Recently I listened to a detailed discussion on 'Flow' by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi from Dialogue: discussion on books, and listening to the key insights of the book broken down in relation to everyday life made me realize that happiness might not be as unreal a notion as we take it to be and may be something one can actively construct, almost on demand, if one understands and realizes the mechanics behind it. 

According to my interpretation, the core idea that the book is espousing is this: When we think of what being “happy” means? We often think of it as a passive state of being, “a moment” in time when we realize a kind of satisfaction…or something along these lines. But the book makes the point that most of what we pursue as happiness is only passive, and passive activities do not provide satisfaction. people often look to tv shows and movies, food, recreational activities to seek comfort and attain happiness. All of these actions are passive in the sense that after a very short time they can go on autopilot and carry on just fine and hence require very little effort. The problem is that they feel pleasant in the immediate moment but ultimately come to an abrupt halt, which leaves us unsatisfied afterwards. The author wants to push the idea that most people experience their happiest moments when they are actively engaged in demanding and exhausting tasks, so much so that “comfort” and “enjoyment” are practically antonyms of one another.

What the author means by “Flow” is very precise, it is a state that one can potentially encounter between something that seems like a challenge to him and where his skill lies. The author lists the necessary conditions for flow: 1) one needs to have clear goals, 2) immediate feedback on what your state is, and 3) this activity or pursuit must be difficult enough that you struggle but not difficult enough that you become anxious about not achieving it. If this pursuit is not difficult enough, you will be bored and it may turn passive, and if it is too difficult you will become anxious about it. Flow happens in this narrow space between being bored and anxious, and this space must be constantly shifted, meaning that for a activity to continually keep you in the  “flow” the task needs to get harder as your skills get more developed.

Now this idea will sound absurd, but if you stay with the author, he will make it make sense. The idea is- within flow, your sense of self temporarily disappears in such a way that this disappearing is the reward itself. When you are immersed in your pursuit, the feeling of your self becomes insignificant, your sense of time warps, and your physiological needs of hunger, sex, or any kind of apetite all become dull and rest in the background. The author refers to this state as "autotelic" and claims that the activity itself becomes the reward that you seek, so one might say that he is “seeking nothing out of it but something in it, because there is no external goal.” This chapter I thought was particularly powerful because we tend to thing that the only things we would really love and which will make us happy in this life are money, prestige and status; when really the true prize and what would satisfy is this flow state, and the others are only byproducts. 

Now some people appear to achieve this state of “flow” in everything they do, but how? The book, according to me, stays consistent and coherent in answering this. The author argues that there is a skill to this. Some people have an “autotelic personality” in which people possess traits such as being highly curious, less egocentric, not relying on external stimulus. The autotelic personality can make just about any situation, even an extremely boring or difficult one, into a flow activity, simply by identifying and meeting the balance of challenge and skill demanded. Everybody has the potential to attain or experience this “flow” state because it is less about someone’s peculiar circumstances and more about how they interpret and interact with them.

To sum it all up, if you keep stuck in the notion of “happiness” as a stable state or an instance in time where you get all the deserved satisfaction, then it's only a house of cards waiting for a gust of wind. One has to seek whatever he means by “happiness” within his pursuit or in the flow of it and not as an outcome of it. And one attains this through identifying and realizing the space between something that seems like a challenge to him and where his skill lies. 

I keep coming back to these insights and will keep doing so because they do not claim that flow is an answer to achieving “happiness” or whatever one means by it, but it has the potential by making it more realizable by shifting the goalpost from outside to inside. It only depends on how you allocate your attention moment by moment, and I find this much more useful and practical than any goal setting approach I have ever read or heard. 

Hope this provided you something.

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Here’s the stuff I wish I knew when I started:

1. Save your credits. Do not book the "Orientation" class. It’s a waste of a credit because they just show you how the buttons work. DM me and I’ll just tell you what happens in it so you can use that credit for an actual lesson.
2. The morning hack. Try to book your classes as early as humanly possible. Most people aren't awake yet, so you often end up being the only person in the class. You basically get a 1-on-1 private lesson for the group price.
3. Follow the good teachers. Once you find a teacher you actually like, go to their specific profile and book from their board. It makes a massive difference for your motivation. For German, Agnieszka, Ozlem, Julia, and Branislav are some of the best I've found.
4. Don't jump around. Try to stay chronological. The jump between chapters is actually pretty steep, and if you skip ahead, you're going to feel lost.
5. Focus on the grammar. You only need 45 out of 50 classes for the certificate. If you're short on time, skip the communication filler classes, but never skip the grammar ones. They're the most important part of the curriculum.

Cost stuff I’m pretty cheap, so I always dig for monthly discounts. I usually get the price down to 6 or 7 eur per class by using 20-30% off codes on the bigger plans. It ends up being way cheaper than any local school in my country.

Also, a warning on the Sprint: it’s only worth it if you are 100% sure you can make it every single day. If you have a life or a job that gets in the way, you’ll probably lose the refund and end up disappointed. The regular monthly plans are much safer.

! What to pay attention to:

1. Payments happen automatically every 28 days!!
2. The discount code might work again if you change plan size.
3. It is important to have good internet connection and an alarm on your phone to not miss classes.

You can write to me for questions, I would gladly offer even a demo from my German account.

Best of luck with language learning!

Someone once told me something incredibly simple.

"Discipline isn't about doing something because you feel motivated. It's doing it because your past self made a promise to your future self and you refuse to break it"

I didn't think much about it at the time.

Years later, I still remember it.

It's weird how certain conversations last five minutes but somehow stay in your head for years.

I've reached a ridiculous point with alarms.

I'll set one for 7:00.
Then 7:05.
Then 7:10.
Then another one because apparently I don't trust the previous three.

And somehow, in the morning, I discover that I turned every single one of them off.

The worst part?

I don't remember doing it.

Apparently there's a version of me that wakes up just enough to silence alarms, makes the executive decision to go back to sleep, and then disappears before I regain consciousness. 💀

I'm pretty sure I'm not the only person who does this.

At this point, setting more alarms clearly isn't the solution.

I need to find a better solution for this before my morning self completely takes over my life. 😭

Every time I work on something outside my coursework, I find gaps in my knowledge.

Instead of seeing that as discouraging, I'm starting to see those gaps as a roadmap for what I should learn next.