In “flow” Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (who I shall refer to by his first name for the remainder of this blog post) outlines one way of looking at happiness, contentment, satisfaction or whatever you’d like to call it.

I’ll get to what it takes to be happy (or content or satisfied or whatever) in a bit, but first I need to explain a few terms.

Attention as “Psychic Energy”

Mihaly points out that the main thing that creates experience is attention.  Our happiness is dependent on our experience in the world, and our experience in the world is entirely based around those things that actually enter into our consciousness — in other words, the things we pay attention to.

“Because attention determines what will or will not appear in consciousness, and because it is also required to make any other mental events–such as remembering, thinking, feeling, and making decisions–happen there, it is useful to think of it as psychic energy.  Attention is like energy in that without it no work can be done, and in doing work it is dissipated.  We create ourselves by how we invest this energy.  Memories, thoughts, and feelings are all shaped by how we use it.  And it is an energy under our control, to do with as we please; hence, attention is our most important tool in the task of improving the quality of experience.”

That is an encouraging thought — the idea that our reality is constructed by our exercise of an energy that is “under our control, to do with as we please.”

I mean, it’s mostly encouraging.  Of course, if you have been diagnosed with some kind of … attentional disorder, indicating that you have a deficit of attention, and that it isn’t quite as “under [your] control, to do with as [you] please” as it is for most people this might actually be kind of discouraging … but we’ll leave that discussion for later.

The Self

The next key definition is “the self.”  Mihaly defines the self as the “hierarchy of goals that we have built up, bit by bit, over the years.”  The self is what we think we are, what we want to be, what we believe we have achieved and what we hope to achieve.  It also is a construct of attention, and our attention is driven by the self.

When you answer the question “who am I” what you respond with is a product of your attention.  It involves the things that matter most to you.  You might say you’re a parent, a friend, a professional, an expert in something — what’s interesting is that the self is just a representation, and everyone else also has a representation of you in their head.  That representation might look fairly similar to your own (if the person knows you well, and shares many of your views) or it might look unlike you at all.  Somewhere out there is a person you cut off in traffic who thinks of you only as “that horrible jerk in the Subaru.”  Maybe you didn’t notice them.  Maybe you did, and you gave that little apologetic half-wave as you blasted through the lanes on your way to your exit.  Whatever the case, their version of “you” looks a lot different from your version of “you.”

This leads us right to our next key concept…

Psychic Entropy

Ideally, our self makes sense.  There is internal logic and we behave (or at least believe we behave) in a consistent manner.  We pursue the things that are important to us.  We are the people we say we are.

Occasionally something will happen that threatens that sense of self.  For example, we may cut someone off in traffic while driving a Subaru, even though we consider ourselves expert, courteous drivers.  This is a threat to the self because we behaved in a way contradictory to how we view ourselves.

At other times the threat is external.  Let’s say you are an athlete and your goal is to compete in the Olympics.  If you tear your ACL, that will cause a short-term threat to the self (you won’t be able to practice) as well as a more existential threat (you may never fully recover).  This leads to psychic disorder.

“Whenever information disrupts consciousness by threatening its goals we have a condition of inner disorder, or psychic entropy, a disorganization of the self that impairs its effectiveness.  Prolonged experiences of this kind can weaken the self to the point that it is no longer able to invest attention and pursue its goals.”

Flow (finally)

As Mihaly explains:

“The opposite state from the condition of psychic entropy is optimal experience.  When the information that keeps coming into awareness is congruent with goals, psychic energy flows effortlessly.  There is no need to worry, no reason to question one’s adequacy … the positive feedback strengthens the self, and more attention is freed to deal with the outer and inner environment.”

This “optimal experience” is called “flow.”  Flow happens when two conditions are achieved:

1. There is a lack of psychic entropy (the self is in a state of order)
2. The experience you’re engaging in is conducive to flow

Experiences that are conducive to flow are those that allow for focus, feedback, and stretching of your abilities.

Flow doesn’t create psychic order, it makes you more complex — it makes the self more expansive and capable.

Summarizing the types of experiences

Let’s pause for a second and summarize the types of experience that these terms imply, based on how they affect psychic order and complexity of the self.

• Stressful experiences — decreases psychic order, no affect on complexity of the self
• Pleasurable experiences — increases psychic order, no affect on complexity
• Flow — requires high psychic order, increases complexity

(as an aside: I was tempted to create a “neutral” category — one that doesn’t increase or decrease psychic order or complexity — but I don’t think that’s truly a type of experience.  Just waiting, for example, is usually stressful, even if only slightly.  When you drill down there probably aren’t many, if any, truly neutral experiences)

Any day is composed of experiences, and those experiences almost always fall into these three categories in some form or another.  Your happiness is mostly a product of the experiences you have throughout the day.

Today I spent some time reading (pleasurable), writing (flow), parenting (sigh — mostly stressful, but some pleasurable and a very small amount of flow).  I’m pretty happy with my day because the disorder caused by the stress was largely cancelled out by the pleasurable experiences, and I had some flow experiences that were satisfying.

Personally, I find a certain amount of flow is required for me to be happy with my day.  My self craves expansion, if that makes sense, so even a day that is entirely made of pleasurable experience feels dissatisfying.  

Why “flow” is a good book

One way to approach happiness is to say “I’m going to find my ratio, and then make sure I hit it every day by filling my day with the exact right activities.”

That approach is doomed to failure, because life is unpredictable.  I think it’s definitely worth trying, but few people choose stress, meaning you will face it no matter what.  Flow is great because it outlines how to transform a great many experiences into flow experiences.

He talks about two people who work at the same factory — one who tries every day to improve their ability to hit their quota and decrease errors, and another who is simply trying to get through the day.  One experiences flow and is happy with their job, one experiences stress and is unhappy.  Two people, exact same activity, entirely different outcomes.

I think the best approach is to know when you need pleasure to counteract stress, and try to take advantage of times when you’re capable of flow by doing something which increases complexity, instead of just adding on more pleasurable activities.