Finding Flow: The Psychology Of Engagement With Everyday Life

Description

Review

“Csik­szent­mi­ha­lyi elo­quent­ly argues that liv­ing ful­ly in the here and now requires that one heed the lessons of the past”―New York Times Book Review

“This famous psy­chol­o­gist of ‘peak expe­ri­ence’ returns to the themes of his 1990 clas­sic, Flow, how to reach the peak through focused ener­gy, and how humans mark the uni­verse in unique ways-but this time the expla­na­tion is short­er, sharp­er, and far more acces­si­ble.”―Utne Read­er

“Mihaly Csik­szent­mi­ha­lyi has a genius for illu­mi­nat­ing phe­nom­e­na that per­plex most behav­ioral sci­en­tists. In this bril­liant syn­the­sis, he shows how all of us can enhance our work, our play, our lives.”―Howard Gard­ner, author of Mul­ti­ple Intel­li­gences

“Mihaly Csik­szent­mi­ha­lyi is a man obsessed by hap­pi­ness.”―Richard Flaste, New York Times Mag­a­zine

About the Author

Mihaly Csik­szent­mi­haly is Dis­tin­guished Pro­fes­sor of Psy­chol­o­gy and Man­age­ment at Clare­mont Grad­u­ate Uni­ver­si­ty and the founder and co-direc­tor of the Qual­i­ty of Life Research Cen­ter. He is the author of a num­ber of books, includ­ing the best­selling Flow, The Evolv­ing Self, Cre­ativ­i­ty, and Being Ado­les­cent. He lives in Clare­mont, Cal­i­for­nia

From one of the pio­neers of the sci­en­tif­ic study of hap­pi­ness, an indis­pens­able guide to liv­ing your best life­What makes a good life? Is it mon­ey? An impor­tant job? Leisure time? Mihaly Csik­szent­mi­ha­lyi believes our obses­sive focus on such mea­sures has led us astray. Work fills our days with anx­i­ety and pres­sure, so that dur­ing our free time, we tend to live in bore­dom, watch­ing TV or absorbed by our phones.What are we miss­ing? To answer this ques­tion, Csik­szent­mi­ha­lyi stud­ied thou­sands of peo­ple, and he found the key. Peo­ple are hap­pi­est when they chal­lenge them­selves with tasks that demand a high degree of skill and com­mit­ment, and which are under­tak­en for their own sake. Instead of watch­ing tele­vi­sion, play the piano. Take a rou­tine chore and fig­ure out how to do it bet­ter, faster, more effi­cient­ly. In short, learn the hid­den pow­er of com­plete engage­ment, a psy­cho­log­i­cal state the author calls flow. Though they appear sim­ple, the lessons in Find­ing Flow are life-chang­ing.