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Title: Finding Flow: The Psychology of Engagement With Everyday Life (Masterminds Series) by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi ISBN: 0-465-02411-4 Publisher: Basic Books Pub. Date: April, 1998 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.71 (24 reviews)
Rating: 3
Summary: His Name's The Hardest Thing
Comment: Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (MC from now on) is a Psychologist based at the University of Chicago who has extensively studied what makes people happy and fulfilled. Through his Experience Sampling Method (ESM), MC asks his subjects at random times (through a beeper) to record what they're doing, how they feel about it, whether they feel happy and so on. Through these studies he has come up with the concept of 'flow'. 'Flow' is when we are at our most fulfilled and it is usually at times when we are using our skills to the maximum and at the same time being challenged - its that simple.
Not having read MCs other books the whole flow thing is new to me but by the end of the book I was starting to get the idea. MC also offers some ways you can spend more time in 'flow' activities. It has the faults of many self help books - mainly constant repetition and those hard to believe anecdotes from 'real life' but there's a practicality about this book that saves it. It's also mercifully short, which means you'll get through it quickly and I don't think MCs erratic conversational style would survive a longer publication. I can't agree with the criticism of MC lacking scientific rigour. Being a scientist I don't think he made claims that went beyond his research which is all referenced should you like to follow it up and it's obvious when he is offering opinion ahead scientific analysis.
While I wasn't totally inspired the concept of 'flow' has stuck with me and I'd recommend you at least find out what 'flow' is about.
Rating: 4
Summary: helpful, interesting
Comment: The author is a respected professional psychologist, so his contribution to the pop self-help genre should be interesting. In fact, it's sort of an explanation for the reason he finds psychology interesting and important: he's trying to discover how to live a meaningful, rewarding life. In this book, he abandons the caution of academic psychology to pursue wisdom; naturally that leaves it with philosophical weaknesses but much greater relevance for life.
Csikszentmihalyi's main idea is that if you really try to do something with your time, you'll enjoy life more. It's a pep-talk for doing something rather than nothing. There are a number of very interesting insights in the book, but this is its main point.
I've only read a few other self-help books. Although "Finding Flow" isn't bad, I strongly recommend "The Road Less Traveled" by M. Scott Peck ahead of it.
Rating: 4
Summary: A psychology book that nails what makes for a good life
Comment: "Finding Flow" is the popular presentation of the author's academic research into what he calls "flow" - the state of being absorbed in an activity; be it work, a hobby or a relationship - and how such experiences form the basis of a rich life.
Csikszentmihalyi goes over the nature of what we experience and classifies them according to the level of challenge vs. the skill we can bear upon them. He then discusses how we feel when doing these different types of activities. The two core chapters cover work and leisure. Csikszentmihalyi shows how engagement with ones job and pursuing active hobbies provide more personal satisfaction than passive entertainment and mere lounging. It is this notion that will clash with many people's belief in what makes them happy; happiness being something that Csikszentmihalyi considers a fleeting emotion and different from true contentment. As has been noted by the philosopher A.C. Grayling, if we are after happiness alone, then we can just self-medicate.
Other chapters examine how relationships are better if you engage in them, rather than merely meet material obligations to loved ones, and what kinds of personalities are better suited to achieving flow. There is a chapter, as well as some discussion throughout, on how to increase flow in your own life. This gives the book an additional self-help angle (which is what the back cover is trying to market it as.) The final chapter begins with some light philosophizing and quickly degenerates into an off-topic discussion of religion, lacking a thesis and coming across as the ramblings of a stoned first-year college student. This is unfortunate in that it mars an otherwise very strong treatment of what constitutes a good life.
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Title: Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi ISBN: 0060920432 Publisher: Perennial Pub. Date: 13 March, 1991 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: Creativity : Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi ISBN: 0060928204 Publisher: Perennial Pub. Date: 18 June, 1997 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
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Title: The Evolving Self by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi ISBN: 0060921927 Publisher: Perennial Pub. Date: 03 August, 1994 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
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Title: Good Business: Leadership, Flow, and the Making of Meaning by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi ISBN: 0670031968 Publisher: Viking Press Pub. Date: 14 April, 2003 List Price(USD): $25.95 |
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Title: Optimal Experience : Psychological Studies of Flow in Consciousness by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Isabella Selega Csikszentmihalyi ISBN: 0521438098 Publisher: Cambridge University Press Pub. Date: 31 July, 1992 List Price(USD): $35.00 |
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