flow

Why is solitude such a negative experience? The bottom-line answer is that keeping order in the mind from within is very difficult. We need external goals, external stimulation, external feedback to keep attention directed. And when external input is lacking, attention begins to wander, and thoughts become chaotic—resulting in the state we have cal

Adolescents who never learn to control their consciousness grow up to be adults without a “discipline.” They lack the complex skills that will help them survive in a competitive, information-intensive environment. And what is even more important, they never learn how to enjoy living. They do not acquire the habit of finding challenges that bring ou

Cicero once wrote that to be completely free one must become a slave to a set of laws. In other words, accepting limitations is liberating.

One way to describe the skills that every man and woman has is to divide them in two classes: the instrumental and the expressive. Instrumental skills are the ones we learn so that we can cope effectively with the environment. They are basic survival tools, like the cunning of the hunter or the craft of the workman, or intellectual tools, like read

Health, money, and other material advantages may or may not improve life. Unless a person has learned to control psychic energy, chances are such advantages will be useless.

One of the most interesting examples of how the phenomenon of flow appeared to thinkers of earlier times is the concept of Yu referred to about 2,300 years ago in the writings of the Taoist scholar Chuang Tzu. Yu is a synonym for the right way of following the path, or Tao: it has been translated into English as “wandering”; as “walking without tou

Ting’s explanation may seem to imply that Yu and flow are the result of different kinds of processes. In fact, some critics have emphasized the differences: while flow is the result of a conscious attempt to master challenges, Yu occurs when the individual gives up conscious mastery. In this sense they see flow as an example of the “Western” search

“However, whenever I come to a complicated place, I size up the difficulties, tell myself to watch out and be careful, keep my eyes on what I’m doing, work very slowly, and move my knife with the greatest of subtlety, until—flop! the whole thing comes apart like a clod of earth crumbling to the ground.

Work not only transforms the environment by building bridges across rivers and cultivating barren plains; it also transforms the worker from an animal guided by instincts into a conscious, goal-directed, skillful person.