Flow - The Secret to Happiness (and to Success)

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi grew up in Eastern Europe. During World War II, when he was between the ages of seven and ten, Csikszentmihalyi noticed how many of the adults he knew were unable to recover from the privations of war and reassemble their lives. He began to wonder what was necessary for human life and happiness. He was inspired to study psychology after hearing a lecture by Carl Jung in Switzerland. He emigrated to the United States at age 22 and graduated from the University of Chicago with a B.A. and a Ph.D. in psychology and later served as head of the department of psychology there. He now works as the Distinguished Professor of Psychology and Management at Claremont Graduate University.

Csikszentmihalyi developed the theory of "flow," a mental state of total absorption in an activity in which one finds fulfillment and joy. Athletes often describe the state as being "in the zone." In law school, the two times I received the highest grade in my class (and American Jurisprudence Awards), I knew I would do so. I walked into the exam in a "flow" state.

Here's his TED Talk on Flow - The Secret to Happiness.

How does it feel to be in flow?

1. Completely involved in what we are doing - focused, concentrated.

2. A sense of ecstasy - of being outside everyday reality.

3. Great inner clarity - knowing what needs to be done, and how well we are doing.

4. Knowing that the activity is doable - that our skills are adequate to the task.

5. A sense of serenity - no worries about oneself, and a feeling of going beyond the boundaries of the ego.

6. Timelessness - thoroughly focused on the present, hours seem to pass by in minutes.

7. Intrinsic motivation - whatever produces flow becomes its own reward.

To optimize learning and academic and professional performance, we all must seek flow. Fortunately, Csikszentmihalyi has developed a number of resources to help us gain access to flow. Csikszentmihalyi's books may be found here.

Bibliography on Teaching and Learning

Over the past twelve years I have learned about teaching from mentors, from sitting in on other law professors' classes, from attending the George Mason Law and Economics Institute for Law Professors (where I not only learned more about economics, but had the great privilege of watching some truly superb teaching), from reviewing my student teaching evaluations and from interviewing students about what worked and what didn't work over the course of the semester.

In addition to all of this, I've read extensively. Here are a few of the resources I've found very helpful in improving my teaching and enhancing students' ability to learn.

Neuroscience of Learning 

Terry Doyle and Todd Zakrajsek, The New Science of Learning, How to Learn in Harmony with Your Brain  (2013).

Terry Doyle, Helping Students Learn in a Learner-Centered Environment (2008).

Peter C. Brown, Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning (2014).

Daniel Kahneman, Thinking Fast and Slow (2011)

Addressing Emotional and Intellectual Blocks to Learning

Amy Cuddy, Presence (2015).

Susan Cain, Quiet (2012).

Brene Brown, Daring Greatly (2012).

Carol S. Dweck, Mindset: The New Psychology of Success (2007).

TED TALKS
Angela Lee Duckworth, TED Talk on The Key to Success: Grit

Brene Brown, TED Talk on The Power of Vulnerability 

Brene Brown, TED Talk on Listening to Shame

Susan Cain, The Power of Introverts 

          Ariana Huffington, How to Succeed? Get More Sleep

Exploring The Joy of Learning

          TED TALKS

Shawn Anchor: TED Talk on The Happy Secret to Better Work

          Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Flow, The Secret to Happiness

Technology and Learning

NPR: Attention Students, Put Your Laptops Away

Pam A. Mueller & Daniel M. Oppenheimer, The Pen Is Mightier Than the Keyboard, Advantages of Longhand Over Laptop Note Taking, 25:6 Psych. Sci. 1159 (June 2014).

The Importance of Sleep

Ariana Huffington, The Sleep Revolution (2016).

Judah Pollack and Olivia Fox Cabane, Your Brain Has A "Delete" Button—Here's How To Use It, Fast Company (May 11, 2016).

Law Teaching Best Practices

Michael Hunter Schwartz, Gerald F. Hess, Sophie M. Sparrow, What the Best Law Teachers Do

Terry Doyle, Learner Centered Teaching, Putting the Research on Learning into Practice (2011)

Ken Bain, What the Best College Teachers Do (2004)

Kent Syverud, Taking Students Seriously, a Guide for New Law Teachers, 43 J. LEGAL ED. 247 (1993).

