Finding Flow Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Finding Flow

From the bestselling author of Flow and one of the pioneers of the scientific study of happiness, an indispensable guide to living your best life. What makes a good life? Is it money? An important job? Leisure time? Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi believes our obsessive focus on such measures has led us astray. Work fills our days with anxiety and pressure, so that during our free time, we tend to live in boredom, absorbed by our screens. What are we missing? To answer this question, Csikszentmihalyi studied thousands of people, and he found the key. People are happiest when they challenge themselves with tasks that demand a high degree of skill and commitment, and which are undertaken for their own sake. Instead of scrolling on your phone, play the piano. Take a routine chore and figure out how to do it better, faster, more efficiently. In short, learn the hidden power of complete engagement, a psychological state the author calls flow. Though they appear simple, the lessons in Finding Flow are life-changing.

Finding Flow: The Psychology of Engagement with Everyday Life

To Want to Learn

Lack of learner motivation is the single greatest challenge before American schools and colleges. When students are self-motivated, they invest more and work harder at learning even if resources are inadequate. Jackson Kytle's provocative book argues that students and teachers waste time and human energy because the conventional curriculum rests on flawed mental models. Hope for change requires a searching critique of modernity as well as expanded theories of human motivation and learning based on advances in neurobiology and cognitive studies. After consideration of existentialism and choice of life purposes, and the dynamics of psychological involvement, Kytle closes his ambitious, interdisciplinary book with ten considerations for better learning.