Introduction to part IV

摘要: Flow is a useful concept not so much because it accounts for rare and exotic activities like rock climbing or ocean sailing, but helps explain the texture of everyday life, rise fall motivations that follow one another as normal people respond to human inanimate contours their changing environment. It sum these momentary motivational states shapes life individual over time, lifetimes evolution social cultural forms. As Massimini has observed, flow experiences in are reminiscent Darwin's image tiny, soft-bodied organisms whose calcareous skeletons slowly build rock-hard reefs on floor. experiences, too, seem ephemeral, they form habits institutions stand wear centuries. The study fairly exceptional cases, such individuals undergoing solitary ordeals joining motorcycle gangs, an important first step reveal parameters autotelic experience. That was initial goal work reported Beyond Boredom Anxiety . But ultimate “to find out piecemeal experimentally what combination challenges skills can be accommodated schoolroom, neighborhood, home…[in order to] maximize involvement many possible” (Csikszentmihalyi 1975b, p. 203).