Good Business: Leadership, Flow, and the Making of Meaning (38 page)

Breakthroughs.
It would go against the central message of this book to claim that the flow experience is “good for you” in the sense that it helps people achieve scientific or any other kind of success. It needs to be stressed again and again that what counts is the quality of experience flow provides, and that this is more important for achieving happiness than riches or fame. At the same time, it would be disingenuous to ignore the fact that successful people tend to enjoy what they do to an unusual extent. This may indicate that people who enjoy what they are doing will do a good job of it (although, as we know, correlation does not imply causation). A long time ago, Maurice Schlick (1934) pointed out how important enjoyment was in sustaining scientific creativity. In an interesting recent study, B. Eugene Griessman interviewed a potpourri of high achievers ranging from Francis H. C. Crick, the codiscoverer of the double helix, to Hank Aaron, Julie Andrews, and Ted Turner. Fifteen of these celebrities completed a questionnaire in which they rated the importance of thirty-three personal characteristics, such as creativity, competence, and breadth of knowledge, in terms of helping them achieve success. The item most strongly endorsed (for an average of 9.86 on a 10-point scale) was enjoyment of work (Griessman 1987, pp. 294–95).

Another indication of how flow may be linked to success is suggested by the work of Larson (1985, 1988). In a study of high school juniors writing a month-long assignment, he found that the students who were bored wrote essays expert English teachers found boring, students who were anxious wrote disconnected essays that were confusing to read, whereas students who enjoyed the writing task created essays that were enjoyable to read—this controlling for differences in intelligence or ability among the students. The obvious suggestion is that a person who experiences flow in an activity will end up with a product that others will find more valuable.

The interview with the wife of
Susumu Tonegawa
appeared in
USA Today
(Oct. 13, 1987, p. 2A).

The amazing variety of
things adults learn
in their free time is described in the investigations of Allen Tough (1978); see also Gross (1982). One of the areas of knowledge to which laypersons continue to contribute is that concerning health. One keeps hearing how people (often mothers) will notice some peculiarities in the health patterns of members of their family, which when communicated to health experts turn out to have beneficial consequences. For example Berton Roueché (1988) reports how a woman in New England, struck by the fact that her son and many of his friends were suffering from arthritic pains in the knee, alerted doctors of this suspicious coincidence, and as a result of her information researchers “discovered” Lyme disease, a potentially serious affliction transmitted by ticks.

It may be presumptuous to present a “reading list” of the great
philosophers,
but to simply name them without a reference would also offend professional scruples. So here goes. A few of the most seminal works in each area might include the following. As to ontology, there are Christian von Wolff’s
Vernunftige Gedanken
, Kant’s
Critique of Pure Reason
, Husserl’s
Ideas: General Introduction to Pure Phenomenology
, and Heidegger’s
Being and Time
(1962); for these last two, it might be a good idea to start with the introductions to Husserl by Kohak (1978) and by Kolakowski (1987), and to Heidegger by George Steiner (1978 [1987]). In terms of ethics, one would certainly wish to tackle Aristotle’s
Nicomachean Ethics
; Aquinas’s treatises on Human Acts, on Habits, and on the Active and Contemplative Life in the
Summa Theologica
; Benedict Spinoza’s
Ethics
; and from Nietzsche,
Beyond Good and Evil
and
Genealogy of Morals
. In aesthetics, Alexander Baumgarten’s “Reflections on Poetry,” Benedetto Croce’s
Aesthetics
, Santayana’s
The Sense of Beauty
, and Collingwood’s
The Principles of Art
. The 54-volume series of the
Great Books of the Western World
, now edited by Mortimer Adler and published by the Encyclopaedia Britannica, is a good introduction to the most influential thinkers of our culture—the first two
Syntopicon
volumes, which contain a summary of the main ideas of the books that follow, could be especially useful to the amateur philosopher.

Medvedev (1971) provides an informed account of how the agricultural policies of
Lysenko,
based on Leninist dogma, resulted in food shortages in Soviet Russia. See also Lecourt (1977).

