Good Business_ Leadership, Flow, and the Making of Meaning - Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi [174]
“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