Christy Ritchie (christyritchie)'s Public Profile in the Diigo Community

Member since Sep 26, 2009, follows 6 people, 0 public groups, 36 public bookmarks (36 total).

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Shambhala Sun - The Man Who Found the Flow on 2009-10-16
- he realized that it was the activity itself-the work of painting-that so enthralled his subjects and not, as he had expected, the anticipation of its outcome.
- This ran, and still runs, counter to the prevailing wisdom of the field. Most psychological theories of motivation assert that we act either to assuage an unpleasant condition-hunger, say, or anxiety-or to achieve some desired end. Even activities that are enjoyable in themselves are assumed to serve some socially adaptive or biologically practical function: children play to discharge aggressive feelings; sex is nature's way of getting us to pass on our genes
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- - moments of flow occur when our physical or mental capacities are stretched to their limits in pursuit of a worthwhile goal.
  - Flow, then, is not something that happens to us; it is something we make happen. It is not dependent on external events: it is the result of our ability to focus, and thus give order, to consciousness.
  - In Flow, Csikszentmihalyi describes eight "elements of enjoyment"-the factors that characterize or contribute to the flow experience. First, flow is likely to occur when one confronts a challenging task that requires skill. Here, there must be a balance between the demands of the activity and one's ability to meet those demands. If the activity is too easy, boredom will result; if it is too hard, it will cause anxiety.
  - The second element is the merging of action and awareness, in which one is so absorbed in the task at hand that the activity becomes spontaneous and one ceases to be aware of oneself as standing separate from it. Third and fourth, optimal experience is more likely to occur when one's task has clear goals and provides immediate feedback
  - Fifth is a high degree of concentration, which limits the dissipation of energy caused by extraneous concerns. The sixth element is called the paradox of control: one feels a sense of control without actively trying to be in control. More precisely, it might be said that one ceases to worry about losing control. Seventh, preoccupation with the self disappears.
  - The final element is an altered sense of time. Hours may seem like minutes, or conversely, one may experience a sense of what sports psychologists call "elongated time," in which things seem to move in slow motion.
  - Of the eight elements, one in particular emerged as the most telling aspect of optimal experience: the merging of action and awareness. In Seven Pillars of Wisdom, T.E. Lawrence sounded a similar theme, when he wrote that "happiness is absorption."
  - In describing the happiness associated with flow, Csikszentmihalyi cites Aristotle's term eudaimonia, a state of being "well-favored" within oneself and in one's relation to the divine. Eudaimonia connects happiness with such characteristics as virtue, prosperity and blessedness. Flow and eudaimonia are not identical notions, but the link between the two is made clear in Flow's opening sentence: "Twenty-three hundred years ago Aristotle concluded that, more than anything else, men and women seek happiness. While happiness itself is sought for its own sake, every other goal-health, beauty, money, or power-is valued only because we expect that it will make us happy."
  - Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi was born in 1934 in the Adriatic harbor town of Fiume, a town that has seen much instability in this century. The young Mihaly's father served as the Hungarian consul in the city, which was then Italian (and is today Croatian). After the Second World War, the elder Csikszentmihalyi was appointed Hungarian ambassador to Italy and the family moved to Rome. In 1948, following the communist take-over of Hungary, he was fired from the ambassadorship.
    Rather than return to Hungary, the family opened a restaurant in Rome. Now an adolescent, Mihaly attended school and spent evenings helping his father at the restaurant. Following high school, he worked as a photojournalist, a travel agent, and, foreshadowing his later work, tried his hand as a painter.
    But all the while, his main focus was on trying to understand the strangeness of human nature as he had witnessed it during and after the war. "I saw so many people just disintegrate from the loss of status, income, and other extrinsic sources of meaning or support," he says, "and yet I also met some, just a few, who had a kind of inner strength that allowed them to take their misfortunes in stride."
    Eventually he stumbled on the writings of Carl Jung, which convinced him that the field of psychology might be the best place to look for answers to the questions that beset him. Unfortunately, it was not the practice of European colleges in the fifties to teach psychology as a separate discipline. Rather, it was offered in isolated courses taught within departments of medicine or philosophy. So Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi decided he would pursue his studies in the United States.
  - Csikszentmihalyi is, of course, devoted to his work and pleased with its success. But he also notes a certain absurdity in the whole enterprise. "It's kind of ironic," he says, "that so many people need the trappings of scientific methodology before they'll pay attention to what they already know in their gut. When people hear about flow, they say, 'Oh yeah, I know that!' But unless you can quantify and measure something, it's not seen to have much significance." After a pause, he adds wryly, "Anyway, I have a lot of fun crunching the numbers."
  - Among the questions to arise from the research on flow, two were particularly significant. The first was moral. Optimal experience is morally neutral.
  - The second problem follows readily from the first. It is a problem of meaning. One might attain excellence in a particular field, and thus experience a high degree of flow, yet be hopelessly inept or boorish in every other way.
  - It was in response to these two problems that Csikszentmihalyi turned to the idea of evolutionary complexity. Complexity, he believes, can serve as the foundation for a viable faith at a time when the traditional cosmologies no longer can.
  - "The thesis of this book," he writes, "is that becoming an active, conscious part of the evolutionary process is the best way to give meaning to our lives at the present point in time, and to enjoy each moment along the way. Understanding how evolution works, and what role we may play in it, provides a direction and purpose that otherwise is lacking in this secular, desacralized culture."
  - Csikszentmihalyi subscribes to the view that evolution proceeds in the direction of increasing complexity, that is, toward continuous differentiation and integration. The realization of complexity, therefore, is the benchmark for measuring evolutionary success. "Differentiation" refers to the degree to which a system is composed of parts that differ in structure or function from one another. "Integration" refers to the extent to which the different parts communicate and enhance one another's goals. A system that is more differentiated and integrated than another is said to be more complex.
  - For Csikszentmihalyi, this means that the ethics of flow require that it not be pursued solely as an isolated, individual event but as something that enhances complexity throughout one's relations with the larger world. The idea that through flow one can become an active participant in the great unfolding drama of evolution recalls Aristotle's notion of eudaimonia, of being well-favored not just within oneself but also in one's relation with the divine.
Finish your PhD... on 2009-10-15
4.09: Go With The Flow on 2009-10-14
- According to Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, great Web sites are not about navigating content, but staging experience.
- The key, says psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, is a finely tuned sense of rhythm, involvement, and anticipation known as "flow."
- 9 more annotations...
- - Vanderbilt University's Donna Hoffman and Thomas Novak, who write that flow is "a central construct when considering
    consumer navigation on commercial Web sites."
  - work is studied by marketing specialists
  - Being completely involved in an activity for its own sake. The ego falls away. Time flies. Every action, movement, and thought follows inevitably from the previous one, like playing jazz. Your whole being is involved, and you're using your skills
    to the utmost.
  - Web site designers assume that the visitor already knows what to choose. That's not true. People enter Web sites hoping to be led somewhere, hoping for a payoff.
  - Goals transform a random walk into a chase. You need clear goals that fit into a hierarchy, with little goals that build toward more meaningful, higher-level goals.
  - There's also the ability to challenge. Competition is an easy way to get into flow.
  - Actually, they're probably more critical. A flow experience has got to be challenging. Anything that
    is not up to par is going to be irritating or ignored.
  - Does the interactivity of the Net recapture part of that cause and effect?
    
    Yes, to the extent that you have to play by the rules and each move has a consequence. Still, it is a symbolic causal system, like playing chess, and it may present too narrow a set of consequences.
  - There has to be a common business interest or ideology before an online community can have much leverage.
EBSCOhost: Finding Flow at School and at Home: A Conversation with Mihaly Csikszentmih... on 2009-10-14
- Flow is more like a source of energy that can be used for pursuing both positive and negative ends. It's more a question of how can one get Flow from activities that will do you good in the long run
- For the first four million years of human evolution, which includes probably about 200,000 generations, children learned by observing and participating one-on-one with adults who taught them how to become members of that society. For the last four or five generations, we have changed that around so that now kids sit for 13 years behind desks being exposed to a kind of abstract stream of information that comes from an adult in front of them. It is not a viable way to teach everyone.
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- - What Flow theory suggests is that if you don't get intrinsically involved in what you do, then you may learn things because you are forced to; but, that type of learning is not very useful to you in the future.
  - You own the kind of learning that you want to acquire for its own sake because you are interested in it.
Interest and the Quality of Experience in Classrooms. on 2009-10-12
csikszentmihalyipowerpoint.pdf (application/pdf Object) on 2009-10-12
Student Engagement in High School Classrooms from the Perspective of Flow Theory. on 2009-10-12
FindingFlow.pdf (application/pdf Object) on 2009-10-12
The educational role of the museum - Google Books on 2009-10-12
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi on flow | Video on TED.com on 2009-10-12