Here’s this week’s 200 word idea from our RealLeaders.tv interview with Professor Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi..
Social scientist and author of the now legendary book on happiness – “Flow,” Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and team spent a week collecting data from a group of internet chess players who played over 1000 games.
They had the players fill out how much “flow” they felt in the game afterwards. All previous psychological theories spoke about play as a way of boosting self esteem by winning. But, Prof Mihaly and team’s hypothesis was that greatest enjoyment doesn’t come from winning but from playing opponents who are equally matched – so skill levels and challenges are equal (i.e. in “flow” territory).
Source and thanks to: www.EBSketchin.com
Interestingly, the results showed that the optimal challenge was when the opponent was about 7% better. Playing against better players meant the curve of enjoyment went down very slowly while playing against really bad players meant enjoyment went down precipitously. The point is clearly not to just win because, when we play against someone better, we win only 30% of the time but when we do win, we feel much better.
Are we regularly giving ourselves challenges that are 7% harder than our current skill level?
“Happiness is not something that is guaranteed, or that comes with our birth certificates. Happiness is to do things that are harmonious with who we are, with what we can do, with what we like, and with what we think is right.” | Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
A Learning a Day 