| Csikszentmihalyi did research around what gives people joy. From that, he introduced the concept of Flow in 1975, which is often misunderstood. Flow is my definition of joy. You do something that needs intense focus. The focus makes you lose sense of self and time. You're too focused to be self-conscious. You don't overthink. You move fluidly. I don't have fixed hobbies. I did boxing for half the year just because I love the feel of redirecting energy from my toes to my fists. But something like climbing or basketball works too. Work can give flow too, it's just programming and writing the way we're usually taught is quite bad for it. One hack is to write at the speed of thought and then edit it afterwards, instead of doing block by block. Meditation makes everything more pleasurable because you learn to silence all the internal voices and ambient thoughts. You learn to empty your mind and other emotions. You focus on the present. And once you can do this, you can apply the same to work or other less joyful activities. As for purpose, it's the long term, the infinite game as described by Carse. Not just the afterlife, but what lies beyond death - family, community, country, humanity, ethics. Purpose has been solved many centuries ago, just RTFM. |