Happy New Year!

I hope 2007 is starting off on a peaceful note for you. You’re probably reading this from your office, I’m guessing, evading work and responsibilities for just a few moments more before everything roars back into full swing around you. I’m doing the same: writing from my home office, and using a flu as my excuse for being a bit of a recluse and attempting to achieve only easy things today. So begins the year.

I hope also that 2007 is both happy and productive for you. So in that spirit, here is some inspiration from The Economist’s Dec 23rd 2006 issue, which focuses on the theme of happiness:

…some fortunate people … found deep satisfaction from losing themselves in their work: “forgetting themselves in a function”, as W.H. Auden put it. … This happy state, which Mr Csikszentmihalyi calls “flow”, arises most often in work that stretches a person without defeating him; work that provides “clear goals”, “unambiguous feedback” and a “sense of control”. Mr Csikszentmihalyi is now one of three scholars behind the “Good Work” project, which aims to make “flow” a more common experience in professional life.

Makes sense to me.

I wish you much good flow in the year ahead, both at work and at play.