Lectures and Oral Delivery

Bill McGowan and Alisa Bowman, Pitch Perfect, How to Say It Right The First Time, Every Time

Diagrams, Drawings, Presentations and Visual Delivery

Lee Lefever, The Art of Explanation

Organization and Structure

Harry K. Wong and Rosemary T. Wong, The First Days of School: How to Be an Effective Teacher (Book & DVD) 4th Edition

Statement of Teaching Philosophy

While drafting a "statement of teaching philosophy" is a standard process for job applicants in colleges of arts and sciences in the United States, it is somewhat more rare for a law school to ask for one. Fortunately, more law schools are requiring them of their entry-level job applicants, forcing prospective law professors to think about what they are doing, why they are doing it and how they propose to go about the teaching. Perhaps a statement of teaching philosophy is more important for law professors than for professors in other fields because there is nothing in law school or in practice that prepares you to become a law professor.

This is a subject on which I've been ruminating for over 25 years. From the time I first read Duncan Kennedy's "Little Red Book" before attending law school, to my receipt of my most recent student evaluations, I have been asking myself whether legal education is helping students develop the skills, habits and ways of thinking about the world that will transform them into competent lawyers, honorable and engaged citizens and effective leaders. In Legal Education and the Reproduction of Hierarchy, Kennedy argues that the lecture format, the use of the Socratic method, the examination process, and the way law school students are socialized undermine initiative, independent thinking, agency, and assertiveness and slot them in specific trajectories that have no purpose other than replicating the existing economic and social hierarchies. Having spent the last 30 years working in one capacity or another in the legal world, I have to conclude that he is correct in many respects.

Fortunately, the upheavals of the last 20 years in the legal profession and of the last five years in legal education have prompted a broader discourse about the goals and functions of legal education. This inquiry is bearing fruit in a variety of ways, but I think one of the more positive developments is the move to incorporate science-based research on learning, emotional and intellectual blocks to learning and effective and innovative teaching technologies. I have incorporated these developments into my own Statement of Teaching Philosophy:

Neuroscience research has transformed our understanding of teaching, learning, and intellectual development over the past 20 years. The central message from this research is straightforward: "The one who does the work does the learning."[1] Drawing from this body of nationally recognized scholarship in education,[2] I have created courses that engage students as partners in the educational enterprise. I structure the readings and assignments to build student confidence, expand their capacity to manage uncertainty, promote persistence, and reward effort and independent thought. I also try to make the courses fun; when students enjoy class, they work harder and perform at a higher level.

For doctrinal courses, including Income Tax, Partnership and Corporate Tax, Environmental Law and Property, I divide the material into weekly modules to help students manage their workload and expectations. First, after a short introduction to the material, I introduce students to close reading and interpretation of the cases, statutes and the regulations. I have developed statutory worksheets help students to focus their attention, extract the main legal concepts, understand the architecture of the law, and develop an outline of authorities. The worksheets also facilitate group discussion about the incentive structures and policies undergirding the law. Second, I require students to turn in weekly problem sets. The problems give the students the opportunity to apply what they have learned in a fact-rich, client-based context. Third, I test basic comprehension with multiple-choice quizzes using TurningPoint or i-Clicker student response systems or the TWEN Instapoll function. The software aggregates students’ responses in bar graph format so that they can tell whether their answers are in alignment with those of their peers. They provide an opportunity for peer-to-peer learning and allow me to address any broader confusion. Fourth, I often give mid-semester examinations so that the students gain important feedback about their performance. I have sometimes provided skeleton outlines of the material to help students see the broader picture; the outlines tend to even the playing field and reduce the advantages associated with course notes that are transferred selectively through social networks.

