“In a world supposedly ruled by the pursuit of money, power, prestige, and pleasure, it is surprising to find certain people who sacrifice all those goals for no apparent reason. . . . By finding out why they are willing to give up material rewards for the elusive experience of performing enjoyable acts, we hope to learn something that will allow us to make everyday life more meaningful.”

—Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Beyond Anxiety and Boredom (1975)

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I know what it feels like to spin on a 80-foot tabletop or ride 30 centimetres of powder on my snowboard, but I could never articulate it until I read about the theory of “flow.” The concept was created by Hungarian-American psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (Me-high Cheek-sent-me-high), who passed away last fall at the age of 87.
 

Csikszentmihalyi discovered that when people are in a state of flow, common characteristics emerge: intrinsic motivation, immersive concentration, time distortion (speeding up or slowing down), loss of self-consciousness, feelings of control, and heightened awareness. Participants in his research cited multiple components occurring simultaneously and often in activities where a person’s challenge and skill level are both high and in balance. If skill is too high and challenge too low, boredom may result; if challenge is too high and skill too low, anxiety may occur. Flow is the goldilocks zone where complete absorption occurs. His theory has been studied in relation to athletic performance, education, the workplace, productivity, and happiness, and it has also been called “energetic focus,” “creative concentration,” and “peak enjoyment.”
 

Born in Fiume, Italy (now Rijeka, Croatia), in 1934, Csikszentmihalyi immigrated to the United States at age 22 to study psychology after two influential experiences: learning how to play chess in an Italian prison during World War II and hearing Carl Jung speak. Csikszentmihalyi earned his BA and PhD from the University of Chicago, where he was a professor until 2000.

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Before becoming the world’s leading researcher on positive psychology and the father of the flow state, Csikszentmihalyi was an avid rock climber, a poetry translator, and a published fiction writer. In the 1960s, he blended his research and personal interests into studying creative processes. By 1975, he had interviewed composers, chess champions, surgeons, spelunkers, mountain climbers, and champion long-distance swimmers. To date, through Google Scholar, his work has been cited 159,000 times; for comparison, Stephen Hawking’s work has been cited 136,000 times. Popularity doesn’t necessarily equate to excellence, but something about flow fascinates people. Csikszentmihalyi provided a framework that changed the way we think about enjoyment.

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As major surgeries prevented me from snowboarding, I sought non-physical risks that provided glimpses of flow. Writing. Reading. Listening to live music. Timing myself doing Sudokus. I once read a poem in front of 10 peers. I started reading and time distorted. I stumbled and became self-conscious, falling out of flow. One or two people snapped their fingers. When I was finished, I couldn’t differentiate, in essence, the experience of reading a poem and jumping off a 30-foot cliff on my snowboard. I realized that experiences of art and action-sport can overlap.

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Authoring 14 books and contributing to over 80 peer-reviewed articles, Csikszentmihalyi defined a subset of psychology and captured the attention of students and scientists worldwide. He asked questions that weren’t being asked. He taught us to be passionate, allow our interests to shape our careers, and tweak our skill-challenge balance until we find that zone—those hard-to-define moments he simply called “flow.”