Flow, enjoyment, and the meaning(s) of life.

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s (Me-high Cheek-sent-me-high) Flow: The Psychology of optimal experience, originally published in 1990, is enjoying a renewed interest thanks in large part to our current preoccupation with self-perfection. In addition to being “extraverted, slim, individualistic, optimistic, hard-working, popular, socially aware yet high-self-esteeming”, we now have to ensure we are actually enjoying ourselves along the way. If we take the quality of our lives to be the sum quality of our experiences (which seems sensible enough), Csikszentmihalyi’s work is essential. Here’s an introduction to Flow and my key takeaways.

[Opening quote taken from Will Storr’s Selfie].

The circularity of consciousness (and the meaning of life)

Consciousness, says Csikszentmihalyi, is composed of two main parts: i) attention and ii) the self (composed of the I and our attendant goals). Our goals both determine the objects of our attention (which we ‘use’/invest), and are themselves shaped by the objects of our attention (enter circularity). This is all presented in an unnecessarily confusing manner until we hear about Sam, one of the many subjects of longitudinal studies introduced in Flow:

1. Sam at 15 has no clearly differentiated goals from other boys his age.
2. In Bermuda, Sam goes underwater diving and is struck by the beauty and mystery of the reef.
3. From then on Sam is drawn to the reef, taking a number of biology courses in high-school and ending up as a marine biologist.

Csikszentmihalyi writes: “At first attention helped to shape his self, when he noticed the beauties of the underwater world he had been exposed to by accident; later, as he intentionally sought knowledge in marine biology, his self began to shape his attention”. To express this as simply as possible: we pay attention to what we like, and we like what we pay attention to (and it’s not always clear what comes first; nor does it matter).

While there is nothing extraordinary about this example it’s a good reminder that our interest, passion, and ultimately love of things increase concomitantly with the time and attention we invest in them. Love or passion for something is not imbued but is earned. As somebody who detests the advice ‘follow your passion’ (tell me where to find it first!) this was useful. It shows that we both draw from and fill the well of our life’s meaning; meaning is not passively received but is created through the investment of attention and will.

We both draw from and fill the well of our life’s meaning.

What is Flow (and why does it matter)?

‘Flow’ is a description of the phenomenology (or experience) of enjoyment. This experience is meant to be relatively stable across ‘activity’ (e.g. chess, rock-climbing, composing music), culture, historical era, social class, age, and gender. Csikszentmihalyi has arrived at his understanding of enjoyment through analysis of the experiences of thousands of diverse subjects (I uncovered surprisingly little criticism of his methodology or findings in initial searches, I will not canvas any here).

Csikszentmihalyi says enjoyment/flow has 8 major components:

1. We are engaged in a challenging activity that requires skill and attention (but that we have a chance of completing).
2. We are able to concentrate on what we are doing.
3. The task we are undertaking has clear goals.
4. The task we are undertaking provides immediate feedback.
5. One faces the task with a deep but effortless involvement that removes from our consciousness the everyday worries of life.
6. We have a sense of control over our actions.
7. Concern for the self disappears, yet paradoxically emerges stronger after the experience of enjoyment is over.
8. The sense of duration of time is altered.

The easiest way to recognise that you’re in an episode of flow/enjoyment is through a warped experience of time. The examples of possible flow activities are endless (this of course is part of the point, it is the experience not the activity that matters). Some examples given are: reading, sailing, mountain-climbing, running, composing music, photography, chess, cooking, and reciting poetry. Technically, somebody sitting alone in a room could create a mental challenge that led to a flow experience. An activity that may produce enjoyment for one person may result only in dull boredom for another; it is the experience that matters.

Csikszentmihalyi distinguishes an experience of enjoyment from an experience of pleasure in that only enjoyment produces psychological growth and “adds complexity to the self”. Pleasure is primarily restorative (sleep, rest, food, sex) whereas enjoyment provides a sense of “forward momentum”: of novelty and of accomplishment. While pleasure can be experienced without any effort, enjoyment requires constant concentration and attention. This distinction matters because while pleasure is important, it is the experiences of enjoyment that people recall as the richest of their lives. In flow/enjoyment experiences people report feeling stronger, more positive, more cheerful, more active, more creative, and more satisfied. It doesn’t matter whether this period of enjoyment is brought on by competing in the Olympics or mowing the lawn. Being in flow (experiencing enjoyment) is on all measures a much more positive experience for an individual than not being in flow. This is true no matter the context.

