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.
Happiness, or “flow,” occurs when we are: • intensely focused on an activity • of our own choosing, that is • neither underchallenging (boreout) nor overchallenging (burnout), that has • a clear objective, and that receives • immediate feedback.
Mikael Krogerus • The Decision Book: Fifty Models for Strategic Thinking (Fully Revised Edition)
the state of total immersion in a task that is challenging yet closely matched to one’s abilities. It is what people sometimes call “being in the zone.”
Jonathan Haidt • The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom
But when one understands that enjoyment depends on increasing complexity, it is no longer possible to take such radical relativism seriously.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi • Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience (Harper Perennial Modern Classics)
optimal experience, and the psychological conditions that make it possible, seem to be the same the world over.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi • Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience (Harper Perennial Modern Classics)
4). “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)
This in turn suggests that people who can enjoy themselves in a variety of situations have the ability to screen out stimulation and to focus only on what they decide is relevant for the moment.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi • Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience (Harper Perennial Modern Classics)
“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
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.