Rating: 
Summary: Every self-knowing person should read this book
Review: For me, this book provided my first insight into how people really become happy. We're happy when we are in flow. Unlike many of the "happy psychology" books that are available, this one feels true. It's also backed up by real research; the author is not a pop psychology dude but a real researcher. (I understand from the university psych community that M.C.'s work may not be universally admired, but that may simply be because it is approachable and understandable by your average educated person.) It's rare to find a book that agrees with both what I think and what I feel. For anyone who wants to have new insights into what makes us feel happy (and who doesn't?), I highly recommend this book. Additionally, I recommend his latest book, Creativity. I would skip much of his second popular book, Finding Flow, which gets into a lot of metaphysical stuff that doesn't agree with either how I feel or how I think. Flow, however, is the key to understanding the rest of his work.
Rating: 
Summary: Excellent description, Doctor, where's the prescription?
Review: Professor Csikszentmihalyi has done a great service by distilling his decades of research into happiness and satisfaction into a well constructed single volume. He writes with wit, insight, and character. He vast learning is often evident but never overbearing. The book ultimately fails, however, for it invests all of its considerable power in describing Flow and convincing the reader to seek this optimal experience but does too little to help us on the path toward experiencing it. This flaw is somewhat healed in his later books, but perhaps the key can not be conveyed in print. That is why I am so busy teaching and consulting on the topic.
Rating:
Summary: A pearl!
Review: This is the book to read if you are an athlete, a business person or anybody else who think about your own performance.
Rating:
Summary: THE FLOW NETWORK
Review: Take steps towards enhancing the quality of your life - explore FlowNet and exchange ideas and experiences associated with Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's Flow theory @ http://www.flownetwork.com
Rating:
Summary: Concisely and clearly illuminates how our minds operate.
Review: This is an extraordinary book. The author's writing style is unusually concise and he is able to explain complex ideas in a simple and understandable style. The concept of flow is intuitively very appealing. The author conducted an apparently well structured empirical study of the causes and conditions that resulted in "optimal experience" (ie happiness) and reached some insightful and convincing conclusions. The ability to achieve "optimal experience" is tightly linked to the ability to focus on fulfilling personally determined goals. Although the book is useful as a personal blueprint for achieving "optimal experience" I found more facinating his compelling arguments about the functioning of the human mind and spirit
Rating:
Summary: .Eastern secret of Moderation defined scientifically
Review: Of the hundreds of psychology, new age, or self
help books that we have to choose from, FLOW is of the few that is absolutely a Must. It defines that which we all seek from birth to death: HAPPINESS. It defines what makes happiness, why
we feel it, and why we do not. And when I applied
the author's theories in my own life, I did indeed
find that what he wrote is rare and precious truth.
Rating:
Summary: Surfing the Slipstream of Sanctity
Review: Flow cascades with liberating insight on how to derive real enjoyment moment-by-moment and taste the true richness of living. Csikszentmihalyi's (pronounced chick-sent-me-high) intelligence tuned my worldview to the positive flux of a pleasurable state of mind marked by concentration and deep satisfaction. With this keen manual for optimal existence, I now set "autotelic" challenges via an action system that accentuates the ebb between being and becoming. The rewards are powerful; a contented context - a connecting order that illuminates meaning and the potential to transform the entirety of life into a single flow activity that provides constant evolutionary purpose. An essential emanation for the idea generation. **** Mark Riv
Rating:
Summary: Not a "quick fix", a scientific approach to a better life.
Review: This is an outstanding, well-researched, easy-to-read guide to transcending the limits of joy typically imposed by materialism, class, religion, behaviorism, and self-doubt. Great approach to integrating success in work, love, life; not about finding a trick. It is a tool (not a morality) to increase attention, which provides focus to build skills, which increases the ability to solve tasks of greater complexity, which leads to richer & fuller lives (social, personal, mental, etc.). Not hot air--backed by research
Rating:
Summary: Important physiologic findings.
Review: The author's findings might well be taken into consideration by virtual reality and video game developers, since "flow" is a neurophysiologic event which may be potentiated by external stimuli. Flow is about being fully engaged - which can result in happiness, but more important, satisfaction, fulfillment, self-realization
Rating:
Summary: An excellent treatise on happiness.
Review: The optimal flow model is an excellent conceptualization of our search for happiness. However, the exemplars of this model include the Nazi war criminal Eichmann, which made me question mine and the author's notion of happiness
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