Uh oh!

Given we report enjoyable experiences to be the best of our lives (both throughout the experience itself and in hindsight) you’d expect that we would do everything in our power to maximise them. Of course, you’d be wrong. According to Csikszentmihalyi we are far more likely to experience flow at work (54% of the time when actually working) than we are in our leisure time (18%), yet almost without exception we try and minimise work and maximise leisure. He writes: “On the job people feel skilful and challenged, and therefore feel more happy, strong, creative, and satisfied. In their free time people feel that there is generally not much to do and their skills are not being used, and therefore they tend to feel more sad, weak, dull and dissatisfied. Yet they would like to work less and spend more time in leisure”.

The answer to this paradox lies not necessarily in working more hours (though some certainly try and address it this way) but in using our free time more wisely. It turns out that the activities we typically associate with leisure (watching TV, reading the news, a drink at the pub, or going to a game) leave us feeling, according to our own assessments, “passive, weak, dull and dissatisfied”. To have positive experiences we need to be challenged. While ostensibly counterintuitive, this realisation confirmed for me some nagging suspicions. As a result I’ve tried to do the following:

1. Disassociate context from quality of experience. Work ≠ negative experience, home ≠ positive experience. Pay close attention to quality, especially in leisure time, asking am I actually enjoying this or do I just think I should be enjoying this?
2. Disassociate exertion from its negative connotations. This has always been relatively easy for me to do with physical exertion, but much harder to do with mental exertion (probably because of its strong association with work). Hurt brain = good.
3. More strongly associate growth, discomfort, and being challenged with enjoyment and satisfaction. Understand the need to increase the level of difficulty of a challenge as skill increases (as shown below).

eAs skill increases, the level of challenge must also increase to avoid boredom.

The potential of ‘Flow’

I never know whether I understand something or not until I try and write about it. It turns out that with Flow, I had missed a lot. Upon reflection I think this was due in large part to Csikszentmihalyi’s decision to use the term ‘flow state’ in place of the much more accessible, ‘experience of enjoyment’, or simply ‘enjoyment’. While ‘flow’ gives the work a certain mystery the price is high, with some of the crucial implications obscured for me on first reading. I don’t know whether this will be a problem for others, but in an effort to reduce confusion I’ve used the terms interchangeably.

While Flow is largely accessible (in some points bordering on glib) the implications of Csikszentmihályi’s findings on our day-to-day lives are huge.

1. We have a real ability to vastly improve the quality of our experiences (and therefore our lives). This is through understanding what enjoyment involves (attention, exertion, challenge, and growth) and seeking it, while minimising negative experience.
2. It doesn’t matter what the content, or context of our experiences are, we will be happy if we are mostly having experiences of a high quality. What we do and where we do it (work or home) doesn’t matter, as long as the activities we engage in are enjoyable. There are many easy ways to quickly probe our consciousness to determine whether we are enjoying ourselves, such as our perception of time, or of whether we are ‘losing ourselves’ in what we are doing.
3. The breadth of activity that can be enjoyed is almost endless as long as we create within the activity the preconditions for enjoyment (the main thing we have to consciously do is increase the difficulties of the challenges we face as we become more skilled in an area).
4. Wherever we choose to focus our love and attention becomes itself the determiner of focus — the meaning and richness of our life is not stumbled upon but cultivated (and can at any point be expanded in an almost endless amount of equally enriching ways). Not everything will produce enjoyment, but out of those activities that do, there are no wrong choices (take that, opportunity costs!).
5. The potential of extrinsic reward may help motivate us to do something but the whole of the enjoyment of an activity is in the ‘doing’ not in its results. If you decide to learn French at 70 and never get to France it’s still a sensational use of time if you enjoyed yourself along the way. (If you write a Medium article and enjoyed it — I have — it doesn’t matter how many people read it).

Now, off to find the next experience of enjoyment!

JA