashing of popular philosophy with case studies attached. A lot of it was common sense and might be useful to someone troubled who has not had an extensive education in the humanities but the unremittingly conservative ideology, geared to keeping people functioning within a broken system was wearing to say the least. This is the type of book that has grown into a torrent since its publication in 1990 - consultants to the corporate sector trying to find a way to keep the wheels of the economic system whirring when so many people within it are struggling to find meaning in what can have no meaning. The whole ethos is exemplified in the praise for a poor sap who gets flow out of being a cog on an assembly line - no doubt, by now, automated out of that small pleasure because his flow was no longer profitable to the people who hire consultants to tell them how to encourage flow. Much of the advice is not bad, albeit from the Institute of the Bleeding Obvious, but it is buttressed by claims from the humanities and social science that often prove to be no more than dubious received wisdom designed to prove the basic thesis. And what does that thesis come down to - that hoary old chestnut that we construct our happiness from within and that we can find happiness through a cod merging of ancient wisdoms and recent psychological research. Yeah, right! Not impressed ...

Not actually finished, putting a mid review for now while I read it because I want to see if my opinion changes. 

Really enjoyed this call to action: “…while humankind collectively has increased its material powers a thousandfold, it has not advanced very far in terms of improving the content of experience.”

Jacqueline Kim

Not actually finished, putting a mid review for now while I read it because I want to see if my opinion changes. 

Really enjoyed this call to action: “…while humankind collectively has increased its material powers a thousandfold, it has not advanced very far in terms of improving the content of experience.”

Aamna

Don't read if you already read a lot of pop psychology. Nothing new in here.

Kolle

expected a decent how-to guide. got that, and and a surprisingly solid philosophy of life itself.

una psicología de la felicidad

Fluir (Flow)

Brian

Vamos a tomarnos la vida como si fuera un juego, a veces perdemos, otras veces ganamos. Pero siempre nos vamos a divertir.

Félix

Finished at about 15% as I couldn't stand anymore the stance of the author just to sound and pretend smart, seeming wise and having meaningful claims without providing any proof or evidence for his ideas. 

I'm sorry, if you want to convince readers and openly skip transparent argumentation - don't make claims like that you just know the Bible was written collecting and synthesizing the experience of people - that early Christianity meant liberation from an imperialist society, that these and these societies were happier because people kept at tight rein on their emotions or that reformation liberated people from political and ideological exploitation. It just makes you void of credibility.

Here another example "The problem is that it has recently become fashionable to regard whatever we feel inside as the true voice of nature speaking. The only authority many people trust today is instinct."

Though I am aware that the book was written in the 1990s, I have not come across this claim ever in a "serious" psychological debate, not did I ever perceive it as somewhat fashionable as of today. Even back then Tversky's and Kahneman's Prospect Theory was already a decade old debate, debunking this conception for a long time or at least giving it some other flavor to discuss. Csikszentmihalyi doesn't care and goes on pretending, adding his own thoughts on the way.

Another example. "In making us work for its goal, society is assisted by some powerful allies: our biological needs and our genetic conditioning. All social controls, for instance, are ultimately based on a threat to the survival instinct."

Ok, then chap, any evidence for this, despite heavy arising doubts? No, Csikszentmihalyi obviously just knows it. Just trust him, stupid.

Besides this, the book is terribly western or US centric. Csikszentmihalyi depicts a suffering, crumbling society because … oh yeah, the SAT scores in the US fell between the 1960s and 1980s - and even more concerning the amount of clinical interventions involving mental patients increased between the 1950s and the 1970s... Anyone working with reasoning should know that these metrics have nothing to say by themselves and can also be an indicator for the opposite - but Csikszentmihalyi doesn't bother arguing.

It's not that these claims are inherently wrong, maybe they are true - but at least the author should commit to explain how he comes to these conclusions and why they are relevant, as otherwise they don't add anything to the content and just seem flat, pseudo-smart and hollow. If there is even a grain of scientific thinking in this book, beside anecdotes, Csikszentmihalyi is hiding it very well... I don't understand readers describing this book as "too academic", as the book itself is free from any academic reasoning.

If you like books written in a "Thus Spoke Zarathustra" style, people like Freud have some inherent epistemic value to you, and you really want to trust an author out of pure belief, maybe you will like this book. I didn't. 

Today, there are many more meaningful, well written and thought books about the subject - whether Self-Help or not. Give The Enigma of Reason a read instead.

The author introduces and explains the flow psychological theory. He demonstrates how it is possible to improve the quality of life by controlling the information that enters the consciousness.

The Psychology of Optimal Experience

Nelson Zagalo

The book that started it all. Every time you'll read about well-being or positive psychology, Flow will appear as the central concept. Flow is central, and has also served the recent studies on Game Design, in the quest for designing optimal experiences for gamers.

Joe Zimet

Ivaylo Durmonski

This, sometimes kind of hard to digest book, is a must-read if you want to harness your mind and achieve total control over your consciousness – enter a flow state of mind more often.

But is flow achieved only by doing work?

No. You can be “in the zone” by doing a lot of things: having sex, listening to music, cooking, eating, looking at paintings, etc.

But if you really want to make the most out of this life-hack physical state, you should do the following: choose a single task you enjoy doing and continuously make things harder for you. By doing so, you’ll be completely absorbed in the task at hand, get better at this thing, and feel a lot happier overall.

Main takeaway: Happiness is not about getting new stuff or watching trivial shows. True content happens when you push yourself and upgrade your skills. When practicing at the edge of your skills, you get to fully enjoy life.

Read more:https://durmonski.com/book-summaries/...

Flow

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