Flow or Go: Happy @ Work?

When you look into the mirror of yourself and work, what do you see?

Here is a snippet to think about from Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience.

On the job people feel skillful and challenged, and therefore feel more happy, strong, creative and satisfied. In their free time people feel that there is generally not much to do and their skills are not being used, and therefore they tend to feel more sad, weak, dull, and dissatisfied. Yet they would like to work less and spend more time in leisure…the apathy of many people around us is not due to their being physically or mentally exhausted. The problem seems to lie more in the modern worker’s relation to his job, and the way he perceives his goals in relation to it…many people consider their jobs as something they have to do, a burden imposed from the outside, an effort that takes life away from the ledger of their existence.

Photo Credit: A perfect world by http://www.flickr.com/photos/jamesjordan/2128261974/