Enjoyment appears at the boundary between boredom and anxiety, when the challenges are just balanced with the person’s capacity to act.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi • Flow: The Psychology of Happiness
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Enjoyment appears at the boundary between boredom and anxiety, when the challenges are just balanced with the person’s capacity to act.
People who experience flow describe it as “a state of effortless concentration so deep that they lose their sense of time, of themselves, of their problems,” and their descriptions of the joy of that state are so compelling that Csikszentmihalyi has called it an “optimal experience.” Many activities can induce a sense of flow, from painting to raci
... See moreDaniel Kahneman • Thinking, Fast and Slow
People who experience flow describe it as “a state of effortless concentration so deep that they lose their sense of time, of themselves, of their problems,” and their descriptions of the joy of that state are so compelling that Csikszentmihalyi has called it an “optimal experience.” Many activities can induce a sense of flow, from painting to raci
... See moreDaniel Kahneman • Thinking, Fast and Slow
Finding flow has largely to do with performing tasks that match your skill level. When a task is far beyond your skill level, you will feel defeated. When a task is too easy, you'll be bored. Only when a task is challenging but achievable will you feel good about doing it.
LessWrong • How to Be Happy - LessWrong
helping clients find their optimal levels of stress. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (1991) refers to this as “flow” and says that this enjoyable state occurs when demands are just beyond what people believe they can attain:
David Rock, Linda J. Page • Coaching With the Brain in Mind
“Flow” is the way people describe their state of mind when consciousness is harmoniously ordered, and they want to pursue whatever they are doing for its own sake.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi • Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience (Harper Perennial Modern Classics)
when people entered flow they found it to be extremely enjoyable and fulfilling, and they performed the associated activity for its own sake rather than for any extrinsic reward.
Ph.D. Richard Schwartz • No Bad Parts: Healing Trauma and Restoring Wholeness with the Internal Family Systems Model
“The best moments usually occur when a person’s body or mind is stretched to its limits in a voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult and worthwhile.” Csikszentmihalyi calls this mental state flow (a term he popularized with a 1990 book of the same title).
Cal Newport • Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World
concept of flow—the state in which people are so involved in an activity that nothing else seems to matter;