In the chapter on the autotelic personality in the book Flow: Mihaly explains that the ability to experience pleasure, joy, or flow depends heavily on control over attention. Some people are constitutionally less able (or unable) to enjoy themselves because of attentional problems.

He specifically discusses anhedonia (literally “lack of pleasure”), a symptom psychiatrists associate with schizophrenia. This is linked to “stimulus overinclusion”: people with the condition are forced to notice and process irrelevant stimuli whether they want to or not. Patients describe things as “coming in too fast,” losing their grip, attending to everything at once and therefore attending to nothing effectively, or feeling they have no control over what enters consciousness. Because they cannot concentrate or selectively focus psychic energy, they end up unable to enjoy themselves. All of which I have written about here

Mihaly notes that attentional disorders (which may involve chemical imbalances, though childhood experience can worsen or ease them) interfere not only with learning but also with flow. Psychic energy becomes too fluid and erratic; people cannot invest attention steadily in an activity. This makes it hard to become interested in intrinsic goals or to lose oneself in something that offers rewards only within the interaction itself. As a result, flow— and the enjoyment that accompanies it — is effectively ruled out.

He contrasts this with the opposite extreme: excessive self-consciousness or self-centeredness, where attention is too rigid and tight. Neither extreme allows genuine control of attention. People at these extremes cannot enjoy themselves, learn easily, or grow the self through optimal experiences. Now my crazy brain maps this to metrology (study of measurements) lessons drawn from the history of precision

In short, Mihaly argues that the capacity for pleasure and joy (especially the deep, autotelic kind found in flow) is not automatic. It requires the ability to structure and direct attention. When attention is disordered—too scattered (as in stimulus overinclusion/anhedonia) or too rigidly self-focused — people are largely shut out of enjoyable, intrinsically rewarding experience. The autotelic personality, by contrast, is marked by the flexible control of attention that makes such enjoyment more accessible.

"attention" links to a rogan interview (It’s long - don’t expect you to listen to the whole thing but it is timestamped to a specific part where they talk about attention

links to an old book by Henry Ford called Moving Forward.