Flow is a (rather dense at times) treatise on what constitutes “optimal experience” – what makes people enjoy themselves, what makes them happy, what makes them grow into stronger human beings. There’s a lot of content in this book, but I’ll focus on its core, the elements of the flow experience. Csikszentmihalyi identifies eight facets to an experience that are necessary for flow (I’m quoting almost verbatim):

• The task is one we have a chance of completing
• We must be able to concentrate on what we’re doing
• The task undertaken has clear goals
• and provides immediate feedback
• One acts with a deep but effortless involvement that removes from awareness the worries and frustrations of everyday life
• The task allows one to exercise control over their actions
• Concern for the self disappears, yet paradoxically the self emerges stronger after the experience
• The sense of duration of time is altered – hours pass in minutes, minutes can stretch to hours.

Incidentally, I’ve been reading a lot about game design recently and a lot of these are just what game design theorists say is necessary for a good game – incremental learning of skills with good feedback, the magic circle, pitching of skills at the right level, etc.

Many tasks that seem boring to us at first can also be converted to opportunities to enjoy flow by posing challenges about the task, e.g. a guy on an assembly line (boring!) may find flow by trying to make things go as smoothly as possible and maximise his productivity. But C. also points out that certain activities are inherently more suited to flow than others. C. is quite anti-TV, for example: because it compels you to take notice of it by presenting you with a barrage of brain-attracting images, someone who “practises” watching TV will have less ability to concentrate than someone who, say, “practises” reading a book, who will have practice compelling themselves to create a flow experience out of manipulation of symbols and concepts. I’m not sure that it’s entirely fair to characterise TV this way, but I’m entirely willing to accept it since I’m a book-reader :-)

C. also encourages not just passive participation in an activity, e.g. listening to music, but going further into active participation – e.g. creating music in some way. That way, one can conjure up one’s own flow experiences from thin air. That, he says, is how many people manage to survive experiences such as concentration camps and desolate wilderness, keeping their minds intact through the creation of structures for their minds to wrap around. That’s why the Icelandic nation has such a strong poetic history – what else could they do to stop themselves from going insane while the storm howled outside their homes?

Flow isn’t a self-help book, but its statements can be reinterpreted as advice. Seek out flow experiences, learning experiences, self-strengthening experiences. There’s a lot more to this book than just that, but that’s my real takeaway from Flow.