,
by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. I first came across the concept of Flow in
my previous job, where it was presented to us as a concept that will
help you manage people better – that you should try and manage people so
that they were in a state of “flow” as often as possible – being
stretched so that they are learning, but not so much that what they were
doing was too hard.But the concept is much more than that. To quote from the introduction:
“We have all experienced times when, instead of being buffeted by anonymous forces, we do feel in control of our actions, masters of our own fate. On the rare occasions that it happens, we feel a sense of exhilaration, a deep sense of enjoyment that is long cherished and that becomes a landmark in memory for what life should be like….. moments like these are not the passive, receptive, relaxing times…the best moments usually occur when a person’s body or mind is stretched to its limits in a voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult and worthwhile.”http://penguinunearthed.wordpress.com
