I came to Flow, by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, thinking that I already knew what it was.

A fairly dense, though canonical and oft-cited academic work on the psychology of the “flow state”: that rare, almost reverent state of creativity in which the practitioner is totally immersed in what they’re doing.

In this “flow state,” as I understood it, skills are perfectly matched with challenges, and a kind of elevated consciousness is achieved that borders on transcendence. I know this state intuitively; it’s what I often experience when “in the zone,” creatively speaking.

After reading the book, I realised that it covers a lot more.