|
|
|
 |
|
|
|
Finding Flow: The Psychology of Engagement with Everyday Life (Masterminds Series)
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Sales rank 14,882
Customers rating (based on 49 reviews)
|
|
|
|
|
Part psychological study, part self-help book, Finding Flow is a prescriptive guide that helps us reclaim ownership of our lives. Based on a far-reaching study of thousands of individuals, Finding Flow contends that we often walk through our days unaware and out of touch with our emotional lives. Our inattention makes us constantly bounce between two extremes: during much of the day we live filled with the anxiety and pressures of our work and obligations, while during our leisure moments, we tend to live in passive boredom. The key, according to Csikszentmihalyi, is to challenge ourselves with tasks requiring a high degree of skill and commitment. Instead of watching television, play the piano. Transform a routine task by taking a different approach. In short, learn the joy of complete engagement. Thought they appear simple, the lessons in Finding Flow are life-altering.
|
|
|
| Publisher | Basic Books | | Release date | 04/1998 | | Availability | Usually ships in 24 hours | | Edition | Paperback |
| | List price | $14.95 | | Our price | $10.76 (you save 28.03%) | | Used price | from $3.73 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 Don't read as an introduction to Csikszentmihalyi's ideas.
I didn't realize that this wasn't the first of the Flow books when I ordered it. Otherwise I would not have bothered. Csikszentmihalyi's work had been recommended to me by a friend.
I have a feeling I would have gotten much more out of this had I read Flow first. As it was, this felt to me like a patchwork of ideas, anecdotes and research fragments about an idea that the author assumed I already knew at least a little bit about. My fault, not his, probably. Some of it was interesting.
 An academic's late-night musings, not a serious or useful work
I was excited to read this initially, and the author's observations in the first half of the book were intriguing, even amusing. I especially enjoyed his admonitions to Satre, Marx and Foucault that peoples' reports of their subjective experiences (ie, a factory worker saying he's happy) should not be interpreted at anything other than face value, and to do otherwise is just academic arrogance (unfortunately the author commits exactly that sin later in the book). I was a little concerned about the lack of footnotes and citations, but figured he'd get to the point soon--ie, how to find "Flow" as the title suggests. However, after several more chapters and growing impatience, I realized this book was primarily a compendium of poorly supported observations, assertions, and anecdotes, with very little practical advice or guidance on how to actually achieve this state he talks about.
A title such as, "Flow Experiences in Everyday Life" or, "Generalized Observations and Assertions Regarding Flow" would be far more accurate. The author's anecdotes seem very overgeneralized and based on personal opinion rather than actual research--personal opinion that seemed rooted in an extrovert's 1950's sort of mentality, I might add. (ie, several of his main tenets are that nearly all people absolutely hate to be alone, that being alone automatically means you have nothing to do and therefore makes you depressed, and that women generally view professional work as sort of play rather than an obligation--all of which are totally contrary to my experiences and those of most people I know and respect) (oh and he's convinced that if you're an atheist you're miserable, which is total b.s.) The author includes a lot of scholarly research references at the end of the book but no footnotes or citations in the text, so it's impossible to tell what he's basing his various statements on. Also, many of the studies he does talk about involve teenagers, and he rarely says what year a study was conducted or discusses the study design to give the reader some idea of its legitimacy.
The few sentences I found that actually dealt with "Finding Flow" were buried in text and not highlighted or expanded on in any way, and they were nothing you can't find in 10 dozen time management/focus on the present/live your best life type of books. To find flow, the author recommends you concentrate on whatever you're doing and try to do your best at it. To increase the number of incidences of flow in your life, he recommends prioritizing what's important to you, doing those, and delegating tasks you don't like to others. That's it--seriously.
The author is a professor at a prestigious university and I cannot help but wonder at the poor quality of this work. It seems like the product of lots of notes jotted down late at night and philosophical musings on the bus that eventually grew into a large enough body that he decided to turn it into a book. It should have been more aptly titled, "An academic's musings on: How the world works and why it works that way, What people think about their daily activities and How I think people could live better lives." A nice idea, but one that did not translate into a very useful product.
 Attention!
Finding Flow was very different from what I expected, but interesting! The book reads more like a science-meets-religion treatise than a self-help book. In the end, I found myself thinking optimistically of the "new earth" that Eckhart Tolle talks about.
In Finding Flow, the author encourages us to engage mindfully, to take ownership of our actions, rather than spending our leisure in passive entertainment. This, he says, will create flow as well as increase happiness. I have certainly found this to be true in my experience. It's easier to work a crossword puzzle than to stare down a blank page and write a poem, less effort to watch TV than to call a friend, but I know which of these feeds me and leads to greater happiness.
And again the idea of loving what is pops up-what Nietzsche called amor fati-"the love of fate." Csikszentmihalyi warns us that people can also learn to love what is destructive, so we must choose our goals wisely. Science has helped us to understand what promotes and sustains growth, life, and order, and to understand the uniqueness of each of us. He says "each one of us is responsible for our particular point in space and time in which our body and mind forms a link within the total network of existence." Being virtuous (that is, acting to preserve order, taking into account the common good, the emotional well-being of others) is not the easy path, but the satisfying one, and connects one to the flow of all that was, is, and ever shall be.
 achieving flow states
Csikszentmihalyi's concern in this book is centered around achieving states of human existence characterized by flow. The flow state is one in which the individual finds challenges to be high but is also able to bring to bear on these challenges a high level of skill.
As a scientist, he is able to bring to consideration of this state the objectivity of his discipline. He has studied human behavior empirically using an objective approach through a statistical procedure he calls ESM (Experience Sampling Modeling). Over years of serious consideration, he was led not only to identify the flow state as one that is achieved (quite surprisingly) in mundane activities like driving, but he was also led to regard such a state as one of "excellence". (However, he does make it abundantly clear that this state of human existence is not one that is necessarily going to be experienced as happy.)
He argues in his book that this state is desirable, that it is beneficial for our species (by reducing entropy), and that it fits into the evolutionary context of our species. He points out that humans in the course of time have learned to develop "myths" appropriate to the conditions of human life (and that in their day could certainly be regarded with respect and as part of the truth about the world).
This type of book is certainly valuable over reading his scholarly work, and it gives him an opportunity to view his scientific work in a large perspective that one cannot usually find in specialized research articles. On the other hand, he takes on so much in the span of his short book, that, while he does a rather splendid job and his book is definitely worth reading, he does not address some of the issues in the depth to which they merit.
A rehash of his other writing
If you've read his first book on Flow, this book isn't going to offer anything substantially different from the first one. It's a rehash of what he already wrote, albeit a more concisely written rehash. What I don't see is anything substantially new or different. It's a good book to read if you want to familiarize yourself with the concept of Flow, but if you have already read his previous works, save yourself your money and time on this one.
|
|
| | |
|
