Flow
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
First published 1990Harper & Row first edition, 1990, ISBN 0060162538
What it is.
Where the idea of being "in flow" comes from: what full absorption in a task actually is, and the conditions the research found it needs.
This is where the idea of being in flow comes from, and the research is more specific than the word has become. Full absorption in a task, with the conditions named. A clear goal, immediate feedback, and a challenge just above your current skill. What it changed for me was the approach. I used to treat work as something to get through, and after this I started treating the state itself as the thing to reach. It turned into a sort of game.
Working summary · based on Toward's reading notes
The strongest objection
A slot machine meets every condition on the list. True, and it does not sink the idea. Flow is not the whole of a good life, it is what turns up in almost every meaningful one.
Working summary · based on Toward's reading notes
Why it is here.
It is not economics, and this row is where the site keeps its practical books rather than pretending otherwise. Everything else on this shelf is about getting your attention back and none of them say what the good version of spending it feels like. This describes that from the inside.
Working summary · based on Toward's records
Where it sits.
No goal on this site is built on this one.
Read it beside Deep Work, which is the same claim with a work ethic attached. Read it after either Newport book, since both spend their pages clearing the space this one describes filling.
Working summary · based on Toward's records