Ever since I came across Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi's concept of Flow it has stayed with me as a simple framework and beacon for finding joy, creativity, and total involvement with life.  

"What I 'discovered' was that happiness is not something that happens. It is not the result of good fortune or random chance. It is not something that money can buy or power command. It does not depend on outside events, but, rather, on how we interpret them. Happiness, in fact, is a condition that must be prepared for, cultivated, and defended privately by each person. People who learn to control inner experience will be able to determine the quality of their lives, which is as close as any of us come to being happy."

When researching happiness Csikszentmihalyi found that be they climbers, ballet dancers, chess players, or gardeners, people gave surprisingly similar descriptions to how they felt at their peak experience while performing an activity.

When in flow people are wholly focused on the present moment, they experience a strong sense of control, they lose their self-consciousness and their ego, their experience of time changes so that time can fly by or a moment can seem to slow down, and the joy of performing the activity becomes an end in itself.

Flow has a fairly simple set of conditions which I find myself using as a little mental checklist:

When climbing, a prototypical flow activity, it's clear that you are trying to get to the top, you can immediately see if you are making progress and whether an action progressed you or not, and it's wise to pick a wall that is difficult but not impossible, for you to enjoy it. No wonder climbing can be so addictive.

By contrast, it was evident to me that none of these were present when studying for my PhD.

I also like flow because it reminds me that peak happiness is unlikely to be experienced by sitting around watching the TV.

The quote is from, Flow, the psychology of happiness, by Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi, who also taught me that any name can work to do great work.

Flow

The fun scale acknowledges that not all fun is created equal and includes the different types of fun, including Type 1, Type 2 and Type 3 fun.

I assumed fun is all the same. Fun is fun. But then, when I first heard about Type I and Type II fun, I had to admit there was some validity in there being different types of fun.

Type 1 fun is like eating ice cream, or skiing with ski lifts to whisk you back up to the top — you love it while you’re doing it, and when you think back on it you remember how good it was. Straightforward— sounds like fun.

Type 2 fun, on the other hand, is the sort of enjoyment you get from something like running a marathon or climibing a mountain. You often have to admit that it wasn’t necessarily all fun at the time. In fact, it could have been quite hard and might have hurt a bit. But when you look back on it, you think of it as often more fun and fulfilling than the Type I fun.

Type 3 fun is usually type 1 or 2 fun that went wrong. Though it was supposed to be fun, things actually got a little hairy – like you got lost, or it got dark, and it got cold, or you had to be rescued — but…it sure makes a great story when you make it back.

The fun scale is probably my favourite sketch that didn't make it into my new book. If you like this one, you'll love the book Big Ideas Little Pictures.

HT: my brother shared this with me having learned it from his mountain guide doing classic Type II fun.

I updated this sketch in 2023. Here is the original fun scale sketch

Climbing