Finding Flow: The Psychology of Engagement with Everyday Life (Masterminds Series)

Mihaly is one of the truly great minds our time. The book Finding Flow is a less academic (and shorter) version of Mihaly great book: "Flow", which for me is one of the best books I've ever read. Finding Flow offers great insights in how we can get the most from targeted life goals or simple everyday tasks. I wish I would have read this book when I was in high school or college. This book can have a great positive impact on your life.

I’ve read multiple of this guys books. Flow is so important. It has be come one of the foundational keys to my philosophy. Wrapping your head around the principles of flow state can transform your life.

"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.

In overall great reading, concise and informative. The book is great, east to read and what's most important based on actual research. There a lot of similar books pitching like life styles, yet very few provide the evidence. At the end it gets a bit too philosophical. It feels like the author had a lot more to say and ran out of time/space.

The information is not bad advice or a bad view point. The problem is it could be summed up with a lot less words. I could read the first paragraph and the last paragraph of each chapter without missing anything.

Great Book. Simple concept. Mindfulness explained in the best scientific terms. Author is the foremost authority in this field; you will find other Neuroscientist refer to the authors work. If you like this book you would enjoy reading "Inner Game of Tennis" by Tim Galleway.By integrating this concept into my skiing. Helped me become a safe and skillful skier in a very short time.

I have studied a bit of his work before and was excited to read more about Flow. I think some of the reviews expected this to be a self-help book, but really it is a book detailing the psychology of flow and the natural forces in our human existence and society that may either enable or limit Flow experiences. I found this to be tremendously useful to understand the mechanism of flow and the outside forces that impact flow experiences.

We read this for faculty book club and even though some of us read this when it first came out, there was much more to be gotten having read it a second time!Importantly, learning how to find flow during leisure time, making that active and fulfilling rather than passive was a significant chapter for me. Generally, the book really gives ideas on how to be happy in work and life. Maybe if more people read it, we would have less hate in the world. People need scapegoats for their anger. But a person in flow has no anger! A person in flow is naturally happy!