CHAPTER 7

For the time budget allocated to
work by preliterate people,
see the excellent volume by Marshall Sahlins (1972) and the estimates of Lee (1975). Some glimpses of the working patterns of medieval Europe are to be found in Le Goff (1980) and Le Roy Ladurie (1979). The pattern of the working day of typical English workers before and after the advent of the Industrial Revolution is reconstructed by E. P. Thompson (1963). The changing role of women as workers in the public sector is discussed by, among others, Clark (1919) and Howell (1986).

Serafina Vinon
is one of the respondents in the groups studied by Delle Fave and Massimini (1988). Her quote
“It gives me great satisfaction…”
is from p. 203.

The quote
“I am free…”
is from ibid.

Development and complexity.
While most developmental psychology has remained determinedly value-free (at least in its rhetoric, if not in its substance), the psychology department at Clark University has maintained a relatively strong value orientation in its approach to human development, based on the notion that complexity is the goal of human growth (e.g., Kaplan 1983, Werner 1957, Werner & Kaplan 1956). For recent attempts in the same direction see Robinson (1988) and Freeman & Robinson (in press).

“Ting was cutting up…”
is in Watson (1964, p. 46), who translated Chuang Tzu’s Inner Chapters.

Some critics.
The criticism that flow describes an exclusively Western state of mind was one of the first to be leveled at the flow concept. The specific contrast between flow and
Yu
was brought out by Sun (1987). It is to be hoped that the ample cross-cultural evidence presented in Csikszentmihalyi & Csikszentmihalyi (1988) will reassure skeptics that the flow experience is reported in almost exactly the same terms in vastly different non-Western cultures.

“However…”
is from Watson (1964, p. 97). Waley (1939, p. 39) is the scholar who thinks the quotation does not describe
Yu
, but its opposite; whereas Graham (cited in Crandall 1983) and Watson (1964) believe it describes Ting’s own way of butchering, and therefore that it refers to
Yu
.

Navajos.
Interviews with Navajo shepherds were conducted by Professor Massimini’s group in the summers of 1984 and 1985.

The life of 17th- and 18th-century
English weavers
is described by E. P. Thompson (1963).

The flow interviews of
surgeons
were conducted by Dr. Jean Hamilton, and written up by her and I. Csikszentmihalyi (M. Csikszentmihalyi 1975, pp. 123–39).

The first two quotations are from Csikszentmihalyi (1975), p. 129, the next two from ibid., p. 136.

The ESM study that looks at how much flow
American workers
report on their job and in leisure was reported in Csikszentmihalyi & LeFevre (1987, 1989) and LeFevre (1988).

Dissatisfaction.
The low percentages of dissatisfied workers were computed by a meta-analysis performed in 1980 on 15 national surveys between 1972 and 1978; see Argyle (1987, p. 32).

Our studies of American workers.
In addition to the ESM studies, here I am drawing on data I have collected over a period of five years (1984–88) on about 400 managers, from different companies and all parts of the country, who have attended the Vail Management Seminars organized by the Office of Continuing Education of the University of Chicago.

Jobs are easier to enjoy.
That leisure can be a problem for many people has been recognized for a long time by psychologists and psychiatrists. For example, the Group for the Advancement of Psychiatry ended one of its reports in 1958 with the bald statement “For many Americans, leisure is dangerous.” The same conclusion was reached by Gussen (1967), who reviewed some of the psychological ills that people who cannot adapt to leisure manifest. The role of television as a way of masking the perils of free time has also been often remarked upon. For instance, Conrad (1982, p. 108) writes: “The original technological revolution was about saving time, shortcutting labor; the consumerism which is the latest installment of that revolution is about wasting the time we’ve saved, and the institution it deputes to serve that purpose is television….”

The leisure industry.
It is difficult to estimate the economic value of leisure, because the worth of federal land used for recreation and the cost of the space devoted to leisure at home and in public buildings are truly incalculable. Direct spending on leisure in the United States has been estimated at $160 billion for 1980, double the amount for 1970 when adjusted for inflation. The average household spends about 5 percent of its income directly on leisure (Kelly 1982, p. 9).

