% at page 61 of The Logic of Failure
\ldots
If, in the course of constructing
an irrigation system, a person experiences
both successes and setbacks on the way toward completing the entire
project, the task can assume its own life: the real purpose of the
task -- to provide improved pastureland -- can disappear behind the
challenge the task itself represents; indeed it can be forgotten entirely.
Psychologist Milhay Csikszentmihalyi coined the term
``flow experience''
for the fascination exerted by work that constantly poses new
challenges of moderate difficulty. Surgeons, chess players,
mountain climbers, pilots of hang gliders, and many other individuals
who engage in activities that are difficult but that also yield successes
are suseptible to flow situations. A flow situation is one in which
tension is built up, then released, a sequence in which the individual
experiences fear of failure, triumph over obstacles, renewed fear of
failure, another triumph, and so on. Inadequate concretization and
elaboration of goals can leave a problem solver vulnerable to this
phenomenon. An interim goal happened on by chance may seduce him into a
flow situation he is helpless to escape (and may not even want to escape).
In scientific research, for which the immediate applicability of results
is often not (nor should be) a criterion of success, ``goal degeneration''
of this kind is no minor matter. Many social scientists who
have set out to write computer programs they could use to evaluate an
experiment have woken up years later to find themselves computer
specialists. And they will hardly have realized that they have long
since lost sight of ther real goal and become addicted to the
fascination, challenges, and triumphs of working with a computer.
An interim goal has dislodged the primary goal.
% quote ends at p 62