flow

The Power of Flow: Practical Ways to Transform Your Life with Meaningful Coincidence
$14.95
I found this book to be very predictable in structure and content, and superficial to the point of artificiality: merely mixing various fashionable concepts, flow and synchronicity, with various obvious references to "nice" things like "commitment" that "everyone" can agree will be "nice" to develop. The authors are obviously attempting to attract a different type of reader than myself. I find that, if one subtracts the clarity with which they delineate certain concepts, their book offers nothing substantial.

Flow: The Cultural Story of Menstruation
$27.99
FLOW is fascinating, funny, informative and, at times, shocking - in a good way. But there's an added benefit to the book. My 11-year old (pre-adolescent) daughter - who has heretofore been embarrassed to discuss ANYTHING in the realm of body change - picked up the book and flipped through it. She then decided that THIS would be the week's "nightly reading" book. Incredibly, it became a fantastic springboard for conversation and my formerly reticent daughter has been bubbling over with facts - and questions. In looking to de-stigmatize a subject that too many people find awkward, FLOW, is a book well worth reading - for ALL ages!!

Finding Flow: The Psychology of Engagement with Everyday Life (Masterminds Series)
$14.95
Csikszentmihalyi's concern in this book is centered around achieving states of human existence characterized by flow. The flow state is one in which the individual finds challenges to be high but is also able to bring to bear on these challenges a high level of skill.
As a scientist, he is able to bring to consideration of this state the objectivity of his discipline. He has studied human behavior empirically using an objective approach through a statistical procedure he calls ESM (Experience Sampling Modeling). Over years of serious consideration, he was led not only to identify the flow state as one that is achieved (quite surprisingly) in mundane activities like driving, but he was also led to regard such a state as one of "excellence". (However, he does make it abundantly clear that this state of human existence is not one that is necessarily going to be experienced as happy.)
He argues in his book that this state is desirable, that it is beneficial for our species (by reducing entropy), and that it fits into the evolutionary context of our species. He points out that humans in the course of time have learned to develop "myths" appropriate to the conditions of human life (and that in their day could certainly be regarded with respect and as part of the truth about the world).
This type of book is certainly valuable over reading his scholarly work, and it gives him an opportunity to view his scientific work in a large perspective that one cannot usually find in specialized research articles. On the other hand, he takes on so much in the span of his short book, that, while he does a rather splendid job and his book is definitely worth reading, he does not address some of the issues in the depth to which they merit.

Flow in Sports: The keys to optimal experiences and performances
$18.95
bought the book for a school project, and it turned out to be helpful. helfpul/intersting insights on ones mental state in sport