The Zone

No I’m not talking about the twilight zone. One of my friends calls it the “coder’s trance”, most people refer to it as being in the zone. The zone, is a trance like state where all distractions and external input fall away and you are able to focus with single mindedness on the task in front of you. As an artist and writer, I am intimately familiar with this phenomenon and it is an interesting occurrence. When I’m there, I lose all track of time, tune out all sound and noise, and devote 100% of my attention and focus to the task at hand. This allows me to work with an incredible level of detail, and not get bored, as many people might. Each person has their own way of getting into this state, I tend to prefer to work late at night when the world is quiet and peaceful and there are few distractions. There isn’t even the sun to tell you the passage of time. I will often listen to techno, both because I like it and because I think the repeated rhythmic nature of the music helps with the focus, as well as it drowns out any remaining distractions. Though once I am in the zone, I often no longer consciously hear the music anymore.

There is something simple and beautiful about being in that state. It’s restful, and pleasant. It can even make mind numbingly dull repetitive tasks tolerable. How you ask? Well once you know how to get into the zone, it can be used on just about anything. I have worked as a stock person, and there really is nothing more mind numbing then organizing an entire stockroom worth of product, by size, style and color. But if you get into the zone, shut all distractions out and focus, you lose track of how long it’s taking you and you just do it. Typically when I do this it’s a bit different than when I’m working on art, though. When I am in an art trance, I’m 100% focused on the art, while when I am in a work zone, I will often put my body on autopilot and let my mind wander. Partitioning off a small portion of my brain to work on the easy task at hand, while devoting the remainder of my mind to thinking about other things. Weather that be analyzing my life, planning my novel, or just pondering random things, like those posted here on this blog, but sometimes, the brain just shuts off all together and I just work. I don’t think, I just do.

I’ve found in my personal experience that most activities, even complex ones, once learned take a small portion of the brain to repeat. The trick is to then learn how to divide your focus, allowing the part of your brain that needs to focus on the task at hand to do so, while allowing the rest of your mind to do whatever it wants.

I’m curious if other peoples experience of being in the zone are similar or if it’s different for each person. Please I’d like to hear from readers about this one.