Fortunately, this is not true of all people. A woman I know, a writer,
keeps her computer near her bed so that she can turn to her work even before
her first cup of coffee in the morning. Friends say she often has to be pried
away from her writing at night. She doesn’ t understand the fuss; she loves
what she does for a living. Time spent writing is time spent learning and
growing. Each day her work produces more challenges and more opportu-
nities for personal development. Moviemaker Woody Allen is another exam-
ple. Friends and colleagues are constantly amazed at the energy and attentionhe gives to his movies. “I love to work, ”he once said. “I’d work seven days a
week. I don ’t care about hours. When we solve this problem, whether it ’s five
o’clock or ten at night, we move on to something else. Hours or days mean
nothing ”(cited in Lax, 1991, p. 337). Woody Allen clearly experiences flow
when he ’s working. That his movies also provide money and fame seems to
be secondary.
Of course, not everyone can be a writer or a movie maker. What about
the average person who puts in 40 hours a week at a less glamorous profes-
sion? Csikszentmihalyi argues that nearly any job can become a flow experi-ence if we approach it the right way. Even mowing the lawn or making
dinner can be a source of happiness if we look at these chores as challenges
and take pride and satisfaction in a job well done. Rather than thinking of
such jobs as something we have to do or something others expect us to do,
we can approach these daily tasks by searching for what we can get out of
them.
This advice also applies to students (Schmidt, Shernoff, & Csikszentmihalyi,
2007). High school students are most content when they face academic assign-ments that are challenging but still within their power to accomplish (Moneta &
Csikszentmihalyi, 1996). Researchers in one study identified high school students
who studied and participated in their classes not because they wanted good
grades but because they found the learning process fascinating and satisfying(Wong & Csikszentmihalyi, 1991). Interestingly, these students ’grades were
not particularly high. But they did take more advanced courses than thegrade-driven students, probably because they wanted to learn more aboutthe subjects they found most interesting. Intrinsically motivated undergraduates
in another study were more likely to lose track of time and to report that time
passed quickly than students who were less interested in the learning experience(Conti, 2001).
In summary, Csikszentmihalyi ’s prescription for happiness contains
many of the elements traditionally embraced by humanistic personality psy-chology. Flow experiences require people to live in the present and to get
the most out of their lives in the here and now. Achieving the goal is not
the point. Rather, it is the struggle and experience along the way that pro-vide the enjoyment. Happiness comes from taking control of your life rather
than caving in to conventional standards or demands from others. In the
flow state people are intensely in touch with themselves and their experi-ences. They feel a sense of mastery and an awareness of finding themselves.
Like the peak experiences described by Maslow, flow experiences are occa-
sions for personal growth.The Psychology of Opt imal Experience 293