Autotelic is an adjective that means “having within itself the purpose of its existence”.
I’m taking a creativity workshop class, which had me read part of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s book Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention. If you haven’t already heard of it, read Wikipedia’s entry on Flow for a summary — or, better yet, watch Csikszentmihalyi himself discuss “flow” in this TED Talks video.
The state of “flow” basically occurs when you’re completely focused on a task. It’s often called “being in the zone” — you know, like when you look up and suddenly 5 hours have passed. One of the characteristics of this state is that the activity is autotelic; you’re running just for the sake of running, or painting for the sake of painting. If you’re doing it for fame or fortune, it isn’t autotelic.
Autotelic comes from the Greek roots auto-, “self”, and -telic, having an “end” or “goal”. Combine the two and you get a self-goal — a goal within itself.
What are your favorite autotelic activities?
I think I’d have to say learning new things is one my most favorite autotelic activities.
Last week, I spent 2 hour at work.. my internship watching your PHP/MySQL project videos lol and next thing you know it, it was time to go home! I loved and learned a lot for you so thank you!
I intern 3 hours a day and 4 days a week. Since there’s no major assignment for me to do, I’m just surfing the net as reference to learn new things
I spoke about you during my “good bye” party here at my internship agency. I told them, while browsing the internet for “new” things to learn, I came across this unique webpage… and the webmaster inspired me to want to become a PHP programmer! (: