Flow is a useful concept not so much because it accounts for rare and exotic activities like rock climbing or ocean sailing, but because it helps explain the texture of everyday life, the rise and fall of motivations that follow one another as normal people respond to the human and inanimate contours of their changing environment. It is the sum of these momentary motivational states that shapes the life of the individual over time, and it is the sum of these individual lifetimes that shapes the evolution of social and cultural forms. As Massimini has observed, flow experiences in everyday life are reminiscent of Darwin's image of the tiny, soft-bodied organisms whose calcareous skeletons slowly build rock-hard reefs on the ocean floor. Flow experiences, too, seem ephemeral, but they form habits and institutions that stand the wear of centuries.

The study of fairly exceptional cases, such as individuals undergoing solitary ordeals or joining motorcycle gangs, is an important first step that helps reveal the parameters of autotelic experience. That was the initial goal of the work reported in Beyond Boredom and Anxiety. But the ultimate goal was “to find out piecemeal and experimentally what combination of challenges and skills can be accommodated in a schoolroom, a neighborhood, or a home…[in order to] maximize flow involvement in as many people as possible” (Csikszentmihalyi 1975b, p. 203).