For Tax Policy, Climate Change and the Law, and other seminar courses, my teaching has been strongly influenced by my own coursework. Michael Sandel’s lectures on distributive justice at Harvard initially inspired me to pursue a career in the law, to dedicate myself to pro bono and nonprofit work, and to combine my experience in private practice with my interests in social and environmental policy. During my LL.M. work at New York University, Daniel Shaviro’s and Alan Auerbach’s Tax Policy Colloquium and Lily Batchelder’s Tax and Social Policy course introduced me to economic analysis. In my own courses, we examine incentives, public policy goals, and legal and economic structures designed to alter those incentives or overcome transaction costs to facilitate trade of entitlements. We discuss whether the law is effective, whether policy-makers’ goals have been met, whether there are significant spillover effects, and how legal structures might be modified to better achieve those goals with lower social or budgetary costs. I also employ some of the teaching methodologies I learned at Harvard and NYU, including requiring students to lead class discussions individually and as a part of a group effort, critique the assigned readings, and develop a research and writing plan. I have also asked students to provide constructive feedback for their peers’ drafts; students learn to improve their own work by critiquing the work of others.

For skills-based courses, such as real estate transactions, I would accompany the readings with a simulated transaction in which the students draft, review and edit client engagement letters, consider conflicts of interests, perform due diligence investigations, draft, negotiate and edit real estate documents, and close the transaction. For some courses, we may also discuss alternative deal structures, and identify the benefits, costs and risks associated with each option. My goal is to familiarize the students with the transactional process, grant the students a solid foundational knowledge of the documents and the economic and legal issues that may arise, and develop their skills to negotiate and resolve those issues to their clients’ advantage.

Over the past two years I have also been working closely with Professor Laurie Zimet’s AcademicSupport Program to improve student performance in first year classes and prepare them for the bar examination. Following an in-depth training with Professor Zimet, I have supported students in skill-building workshops and one-on-one meetings focused on helping students identify their academic strengths and weaknesses, build their skills and confidence, and explore their other concerns that may have been interfering with learning.

Finally, I know from both my in-class experiences, and from my work with pro bono attorneys and pro se clients to expand access to justice in Georgia, that technology is a powerful tool for engaging and empowering students. I have employed Blackboard, TWEN, Canvas, audio, video, and student response systems to engage students and to accelerate the learning process. Once my course responsibilities stabilize and I can obtain access to user-friendly videotaping and editing software, I plan to use the “flipped” classroom methodology developed at West Point. In flipped classrooms, the students watch the introductory lecture prior to class, complete and online quiz and then use classroom time for problem solving, skills development work, and policy discussion.

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[1] Terry Doyle, Helping Students Learn in a Learner-Centered Environment 63 (2008).
[2] I have read and incorporated best practices from a number of books and articles about how students learn and what constitutes good teaching. My growing bibliography is HERE. I have attended a number of conferences and workshops on learner-centered teaching and incorporated their suggested practices into my curriculum: Southeastern Association of Law Schools Annual Conference, New Law Teachers' Workshop (Aug. 6 - 7, 2013); University of Louisville Delphi Center for Teaching and Learning Events: "Becoming a Learner-Centered Teacher" (Feb. 7, 2013); “What Makes a College Teacher ‘Great’? Learning to Make the Most of Your Teaching Activities” (Sept. 29, 2011); “Small Steps are Best: Incorporating Critical Thinking & Assessment into Courses One Step at a Time” (Apr. 11, 2011). I have also observed the classes of Tony Arnold, Tom Blackburn, John Crawford, Bill Dodge, Susan Kuo, Jack Miller, Roger Park, Radhika Rao, Joel Samuels, Reuel Schiller and Laurie Zimet. Finally, I've taken an improvisational theater course to improve my extemporaneous speaking and classroom performance.

Picking Winners and Losers

The Daily Kos recently posted a photo and a brief article about the installation of solar panels on the White House during the Carter Administration.Sadly, only a couple of years later, President Reagan removed the panels and presided over the elimination of tax subsidies for renewable energy. The discourse surrounding government support for renewable energy has been dominated by those who exclaim that "Government shouldn't be picking winners and losers." They argue that government bureaucrats are not very skilled or smart in making these choices.