CHAPTER 8

The importance of human interaction.
All the ESM studies show that the quality of experience improves when there are other people around, and deteriorates whenever the person is alone, even if by his or her own choice (Larson & Csikszentmihalyi 1978, 1980; Larson, Csikszentmihalyi, & Graef 1980). A vivid description of how and why people depend on public opinion for their own beliefs is given by Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann (1984). From a philosophical perspective, Martin Heidegger (1962) has analyzed our continuous dependence on the
they
, or the intrapsychic representation of other people we carry in our minds. Related concepts are Charles Cooley’s (1902) “generalized other” and Freud’s “superego.”

To be among men.
This section is indebted to Hannah Arendt’s brilliant treatment of the public and private realms in
The Human Condition
(1958).

The company of others.
Here again we refer to the findings of the ESM studies mentioned in the last note. That interactions with other people improve the mood for the entire day has been reported by Lewinsohn & Graf (1973), Lewinsohn & Libet (1972), MacPhillamy & Lewinsohn (1974), and Lewinsohn et al. (1982). Lewinsohn and his group have developed the clinical applications of a psychotherapy based on maximizing pleasant activities and interactions. If one were to develop a therapy based on flow—and steps in that direction have already been taken at the Medical School of the University of Milan, Italy—this would also be the route to follow. That is, one would endeavor to increase the frequency and intensity of optimal experiences, rather than (or in addition to) decreasing the incidence of negative ones.

Baboons.
Stuart Altmann (1970) and Jeanne Altmann (1970, 1980) know more about social relations among these primates than possibly anyone else. Their work indicates that the role of sociability for ensuring survival in such primates gives a good clue as to how and why human social “instincts” evolved.

People are flexible.
It was Patrick Mayers’s doctoral dissertation (1978), which utilized the Experience Sampling Method for gathering data, that first alerted us to the fact that teenagers listed interactions with their friends as both the most enjoyable and also the most anxiety-producing and boring experiences in their day. This usually did not happen with other categories of activities, which were, in general, either always boring or always enjoyable. Since then the finding has been replicated with adults also.

The realization of how important
communication
skills are for effective management was suggested by the data collected in the Vail program (see note to p. 160). For middle managers especially, better communication is the number one strength they wish to develop.

Books on etiquette.
For a particularly mind-boggling example of such, see Letitia Baldridge’s
Complete Guide to a Great Social Life
, whose advice includes such perfectly true but rather fulsome pearls of wisdom as “Flattery is an immensely useful device….” and “Any host…is proud to have well-dressed guests at his or her party. They convey a sweet smell of success.” (Compare this last quote with Samuel Johnson’s remark recorded in Boswell’s
Life
, March 27, 1776: “Fine clothes are good only as they supply the want of other means of procuring respect.”) See review in
Newsweek
(Oct. 5, 1987, p. 90).

Human relations are malleable.
This has been one of the basic tenets of symbolic interactionism in sociology and anthropology (see Goffman 1969, 1974; Suttles 1972). It also underlies the systems approach to family therapy, e.g., Jackson (1957), Bateson (1978), Bowen (1978), and Hoffman (1981).

Intolerable solitude.
See notes to p. 165.

Sunday mornings.
That people tended to have an unusual number of nervous breakdowns on Sunday mornings was already noted by psychoanalysts in turn-of-the-century Vienna (see Ferenczi 1950). They, however, attributed the fact to more complicated causes than the ones we are postulating here.

The literature on
television viewing
is so enormous that even a short summary would probably be too long. A reasonably complete review is given in Kubey & Csikszentmihalyi in press. Given the scale of the phenomenon, and its social and economic implications, it is very difficult to maintain scientific objectivity when dealing with television. Some researchers stoutly defend it, claiming that viewers are perfectly able to use television for their own purposes and turn viewing to their advantage, while others interpret the data to show that it makes the viewers passive and discontented. Needless to say, this writer belongs to the second faction.