Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi – Audio Book Summary

FlashBooks Podcast

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

• Get the book: https://getflashnotes.com/portfolio/creativity/
• Get the book summary: https://getflashnotes.com/creativity/
• Read more self-help and business book summaries: https://getflashnotes.com/join
• Get the audiobook for free: https://getflashnotes.com/go/audible

---

Get Started For $1

---

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

• Get the book

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.

---

Too Busy To Read? Get (Flash)Books.

Get Started For $1

We compress the actionable insights from the best Business + Self-Help books into 20-minute summaries you can read (or listen to) anywhere; anytime. Join now for access to the world's largest library of Business + Self-Help Book Summaries instantly.

GET STARTED.

You will be charged $1 for your first 7 days of access. After that, you will be charged $29 per month for unlimited access to the FlashBooks Library.
Cancel anytime at getflashnotes.com/billing or email [e-mail]

---

Get Started For $1

• Get Started For $1

• Get Started For $1

• Get Started For $1

GET STARTED FOR A BUCK.

You will be charged $1 for your first 7 days of access. After that, you will be charged $29 per month for unlimited access to the FlashBooks Library.
Cancel anytime at getflashnotes.com/billing or email [e-mail]

---

No time to read? Get (Flash)Books | Non-Fiction Book Summaries for Busy People.

FlashBooks are like CliffNotes for professionals.

We compress the actionable insights from the best Business + Self-Help books into 20-minute summaries you can read (or listen to) anywhere; anytime. Join now for access to the world's largest library of Business + Self-Help Book Summaries instantly.

More Knowledge in Less Time.

In just 20 minutes or less, you can get all the knowledge you need from the books you don’t have time to read.

Formatted For Every Device.

Our book summaries are formatted to work with every device. iPhones. iPads. Kindles. Androids. PDFs. MP3s. Everything.

Listen + Learn.

Download 20-minute audiobook summaries to your phone or MP3 player so you can listen to summaries on your way to work, while you’re at the gym, or wherever else you feel like gettin’ your knowledge on!

Join today for just $1. Cancel anytime.

CLICK HERE TO GET STARTED

You will be charged $1 for your first 7 days of access. After that, you will be charged $29 per month for unlimited access to the FlashBooks Library.
Cancel anytime at getflashnotes.com/billing or email [e-mail]

---

Category: Arts > Literature
Related: Book Review by The New York Times: the world's top authors and critics join Sunday Book Review Editor Pamela Paul in lively conversations about books, arts and ideas

The post Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi – Audio Book Summary appeared first on FlashBooks | Book Summaries for busy people..