Category: Arts > Literature > FlashBooks Podcast
In today’s episode of the FlashBooks Podcast, we’ll be getting into an audio book summary on Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
Creativity by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi – Book Summary
Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi – Audio Book Summary | Creativity Csikszentmihalyi Summary
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BOOK DESCRIPTION:
Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (1996)
Crucial quotes
The real story of creativity is more difficult and strange than many overly optimistic accounts have claimed. For one thing, as I will try to show, an idea or product that deserves the label ‘creative’ arises from the synergy of many sources and not only from the mind of a single person… And a genuinely creative accomplishment is almost never the result of a sudden insight, a light-bulb flashing on in the dark, but comes after years of hard work.”
“Creativity is a central source of meaning in our lives for several reasons… First, most of the things that are interesting, important, and human are the results of creativity. We share 98 percent of our genetic makeup with chimpanzees… Without creativity, it would be difficult indeed to distinguish humans from apes.”
Tweetable summary
Real creativity can only emerge once we have mastered the medium or domain in which we work.
Links / Downloads
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Overview: Creativity by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
Creativity is about capturing those moments that make life worth living. The author’s objective is to offer an understanding of what leads to these moments, be it the excitement of the artist at the easel or the scientist in the lab, so that knowledge can be used to enrich people’s lives. Drawing on 100 interviews with exceptional people, from biologists and physicists to politicians and business leaders, poets and artists, as well as his 30 years of research on the subject, Csikszentmihalyi uses his famous theory to explore the creative process. He discusses such ideas as why creative individuals are often seen as selfish and arrogant, and why the tortured genius is largely a myth. Most important, he clearly explains why creativity needs to be cultivated and is necessary for the future of our country, if not the world…
“Whether this transformation will help the human race or cause its downfall is not yet clear. It would help if we realized the awesome responsibility of this new role. The gods of the ancients, like Shiva, like Yehova, were both builders and destroyers. The universe endured in a precarious balance between their mercy and their wrath. The world we inhabit today also teeters between becoming either the lovely garden or the barren desert that our contrary impulses strive to bring about. The desert is likely to prevail if we ignore the potential for destruction our stewardship implies and go on abusing blindly our new-won powers. While we cannot foresee the eventual results of creativity— of the attempt to impose our desires on reality, to become the main power that decides the destiny of every form of life on the planet— at least we can try to understand better what this force is and how it works. Because for better or for worse, our future is now closely tied to human creativity. The result will be determined in large part by our dreams and by the struggle to make them real. This book, which attempts to bring together thirty years of research on how creative people live and work, is an effort to make more understandable the mysterious process by which men and women come up with new ideas and new things. My work in this area has convinced me that creativity cannot be understood by looking only at the people who appear to make it happen. Just as the sound of a tree crashing in the forest is unheard if nobody is there to hear it, so creative ideas vanish unless there is a receptive audience to record and implement them. And without the assessment of competent outsiders, there is no reliable way to decide whether the claims of a self-styled creative person are valid.”
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Category: Arts > Literature
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