I readed this book with great interest. Unfortunately I didn't do the "exercises" it tells you to, so I don't know how this could really have helped me in practice, only in theory.

This book helps you to understand some aspects of sports and our participation in sports we usually never stop to think about. It helped me a lot in finding why am I performing worse than I was two years ago - a motivation problem, I found myself much better than my competition and therefore I feel bored, without challenges. It them helps you to do some routines to keep yourself motivated, and defines one optimal zone of performance, called the "flow". He keeps telling this is related to how you perceive the chalenges and your abilities, and helps you to get to the point of balance where you can make your experiences the best (flow).

I just don't rate this book higher because I found it to be not very good to read and I think there lacks something. The exercises didn't seem very interestining to me, but someday I'll try to do them.

If you know some better psychingbook as this so tell me.

Flow in Sports by Susan A. Jackson is a well written, clear, practical manual that offers well grounded advice to any level athlete. This is the best book I have seen on the topic since the original classic by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi because it delivers the concepts without fanfare. Flow is just another practical took for the modern day athlete, the same as good nutrition and dedicated practice schedules. This tone and the plentiful, flow-accurate blurbs from atheltes in several different sports, make for a fun and exciting read. Every athelete will identify with the concepts and find inspiration to expand on the methods in their own specific sports training.

What is most signficant about this work is its exploration of the veils that our culture and its members live with, and what could be beyond them. It summarizes the concept of Flow and then takes us beyond into what we can actually do in communities to make a difference in the evolutionary epic. I find this book to be very practical.

While "everyperson" might not find this entertaining reading, I think this book is the first one I would/will give my children as they try to become adults. It ought to be required reading for every adult in every culture, especially those who think they're "right." Csikszentmihalyi's insight and ability to weave a powerful story from myriad perspectives is simply awesome. We may think we are "people" but until we understand the interconnection of our genetic heritage and our mimetic heritage, and develop our own sense of flow in the world, we are little more than reproductions of other (dead) people's thinking. The concepts of memes and complexity and the invitation to become a transcender ranks Csikszentmihalyi right along side Carl Rogers as the most informed about how we can become truly individual, contributing human beings. Don't miss this book!

Flow experiences, human peak experiences and high synergetic states are introduced in such an original and practical way in this book that, while readind it, one really experiences flow. Genes are the information units of life; they are associated with the genetic code, while "memes" are the equivalent information units when dealing with consciousness, with mind, with the noosphere, and they are coded in this master piece, from beginning to end, so that the "I" is challenged continually to evolve and to know how to obtain wisdom, "because wisdom is a cognitive skill, a special way of acting and a personal good, because the practice of wisdom leads to inner serenity and enjoyment". Complexity is certainly a fashionable catchword but again Mihaly makes it graspable and human, a practical tool, so to speak, because the final principle of evolution is an increase in both differentiation and integration ... Differentiation refers to the parts that differ in structure or function and integration refers to the whole in which the different parts communicate and enhance one another's goals. Flow, memes and complexity are presented in this work in such a unified framework that we can think that with it we have finally a truly complementary work for the "I", or some sort of evolutionary ontology, while with Ken Wilber work Sex, Ecology and Spirituality we have the corresponding philosophical counterpart, for the "we", and with Physics and the Principle of Synergy by Epsilon Pi, we have the corresponding scientifical counterpart, for the "It". But the important point to recall is that they all three are integral proposal; they really complement each other in this new stage of mankind in which the integration of the big three is a main concern. Synergy is a principle that when applied produces harmony and when not produces entropy, and when synergy is obtained, flow is experienced and a "field" is created, a field that can be used as a medium to detect a higher ordered state or an increased complexity, as "a good society is one that encourages the individuals to realize their potentials and permits complexity to evolve".

After reading this most influential book you will be not the same again because its "memetic" influence will start working by itself in your own evolving self.

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (MC from now on) is a Psychologist based at the University of Chicago who has extensively studied what makes people happy and fulfilled. Through his Experience Sampling Method (ESM), MC asks his subjects at random times (through a beeper) to record what they're doing, how they feel about it, whether they feel happy and so on. Through these studies he has come up with the concept of 'flow'. 'Flow' is when we are at our most fulfilled and it is usually at times when we are using our skills to the maximum and at the same time being challenged - its that simple.
Not having read MCs other books the whole flow thing is new to me but by the end of the book I was starting to get the idea. MC also offers some ways you can spend more time in 'flow' activities. It has the faults of many self help books - mainly constant repetition and those hard to believe anecdotes from 'real life' but there's a practicality about this book that saves it. It's also mercifully short, which means you'll get through it quickly and I don't think MCs erratic conversational style would survive a longer publication. I can't agree with the criticism of MC lacking scientific rigour. Being a scientist I don't think he made claims that went beyond his research which is all referenced should you like to follow it up and it's obvious when he is offering opinion ahead scientific analysis.
While I wasn't totally inspired the concept of 'flow' has stuck with me and I'd recommend you at least find out what 'flow' is about.

