Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention

I've just finished reading the book, Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention for Mihaly Csikzentmihalyi.

The book summarizes interview with many creative people to find a common pattern.

Although the writer mentions in different times in the book that there is no definite one single pattern for those creative people.

But there are some broad feature they share while there are many others can have the opposite.

For example:

- They can afford to stay alone and enjoy solitude while they like being with people and know their problems.

In fact, being alone is the main time for being creative while many have reported that being with people has been their source for creative ideas.

- They have their inner feeling of self fulfillment. They enjoy being notified by others but first they know how to assess their work and enjoy doing it even if nobody notice it.

- They follow standards of their domains while they can be total rebellions to old thoughts and traditions.

- They are open to try many domains. Many interviewees have already mastered more than one domain in different disciplines.

- They are conservative when it comes to spending their physical power. They get enough sleep. They don't exhaust their bodies in destructive activities.

- They maintain their physical and mental ability an productivity even in their old ages.

- They all have stable families and enjoy spending times with them more than any other thing. Most of them mention having families as their best accomplishment in their lives.

The writer concludes some points for us to be creative in all aspects of our lives. Here are some:

- We need to be open to many activities in order to find our true purpose in life.

- Surprise yourself and other daily. Try something new and find a newer version of yourself.

- Try to enjoy each moment of your life. Try even to enjoy moments when you do things you have to do like work and chores. Most people find those times as being wasted because they are neither productive nor fun. But we can make our experience better by doing them with more attention.

You can find the book here.

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www.amazon.com/author/ahmedebeed