Flow

And the man who talked at that evening lecture was very interesting. Instead of talking about little green men, he talked about how the psyche of the Europeans had been traumatized by the war, and now they're projecting flying saucers into the sky. He talked about how the mandalas of ancient Hindu religion were kind of projected into the sky as an attempt to regain some sense of order after the chaos of war.

But you find essentially the same results, namely, that after a certain basic point -- which corresponds more or less to just a few 1,000 dollars above the minimum poverty level -- increases in material well-being don't seem to affect how happy people are. In fact, you can find that the lack of basic resources, material resources, contributes to unhappiness, but the increase in material resources does not increase happiness

So ecstasy is essentially a stepping into an alternative reality. And it's interesting, if you think about it, how, when we think about the civilizations that we look up to as having been pinnacles of human achievement -- whether it's China, Greece, the Hindu civilization, or the Mayas, or Egyptians -- what we know about them is really about their ecstasies, not about their everyday life. We know the temples they built, where people could come to experience a different reality.

completely engaging process of creating something new, as this man is, he doesn't have enough attention left over to monitor how his body feels, or his problems at home so many of the people described this as a spontaneous flow that I called this type of experience the "flow experience." And it happens in different realms.

The same essential description of the phenomenology of the inner state of the person. You don't think; it goes automatically, if you merge yourself with the music, and so forth.

This is an interesting little quote from Masaru Ibuka, who was at that time starting out Sony without any money, without a product -- they didn't have a product, they didn't have anything, but they had an idea. And the idea he had was to establish a place of work where engineers can feel the joy of technological innovation, be aware of their mission to society and work to their heart's content. I couldn't improve on this as a good example of how flow enters the workplace.