A book about how to experience happiness in spite of circumstances by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
Date Purchased: Mar 7, 2024
Date Started: Aug 13, 2025
Date Finished: Nov 15, 2025
Reflections and Random Thoughts
When I finished reading this book I created a calculator to tell me how many hours were left in this year – I don’t remember how I did it and I don’t know if I’ll be able to edit it at the end of the year – but FYI right now there are 7286 hours left in 2026.
There are 7156 hours left in 2026.
Insights or Stuff I Don’t Get
On page 59 the author writes “The concentration of the flow experience, together with clear goals and immediate feedback, provides order to consciousness, inducing the enjoyable condition of psychic negentropy. ”
So that definitely falls under the Stuff I Don’t Get category, even after having looked up the definition of negentropy – I’m having trouble understanding what he is saying.
Try Googling negentropy – it’s not a lot of help. But I think what he is saying is, we generally experience ordered thoughts positively.
Key Take-Aways – Or 3 Things Worth Remembering
Be mindful of how I spend my time.
Something Actionable
Is it actionable to stop doing something? Stop faking my mind out playing games on my phone.
Review Title (star rating)
What Everyone Else Thinks
This book has 4.8 Stars on Amazon 68% 5 Stars.
As usual the 1 star reviews are entertaining. One in particular that, according to Amazon 13 people find helpful – let’s us know that she read all of 10 pages of the book and decided the author “has a complete disregard for all religions” and that “she” has some work to do. Lest I confuse you Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, is a man. Perhaps our well read reviewer should read a page or two more.
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