Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience

The bestselling classic that reveals the secrets of the flow experience — a state of joy, creativity, and total involvement with life — and teaches us how to achieve it. Psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's famous investigations of optimal experience have revealed that what makes an experience genuinely satisfying is a state of consciousness called flow. During flow, people typically experience deep enjoyment, creativity, and a total involvement with life. In an effort to gain more flow experience, people have climbed mountains, bet their savings on a hand of cards, and become virtuosos at the piano. Csikszentmihalyi demonstrates the ways this positive state can be controlled, not just left to chance.