Reads • Flow by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

On awareness as the key to fulfilment.

“Enjoyment appears at the boundary between boredom and anxiety, when the challenges are just balanced with the person’s capacity to act.”

Flow is when you forget time, your surroundings, your self. You get lost in riding your bike through the woods, reading, or crafting a table, one moment at a time.

For me, the realisation of having had an awesome time only comes once the awareness of the self has resurfaced. I haven’t worried about the future, analysed the past, I haven’t been trying to figure out who on earth I am. Maybe I’m hungry, or my legs are stiff. Temporarily, the basic needs as well as arbitrary reflections have been dislodged by something way more important — full attention.

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi has spent a large chunk of his career researching this state of mind, and how to achieve it. He discovered that the experience is described similarly across various cultures and ages, and that there are certain characteristic that make an activity more conducive to flow.

Getting flowing

Stories are the vertebrae of the book. They include climbers, yogis, people brilliant at fixing toasters by asking themselves “If I were a broken toaster, what would be wrong with me?” They are beautiful, inspiring, and (un?)surprisingly similar.

Nearly all the accounts feature people who are able to make the best out of their situations, whether voluntary or involuntary. What they share is the ability to turn activities into challenges that are complex enough to keep them interested but not make them anxious. Set a goal, be in the moment, once it becomes too easy, set a higher goal, repeat.

One interesting observation is that although we often find ourselves in the flow more often at work than during our leisure, we dislike work because our culture tells us that leisure should be more enjoyable. In other words, we seem to disregard the quality of immediate experience and base our motivations on strongly rooted cultural stereotype. An important takeaway from that is: structure your leisure wisely.

In any case: While I found the stories and parts of the research fascinating, I cannot but disagree with the conclusions.

How dare I?

We learn, for example, that to achieve optimal experience, we need to have “control over our consciousness”, or that “only direct control of experience can overcome obstacles to fulfilment.” Further in the book, the author claims that happiness comes from being in control of our lives. Another instance of a similar view can be found in the following passage:

“Great music, architecture, art, poetry, drama, dance, philosophy, and religion are there for anyone to see as examples of how harmony can be imposed on chaos.”

Now, I could simply be fatally misunderstanding his choice of words. But to me, all of these sound very close to suggesting that readers simply force it. This suspicion is only bolstered by the fact that he defines consciousness as “intentionally ordered information.”

To me, this is directly contradicting the quote by Frankl he uses at the outset of the book: “Don’t aim at success — the more you aim at it and make it a target, the more you are going to miss. For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue… as the unintended side-effect of one’s personal dedication to a course greater than oneself.”

At one point, he states that “… martial arts were influenced by Taoism and by Zen Buddhism, and thus they also emphasise consciousness-controlling skills.” This only seems to betray Csikszentmihalyi’s bias, for lack of a better word, for control since I don’t think this is true at all —Tao and Zen at their core are about letting things flow naturally.

They do encourage you to be present. But I would describe it as “cultivation of awareness” rather than “controlling your consciousness.” Towards the end of the book, it almost seems he would agree when he says that:

“The most promising faith for the future might be based on the realization that the entire universe is a system related by common laws and that it makes no sense to impose our dreams and desires on nature without taking them into account.”

Simple rather than complex?

Every flow activity provides a sense of discovery, pushing the person to previously unavailable states of consciousness. “In short, it transforms the self by making it more complex.” This statement in various forms is repeated throughout the book in copious quantities.

But when describing fMRI scans of people’s brains in the flow, he says:

“[their cortical] activation decreased when they were concentrating. Instead of requiring more effort, investment of attention actually seemed to decrease mental effort.”

Doesn’t this sound like things have just got simpler rather than more complex? Isn’t it one of the core reasons of flow being as enjoyable as it is — that life has become simple for a while, because we were able to rest in the now?

Goals as friends or enemies?

According to the book, achieving the state of flow can be summarised in the following steps: set goals, become immersed, pay attention to what’s going on, enjoy the immediate experience.

In my mind, the last three are virtually the same — be in the now. Or, taking it a step further, be the now. Become one with the wall you’re climbing, become the passionate kiss. Become the dirty rag you’re cleaning the floor with.

As for the first step: I can see how life without goals is problematic. But goals are directly connected to the self. They stem from us trying to grasp the self rather than losing ourselves in the moment, which, to me, is what flow is all about.

I think Steinbeck gets it right in East of Eden when he writes that:

“In human affairs of danger and delicacy successful conclusion is sharply limited by hurry. So often men trip being in a rush. If one were properly to perform a difficult and subtle act, he should first inspect the end to be achieved and then, once he had accepted the end as desirable, he should forget it completely and concentrate solely on the means. By this method he would not be moved to false action by anxiety or hurry or fear. Very few people learn this.” (Steinbeck, East of Eden)

In other words: establish goals to motivate yourself, and then get rid of them, they’ll only get in your way. James Clear echoes this in his book on building habits: “You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems.”

At one point, the author states that “Walking is the most trivial physical activity imaginable, yet it can be profoundly enjoyable if a person sets goals and takes control of the process.” From my experience, walking’s mostly enjoyable when you’re simply there. Goals are tricks we employ to foster attention, activities excuses to be aware. But the joy comes from the awareness itself.

In the end…

… it’s nice as the book got me thinking. Also, it showed me how allergic I seem to be to people claiming that a good of way to live is to control.

There are quite a few nuggets of wisdom on the pages. Such as that it’s better to make a decision and start living instead of constantly trying to figure out how to live. And that although we have multiplied our material wealth thousandfold, we don’t seem to be better at improving the quality of experience.

“Activity and reflection should ideally complement and support each other. Action by itself is blind, reflection impotent.”

Or that the word compete is derived from “seek together”, amateur” comes from “to love”, and the word “dilettante” from “to find delight in.” How it’s a shame that there are less amateur poets because we always seem to be chasing some reward for what we do.

Which makes me believe that somewhere deep down, Mr. Csikszentmihalyi knows that control destroys flow. To have running water, you have to let it run. Maybe, he even knows that when flow comes, you’re not in the flow.

You are it.