The British-American poet W.H. Auden waxed in “Sext” – part three of “Horae Canonicae,” a series of his poems, first published in a 1955 collection, titled “The Shield of Achilles” (The Shield of Achilles. 1955):
A generation later, in his 1990 book “Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience,” the Hungarian-American psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi proposed the concept of flow as “the state in which people are so involved in an activity that nothing else seems to matter; the experience is so enjoyable that people will do it even at great cost, for the sheer sake of doing it” (Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. 1990). Csikszentmihalyi's “flow” is not hedonism – instead, it is when your whole being is engaged in an activity and you are using your skills to the utmost. Time both stands still and flies by.
Auden and Csikszentmihalyi describe my experience when I...
