TED Talk on Flow

Having read a lot of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi I felt it would be a good idea to watch his TED Talk and write up some notes on here, to get a background on the concept and help my own understanding of it.  After all, what better way to get an explanation of the concept of flow from the man who came up with it?

I found the story behind how he got into the field of psotiive psychology interesting as it was a reaction to the chaos and emotional toll the second world war had taken on the people  Csikszentmihalyi grew up around as a child during wartime. "I realised how few of the grown-ups I knew were able to withstand the tragedies that the world visited on them...how few of them could even resemble a normal, contented, satisfied, happy life once their job, their home, their security was destroyed by the war." (Csikszentmihalyi, 2004)

Csikszentmihalyi Credits Carl Jung for getting him into psychology after attending a free lecture he gave in Zurich, on how the psyche of Europeans had been impacted during the war - relating to his own experiences.  After moving to America to study psychology and eventually becoming a professor, Csikszentmihalyi began to try to understand what the "root" of happiness is.  Notably from studies on happiness vs income/materials showed that there was no increase in happiness as the amount of money earned or number of possessions owned grew higher, so he wanted to know "Where in everyday life, in our normal experience, do we feel really happy?" (Csikszentmihalyi, 2004)

His work started off by looking at creatives such as artists and scientists, as the aspect of being deeply involved in a task was soon picked up on as a major factor in positive moods. Says Csikszentmihalyi, "I tried to understand why they did work that made their life meaningful and didn't feel like work." (2004) In the presentation examples were used of composers, poets and artists, among others, who reported a kind of suspension of being when they became so focused on the task at hand that they forgot they were hungry, needed to go to the bathroom and other sensations related to bodily awareness because of the high level of absorption in the activity. On one example, Csikszentmihalyi (2004) described the experience as such: "When you are involved in this, completely engaging process of creating something new, he doesn't have enough attention left to monitor how his body feels or his problems at home…his identity disappears from his conscious, as he doesn't have enough attention…"

After interviewing many people for various projects - some relating to flow, some not - so many people described the experience of being so involved with their task as a "spontaneous flow" that Csikszentmihalyi named the experience accordingly.  The 7 conditions of flow were identified through ESM testing and interviews (as outlined in this dodgy screen shot).

Components of Flow

Conditions of flow

Challenge vs skills in each experience - when challenge is higher than average and skill is higher than average.  "That flow channel will be when you are doing what you really like to do." At the point of this TED Talk, Csikszentmihalyi's mission was to figure out how to put more and more flow states into the everyday channel.  We know of course that this has since developed!

References 

Csikszentmihalyi, M.  2004.  Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi: Flow, the secret to happiness [online video]
Avaliable at:  http://www.ted.com/talks/mihaly_csikszentmihalyi_on_flow?language=en#t-937633
[Accessed 04 March 2015]

Images are screen shots from the above