Often, I hear people repeat the phrase, “Life is a journey,
you have to enjoy the ride.” I
completely agree that it is important to enjoy the things you do each day. If you want to set up your life so that you
can enjoy as many of the moments as possible, though, are there particular
experiences you ought to strive for?
This issue was addressed in an interesting paper by Sami
Abuhamdeh and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi in the March, 2012 issue of Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin.
The starting point for this paper is the observation that
you perform activities for different reasons.
Extrinsically motivated
activities are done because there is some goal that they achieve. A student might go to a lecture, for example,
because she has to go in order to get credit for the class. Intrinsically
motivated activities are done because there is something inherently
rewarding about doing them.
The first study in this paper examined an intrinsically
motivated activity—playing chess. Most
chess players play the game, because they enjoy it. The researchers tracked 87 male chess players
using a chess website over a 2-week period.
On average, players played about 16 games in that period. After each game, the players rated their
enjoyment of the game.
Two main factors influenced players’ enjoyment of the games
they played. Games that they felt were
challenging were enjoyed more than games that were easy. Games in which a player felt he played well
were enjoyed more than games in which a player felt he did not play well.
This study suggests that people find activities particularly
rewarding when they are challenged and engaged.
Of course, this result might just reflect something about
chess players. Perhaps the people who
gravitate to chess are ones that enjoy a challenge. So, in a second study over a thousand people
were tracked for a week at a time.
Participants wore a watched that beeped at random times of the day. When it beeped, participants were supposed to
fill out a survey about what they were doing, why they were doing it, how much
they enjoyed it, and they answered questions about whether the activity was
challenging and whether they were performing well.
There are two nice aspects of this method. First, the researchers were able to sample a
large number of activities. Second, some
of these activities were being done for extrinsic reasons (the participant had
to do them) and others were being done for intrinsic reasons (the participant
wanted to do them).
An interesting pattern emerged. First, people generally enjoyed intrinsically
motivated activities more than extrinsically motivated activities. For all activities, participants enjoyed them
more when they thought they were doing them well than when they thought they
were doing them poorly. However, the
results for challenging tasks depended on the reason for doing them. For intrinsically motivated tasks (like
playing chess or doing a sport) the activity was more fun when it was
challenging than when it was not. For
extrinsically motivated tasks (like housework or an exam) the activity was more
fun when it was easy than when it was challenging.
So, what can you do if you want to enjoy life’s journey?
First, try to focus your life on activities you do because
there is something about them you enjoy.
Even when there are things you technically ‘have’ to do (like going to
school or going to work), you can try to find elements of them that are
inherently enjoyable.
Second, find ways to challenge yourself. The more that you are engaged with your
world, the more you will enjoy it. Don’t
take the easy road through life. Not
only will you achieve more, you’ll have a better time doing it.
