Notes on "Flow"

24 Aug 2023

I recently spun up my old Obsidian vault to try out a second brain again, and came across my old notes on the late Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's classic, Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience.

[me - high - chick - sent - me - high], in case you need a helpful pronunciation reference.

Flow is often shoehorned into 'grind and hustle' reading lists, and Csikszentmihalyi is best known as the individual who coined the idea of the 'flow state' (and arguably made Cal Newport a millionaire), but every time I have read this book, I always felt that it read more like an Oliver Sacks book, where the message beneath is more centred on the human spirit than the psychology of productivity.

Here are some key quotes that I thought were important enough to store in at least one of the many note-taking tools I've juggled over the years.

Happiness, in fact, is a condition that must be prepared for, cultivated, and defended privately by each person.

Contentment has become harder to maintain in a world that has stacked itself high on technological progress and 'more' at all costs. Happiness can develop spontaneously but inner contentment has to be stronger than the shifting world around it.

To overcome the anxieties and depressions of contemporary life, individuals must become independent of the social environment to the degree that they no longer respond exclusively in terms of its rewards and punishments.

People who are happinest are those who are to an extent, independent thinkers and free of the trappings of consumerism.

A person can make himself happy, or miserable, regardless of what is actually happening “outside,” just by changing the contents of consciousness.

I think we all struggle to some extent at maintaining this, but when I read this first, I had a lifelong shift in perspective. Feelings can sometimes just be feelings.

Paradoxically, it is when we act freely, for the sake of the action itself rather than for ulterior motives, that we learn to become more than what we were.

I can relate to this. When I've let go of the anticipation of a fixed result, I've achieved work that I'm still proud of. I set out to publish a body of music and I distinctly remember that when I stopped making it for an imagined audience, everything came together.

Every piece of information we process gets evaluated for its bearing on the self. Does it threaten our goals, does it support them, or is it neutral? News of the fall of the stock market will upset the banker, but it might re- inforce the sense of self of the political activist. A new piece of information will either create disorder in consciousness, by getting us all worked up to face the threat, or it will reinforce our goals, thereby freeing up psychic energy.

Do we allow our self to be at the whim of what we cannot control, or can we cultivate an inner light that cannot be extinguished by perceived disorder? This is distinctly different to ignorance.

“We are always getting to live,” as Ralph Waldo Emerson used to say, “but never living.”

Emerson was quoted as saying this in the 1800's. How curious that this sentiment seems timeless, and more prevalent than ever as we accelerate, amass, and claim to be more enlightened than ever.

One could argue that 'flow' is simply a state of disconnection from the anxieties of the modern world and sparking a connection with our inner curiosity, which many of us sadly lose after childhood or a traumatic event. It's a shame that 'flow state' has been commodified as a productivity hack, rather than a beautiful state of being.

If you haven't read Flow, I'd highly recommend it. I'd consider it more of a philosophical prose than a 'hustle and grind' piece, and would strongly you recommend it from a slow thinking perspective, rather than trying to extract some knowledge from within.