RIP Csikszentmihalyi

 From University of Chicago.

As a scholar, he is best known for creating flow theory—a state of being in which people become so immersed in the joy of their work or activity “that nothing else seems to matter.” He outlined the theory in Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, a seminal 1990 book that influenced leaders from politics to sports.

“Mike had a genius for creating simple, generative models of flow, creativity and aesthetic experience, and then unfolding their implications in his writings; the impact of his ideas has been remarkably broad,” said Jeanne Nakamura, an associate professor at Claremont Graduate University, where Csikszentmihalyi taught after retiring from UChicago in 1999.

Nakamura also wrote:

“He was the best example of the things that he studied about the life well lived.”

Which suggests to me that in studying FLOW, he also lived it.

Wikipedia also has an entry about him, of course.

I first learned of his death from Boingboing.