This is a simpler, more practical book than Csikszentmihalyi's other popular work on the subject (Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience). He explains how you can apply the insights from his teams' experiments at the University of Chicago. They've been studying enjoyment for over thirty years -- what it is and how people create it. They are not studying simple pleasure, but real, enjoyable absorption in a task.

Csikszentmihalyi originally studied artists and noticed it wasn't the end-product most good painters were after, it was the process of painting. He was surprised to see painters finish a painting and immediately set up another canvas to continue painting -- without even looking at the masterpiece they had just created. This intrigued him and so he has spent his lifetime exploring this interesting and enjoyable state he calls "flow", and he knows something about how we can have more of it in our lives.

I'm the author of the book, Self-Help Stuff That Works, and I'm an expert on what is effective. Csikszentmihalyi's work is in that category. You can apply his insights and truly experience more enjoyable flow in your life.

"Finding Flow" is an easy-read paperback subtitled "the psychology of engagement with everyday life". The thesis cut back to its core is that optimal experiences happen when you are highly challenged and have the skills to match, and that too many people spend their lives of quiet despiration being frustrated, anxious, apathetic or bored when the tasks that fill their day don't match up. Mihaly describes this state of "Flow" as a period of complete focus on the task, no distractions or irrelevant feelings, and a distorted sense of time. "In the harmonious focusing of physical and psychic energy, life finally comes into its own".

You would hope that a book like this would be a pretty engaging read, or else it would have failed its stated purpose, and for the most part I was engaged while reading it. It tries to be a self-help book too, which I suppose is fair enough -- if you believe that this state of being is superior to being lazily happy sitting on the couch watching TV, then you might well want to preach its virtues.

One of the major conceits in the history of psychology is that the act of paying attention can be a portal to amazing or magical things. Pay attention to a swinging watch and you become hypnotized, focus on your belly button or a mantra and you enter a blissful meditative state, and concentrate real hard while tapping your shoes together and you just may get to Kansas. The latest wonderful mind state that occurs thanks to paying attention is 'flow'. Upon interviewing a few thousand people as they went about their ordinary lives, Dr. C. discovered that many of them reported a state of pleasure or even ecstasy when they engaged in demanding tasks that challenged them to the limits of their capabilities. The fact that mountain climbers, artists, doctors, etc. reported some real good feelings while having to rapidly shift their attention to stay on a ledge, keep inspiration, or keep a patient alive seemed to indicate once again that attention, if focused just right, can be a portal to some mighty good things. In this his first book on the topic of flow, Dr. C. waxes poetic about how flow represents a heightened sense of self, undreamed level of consciousness and so on, without grounding any of it to actual neural processes. Dr. C.'s house of metaphorical cards however collapses if attention was not the antecedent for flow, but the stuff of flow itself. The critical question that Dr. C. studiously avoids is whether attention is in itself a pleasurable or hedonic thing. Modern research in neuropsychology answers the question in the affirmative, as it is well known that when attention rapidly shifts between a host of important precepts, the neuromodulator dopamine is released that keeps us rooted, alert, promotes efficiency in thinking, and feels good to boot. Dr. C. does not concern himself to explore any of these findings, preferring instead to view attention as a portal to all those good metaphysical feelings, and not a source of those good feelings themselves. But again, if Dr. C. actually was intent on finding out what flow actually is, instead of reveling in its poetry, his book would be shorter by two thirds, and lose its representation as a model for vacuous New Age thinking, which in toto represents the intellectual con of the 20th century.

Mihaly Csikszentmihaly presents a detailed examination of motivation based on a study of a half-dozen groups of people involved in recreational pursuits: rock climbers, composers, dancers, chess players and basketball players. He chose these groups in an effort to understand more fully what motivates people to engage in activities that are extremely challenging or offer few external rewards. Although some of his conclusions may be of interest to executives and managers seeking ways to motivate employees, most readers will find this academic study too detailed. Some of the interview comments are interesting, but much of the book describes survey results, a discussion that non-statisticians may be hard put to follow. Because of this complexity and because of the book's somewhat dense prose, we [...] recommend this 25-year-old reissued classic primarily to scholars or to those who are intensely curious about the nuts-and-bolts of motivation. But any human resources professional or leadership specialist should have at least a passing familiarity with its concepts and contents.

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