While there is some evidence that government has had more success than venture capital in Silicon Valley, there are two deeper points to be made. First, this way of framing the debate ignores the nation’s long history of support for fossil fuels and obscures the economic theory behind the subsidies. Congress has been picking winners and losers for over a hundred years, providing substantial subsidies to fossil fuels through the tax code. Second, when you refuse to regulate or tax the activities that are causing harm to health and the environment (such as fossil fuels), the only choice you have for encouraging a shift to other non-harmful substitutes is to choose. If you are going to provide support in the form of cash or other benefits, you have to make decisions about what kinds of projects deserve support and how they are going to qualify for that support. If, instead, Congress taxed the polluting industry, ensuring that the full health and environmental costs and risks that the public faces are shifted back to the fossil fuel industry, those costs would be included in the price of gas and coal-fired electricity.This would allow the market to respond. Instead, we now have market failure, we are funding deeper market failure (through tax subsidies to oil and gas and coal), and we provide tepid support for renewables. For more discussion along these lines, see my most recent article, Picking Winners and Losers: Examining the Structure of Tax Subsidies for the Energy Industry, 41 COLUM. J. ENVTL L. __ (forthcoming Winter 2016).


Consider, how the personal computer has transformed our world in the last 30 years. Where would we be if we had stayed the course with solar and continued to develop alternative energy resources?

The "Most Luxurious" Tax Plan

Citizens for Tax Justice have analyzed Trump's tax cut plan in a new report. Unsurprisingly, he gives the "most luxurious" tax cuts to the wealthy... and increases the deficit significantly over 10 years.

Grit and How to Grow It: Addressing Declining Student Resilience

My friend and college classmate, Allison Hagood, teaches psychology at Arapahoe Community College in Denver, Colorado. Last week she shared an article from the September 22, 2015 issue of Psychology Today "Declining Student Resilience: A Serious Problem for Colleges."  The article traces the increasing demand by college students for psychological and other services to address depression and anxiety, their desire to avoid challenge, and the impact of these trends on faculty teaching (and ultimately, student learning outcomes). The article discusses the collective perception of college and graduate-level faculty and administrators that today's students are more needy and less resilient than those of prior generations, issues discussed in more depth in a recent article in the Chronicle of Higher Education "An Epidemic of Anguish." 

Peter Gray, the author of the Psychology Today article, argues that there is a link between the dramatic decline in play from over-scheduling and students' increased anxiety and depression, lack of emotional resilience, and inability to cope during college. He argues that students need to experience opportunities to play, explore, pursue their own interests, and solve their own problems.

These are important insights for parents who might be tempted to over-schedule, intervene and place too much emphasis on performance rather than effort and enjoyment. However, it does not help the current set of students who are having these experiences or the faculty and administrators who are teaching them. Fortunately, a number of scholars have been observing this trend for a while and have begun to develop resources for faculty and students to facilitate learning and growth.

First, Angela Lee Duckworth explains the importance of resilience in long term success in her TED Talk The Key to Sucecss: Grit. Silicon Valley has long recognized that "failing intelligently is an important skill" and has begun offering premiums for those who have failed and learned from their experience, because embracing failure is an essential part of innovation.

Second, there are a number of resources to help students, faculty and parents understand that a shift in mindset can improve student experiences and advance learning. Brene Brown has several books and TED Talks on the impact of shame, the value of vulnerability and the joy of daring greatly. Shawn Anchor describes the payoff of being happier at work (and school) in his TED Talk on The Happy Secret to Better Work. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi describes the ideal state for generating happiness: Flow, The Secret to Happiness.

Third, several scholars are helping students shift their mindsets to lower the emotional stakes, and make failure fun again, since it's an essential part of the learning process. Carol S. Dweck describes how to move from a fixed mindset to a growth mindset to reduce stress and improve performance in Mindset: The New Psychology of Success. Terry Doyle and Todd Zakrajsek have produced a book that helps students understand the neuroscience of learning and the importance of repeatedly engaging with challenging material over a long period of time in The New Science of Learning, How to Learn in Harmony with Your Brain   [Note: I give this book to my students to read before the semester begins.]

