The work of Csikszentmihalyi (pronounced like: chick zen’t me hi) is being brought to my attention through the Daniel Pink work Drive. I imagine I’ll post again about Drive, as I’m halfway through; a book on motivation that I highly recommend already. The what’s up with Csikszentmihalyi is that he has sought all his life to find a functional essence as to a better way for things to be. Eventually he studied “flow”. I called it the zone, it is called many things. That space where an athlete, artisan, artist, etc. is lost within the work itself. Csikszentmihalyi actually deconstructs this.
Jenova Chen wrote his MFA thesis on this by way of creating a video game (what he does). Quoting from Jenova’s website: “With Flow the psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi names the feeling of complete and energized focus in an activity, with a high level of enjoyment and fulfillment. As Csikszentmihalyi sees it, the components of a Flow producing activity are:
• We are up to the activity. • We are able to concentrate on the activity.
• The activity has clear goals.
• The activity has direct feedback.
• We feel that we control the activity.
• Our worries and concerns disappear.
• Our subjective experience of time is altered.
Not all of these components need to be present together for Flow to be experienced.”
The online version of his video game, Flow, was downloaded 30 million times, he then created “That Game Company” on the success of that and then Sony offered this “unknown” a three game deal!
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