This is one of the most important books I have ever read.

There are some books that use beautiful language and sharp opinions to pull the rug from under your feet, questioning everything you've ever known. You feel like, in that moment, your life has changed. Thereafter, once the vertigo subsides, the only thing about your life that seems to have changed is the fact that you have read a book that made you feel that way, and nothing else. You're slightly more well-read, and that's it.

This is not that kind of book. In fact, the immediate feeling is quite the opposite. Flow is written in very straightforward language, and proceeds to unpack with audacity a feeling nearly everyone of us has felt at some point in our lives, lay it bare, and give us the vocabulary and the intuition to revisit that feeling again. You think, "huh, that's cool", and move on.

And then, at random points during the following days, in the middle of some activity, you realise how much of what the book said made sense. You are able to recapture that elusive feeling of being fully present and being in the moment. You realise that this book, which seemed unassuming at first, is slowly changing your life in short but lasting and positive ways.

"Flow" is the culmination of Mihály Csíkszentmihályi's years of research on the state of mind where one feels pure joy - when you feel like you are "in the zone", ecstatic, forget all your worries, and briefly even forget about yourself. Everyone has experienced this at some point in their life, when they're so engrossed in something, or are enjoying an activity or a moment so much, that they lose their grasp on the passage of time, forget all their worries and anxieties, and are wholly, effortlessly, present.

This book first unpacks and attempts to put to words that elusive, hard to describe state of mind. Then, it lays down the conditions in which one experiences that state of flow. Finally, it looks at examples of easily accessible things most people can do to deliberately experience flow. And that's it. That's the book. The simplicity works really, really well.

The author is an accomplished psychologist, and the book is based on substantial research - and it shows. Teetering right on the edge of self-help, I was constantly worried it would derail into wishy-washy opinionated advice about life, but thankfully it never did. It stuck to psychology, facts and research. Which is a big win in my book.

Now, Flow is not without it's faults. Although it never fully derailed, it did, at times, seem to have the structure of a self-help book. My biggest gripe with that genre is fluff - taking 300 pages to say something that could've been said in 30. While Flow is extremely dense and full of knowledge in some parts, it does sometimes go on and on with the anecdotes. Sometimes, it will share some information, and then follow it up with a bunch of anecdotes from research subjects that validates that information. I often found myself skimming over these since the book was essentially saying the same thing again and again for 2-3 pages.

That being said, this book, on the whole, is fantastic. It's been a while since I read it, and I still think about the ideas and concepts it spoke about. I am glad I read it, and it has genuinely changed the way the look at things in life that I enjoy.

Favourite Quotes

A joyful life is an individual creation that cannot be copied from a recipe.

Flow is being completely involved in an activity for its own sake. The ego falls away. Time flies. Every action, movement, and thought follows inevitably from the previous one, like playing jazz.

Of all the virtues we can learn no trait is more useful, more essential for survival, and more likely to improve the quality of life than the ability to transform adversity into an enjoyable challenge.

Most enjoyable activities are not natural; they demand an effort that initially one is reluctant to make. But once the interaction starts to provide feedback to the person's skills, it usually begins to be intrinsically rewarding.

There are two words whose meanings reflect our somewhat warped attitudes toward levels of commitment to physical or mental activities. These are the terms "amateur" and "dilettante". Nowadays these labels are slightly derogatory. An amateur or a dilettante is someone not quite up to par, a person not to be taken very seriously, one whose performance falls short of professional standards. But originally, "amateur", from the Latin verb amare, "to love", referred to a person who loved what he was doing. Similarly a "dilettante", from the Latin delectare, "to find delight in", was someone who enjoyed a given activity.

The earliest meanings of these words therefore drew attention to experiences rather than accomplishments; they described the subjective rewards individuals gained from doing things, instead of focusing on how well they were achieving. Nothing illustrates as clearly our changing attitudes toward the value of experience as the fate of these two words. There was a time when it was admirable to be an amateur poet or a dilettante scientist, because it meant that the quality of life could be improved by engaging in such activities. But increasingly the emphasis has been to value behavior over subjective states; what is admired is success, achievement, the quality of performance rather than the quality of experience. Consequently it has become embarrassing to be called a dilettante, even though to be a dilettante is to achieve what counts most - the enjoyment one's actions provide.

For those who live in large cities, flat sidewalks and right-angle layouts make the physical act of walking easy. Walking on a mountain trail is another thing altogether: for a skilled hiker each step presents a different challenge to be resolved with a choice of the most efficient foothold that will give the best leverage, simultaneously taking into account the momentum and the center of gravity of the body and the various surfaces - dirt, rocks, roots, grass, branches - on which the foot can land.

On a difficult trail an experienced hiker walks with economy of motion and lightness, and the constant adjustment of her steps to the terrain reveals a highly sophisticated process of selecting the best solution to a changing series of complex equations involving mass, velocity, and friction. Of course these calculations are usually automatic, and give the impression of being entirely intuitive, almost instinctive; but if the walker does not process the right information about the terrain, and fails to make the appropriate adjustments in her gait, she will stumble or will soon grow tired. So while this kind of walking might be entirely unselfconscious, it is in fact a highly intense activity that requires concentrated attention.

...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.

Even what people take to be their most personal desires are usually programmed by the imagined order. Let's consider, for example, the popular desire to take a holiday abroad. There is nothing natural or obvious about this. A chimpanzee alpha male would never think of using his power in order to go on holiday into the territory of a neighbouring chimpanzee band. The elite of ancient Egypt spent their fortunes building Pyramids and having their corpses mummihed, but none of them thought of going shop ping in Babylon or taking a skiing holiday in Phoenicia. People today spend a great deal of money on holidays abroad because they are true believers in the myths of romantic consumerism.

Romanticism tells us that in order to make the most of our human potential we must have as many different experiences as we can. We must open ourselves to a wide spectrum of emotions; we must sample various kinds of relationships; we must try different cuisines, we must learn to appreciate different styles of music. One of the best ways to do all that is to break free from our daily routine leave behind our familiar setting, and go travelling in distant lands where we can 'experience the culture, the smells, the tastes and the norms of other people. We hear again and again the romantic myths about how a new experience opened my eyes and changed my life.