Law school and college faculty are also developing new resources to advance college and post-graduate education. Flipped classrooms and active learning techniques give students low-stakes opportunities to make effort, receive feedback, and learn from their peers' and their own mistakes. Terry Doyle has written a book encouraging college professors to shift to a model of Learner Centered Teaching, Putting the Research on Learning into Practice. In the law school context, the book, What the Best Law Teachers Do by Michael Hunter Schwartz, Gerald F. Hess, and Sophie M. Sparrow, provides alternatives to the standard lecture course and Socratic method options that have long held sway in legal education.

Finally, I have found that structure, clear procedures and organization are even more important if you are going to deviate from an institutional norm. While nothing has been developed at the college and grad school level, one book confirmed my classroom experiences with using innovative teaching techniques: You can demand more from students when you give them clear structure and predictability. I recommend The First Days of School: How to Be an Effective Teacher, 4th Edition, by Harry K. Wong and Rosemary T. Wong for all beginning teachers, particularly those who have had no prior training.

We should all practice resilience. If our current process isn't working, let's recognize our failures and innovate. Consider: (1) sharing with our students what science has shown to be the true keys to success and happiness, (2) shifting our priorities away from evaluation, perfection and shame and toward effort and learning and growth, (3) providing structure and low-stakes active learning opportunities, and finally, (4) recognizing what works for Silicon Valley, where some of the most fertile and productive minds are transforming our world, may also work for the rest of us.

Global Conference on Environmental Taxation - Outside the Tax Box

Dr. Anna Poelina

The 16th Global Conference on Environmental Taxation brought tax and environmental law experts from twenty-three countries to discuss the use tax and other market-based instruments to manage natural resources and address environmental concerns throughout the world. GCET is "the leading global forum for exchanges on the principles and practices of environmental taxation and other market-based instruments relevant for greening of the economy and a more sustainable development." The conference drew leaders from the following sectors, industries, fields and occupations:

• tax and accounting, such as Chas Roy-Chowdhury, Head of Taxation, ACCA
• consulting, such as Martijn Wilder AM, Head of Global Environmental Markets, Baker & McKenzie
• international development and environmental management, such as Nils Axel Braathen, Principal Administrator, Environment Directorate, OECD
• diplomacy, such as Hugo Llorens, Consul General of Consulate General of United States in Sydney, 
• land trusts, such as Gary Wells, CEO of the Nature Conservative Trust of NSW,
• mining industry, such as Samantha Daly, Partner, McCullough Robertson
• government, such as John Seidel, Principal Project Officer, NSW Office of Environment and Heritage
• NGOs, such as Dr. Anne Poelina, Managing Director, Madjulla Incorporated.

Most of the presentations covered traditional topics, including green fiscal reform, market instruments, energy, fuel and carbon pricing, and renewable energy and innovation. For example, representatives from the US, Roberta Mann (University of Oregon) presented her work Tax Fuel or Miles, Mona Hymel (University of Arizona) delivered her papers on Fighting for Water: Can Federal Market Instruments create a National Trading System in the United States? and Energy Tax Incentives (Oops, I mean “Expenditures”): Did Surrey’s Tax Expenditure Concept Really Impact Tax Laws?, and I presented Picking Winners And Losers: A Qualitative Examination Of Tax Subsidies To The Energy Industry.

Some of the papers, however, extended to biodiversity protection and environmental stewardship. 
One of my favorite presentations was by Dr. Anna Poelina, "A Case Study for Environmental Tax Offsets: Collaboration of Indigenous Science and Western Science to Value and Protect Cultural and Geoheritage Landscapes as Culture, Science and Conservation (Green) Economies." She has developed a website and has been been using film to educate and inform the world of the rare beauty of the Mardoowarra, the Nyikina name of the river now known as the Fitzroy in the Kimberley region of Western Australia, and protect it from the increasingly severe incursions of the mining industry. The films showcase the cultural and natural assets of the area and relay information about lawsuits that have been brought against Rio Tinto following the release of scientific studies about the impacts of mining on the Mardoowarra.

Perhaps the Apache could use film as well as the Internet to share their perspective on the recent Congressional trade of Apache sacred land to Rio Tinto in a fine-print rider attached to the military spending bill in December of 2014, the National Defense Authorization Act.