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by haswell 906 days ago
I highly recommend reading the book “Flow” if you’re looking for that thing that makes every day enjoyable.

In addition to exploring why people love games and other high skill activities, it discusses the idea that we can learn how to turn every day tasks into activities that evoke the same reward centers. It doesn’t just dive into “people like games”, or “people like achieving hard things”, but it delves into why, and tries to explain some of the mechanisms.

It made me start to see daily mundane/boring tasks differently. They’re things I have to do anyway, so I can choose to approach them with a mindset that actually evokes enjoyment. Might as well.

Video games used to be my primary outlet. These days, it’s photography and writing. Over time, cooking/baking have transformed from tasks I begrudgingly did to tasks I find deeply rewarding. I still play video games and my point isn’t to disparage them, but the more things in my life that I can move into the “things I enjoy” category, the better my life has become, on average. And part of that had more to do with changing how I engaged with tasks than the specific tasks I was doing.

2 comments

This reminds me of that Zen proverb “Before enlightenment chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment chop wood, carry water”.

The simple and even tedious things in life are worth embracing and engaging in whole heartedly and with all of your attention.

"If you see yourself as God and then you come back from this state and somebody says, "Hey, Sam, empty the garbage!" it catches you back into the model of "I'm Sam who empties the garbage." You can't maintain these new kinds of structures. It takes a while to realize that God can empty garbage."

- Ram Dass

i go through the diamond sutra regularly, but still can't stop building sawmills and waterworks

currently thinking about how to build a system that plays klondike solitaire for me based on my previous games, so it only presents me with deals that i "woulnd't be able to beat" (based on previous games)

Name the author please!
Good call. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi.
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