Excerpted from Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, page 47.
Csikszentmihalyi’s point is reinforced by the research on play, learning, and quality of life recorded by Peter Gray in Free to Learn. Both Gray’s and Csikszentmihalyi’s research suggest that voluntarily choosing to undertake projects for the ends for which we ourselves derive satisfaction (not the rewards given for undertaking said projects) is not only a necessary condition for learning well but also for having a worthwhile experience.