Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
The Best Moments Are Not in Your Leisure
The data contradicted the common sense
Flow, the experience sampling studies
Everyone assumes leisure is where the happiness is. Why the recorded results came out the other way.
What actually happened?
The sampling data produced a counter-intuitive result: people assume leisure is where the happiness is, and the records show flow occurring far more often at work. In front of a television people generally report a mild low; in work of moderate challenge they most often report being deeply involved and very satisfied. The contradiction is that when asked what they would like to be doing now, they still choose rest. His explanation is that flow has an entry cost, attention to gather and the possibility of failing, while relaxing has no threshold at all.
The entry cost is what decides the choice
It is not that people cannot tell which activity is worth more. It is that the better one is hard to begin. Relaxing has a threshold of zero, so when you are tired it always wins. Once you see this, you know not to decide by what you feel like.
Too tired after work for anything but the phone, and two hours of it usually leaves you emptier. Two hours on something hard tends to restore.
Flow does not feel pleasant while it happens
In flow all the attention is on the task and none is spare for judging whether you are enjoying yourself. The satisfaction arrives afterwards. Which means choosing activities by whether this feels nice right now will almost certainly choose wrong.
Writing a passage through to the end is not enjoyable. The solid feeling the moment it is done is the return.
Do not read it as work more
His conclusion is about the structure of an activity, not the length of the working week. A job with vague feedback and mismatched difficulty produces no flow at all, and more hours only deepen the damage. What has to change is the shape, not the time.
Repetitive work with no visible result will never produce flow however long you do it. There the task design is what needs fixing.
How do I use it today?
Where you are: a long day is over and you only want to collapse.
Ask first: will the thing I am about to do leave me fuller or emptier? Could I pick one small thing with the right difficulty and a definite output?
Where it goes wrong: taking it as proof that resting is shameful. Real tiredness needs rest. This is aimed at distraction pretending to be rest.
Lines to keep
People assume leisure is happiest; the records put flow at work.
In front of a television people report a mild low.
Flow has an entry cost and relaxing has no threshold.
Same situation, other people are asking
By the afternoon I'm finished.Have I just been white-knuckling it this whole time?Where did my best hours go?I'm trading my body for my career. Is it worth it?I've run out of energy · all 5 questions →If this one named what you are going through,
send it to someone who needs it, or keep it somewhere you will find it again.