"The Zone"

A post yesterday (by a lady called Anja) on a bulletin board I belong to resonated with something in me - so much so that it kept cropping up in my thoughts throughout the day yesterday.

Quote:

...... the best feeling is when i emerge from the fog, victorious. when i was a kid, at school, we would get this assignment to write a story or essay. i would map it out in my head and then dive in there, all sounds would fade around me and it would be like magic, i would get it down exactly like i thought i would. that was the biggest magic in the world to me, the fog ....

Now, this is exactly how I do my best work, how I find solutions to perplexing prolems - how I need to work to get anything done. I need to be able to immerse myself in that fog - unlike Anja, I can't summon it at will, I have to have no interruptions.

Thing is, I was always told I was strange needing that. I should be able to concentrate through whatever - and be able to return to full concentration after any interruption. "look at... if they can do it, you should be able to." Whether doing my school homework, or later in life, working in an office - open plan! Satan's invention - I was expected to be able to answer any stupid question or request and maintain the same level of concentration throughout. I felt very inadequate.

That why when Anja shared this with us it created such ripples in my thoughts.

And then, this morning, through one of those coincidences, while web-hopping, I encountered in two separate articles the zone - a concept very similar to Anja's fog.

Quote:

We all know that knowledge workers work best by getting into "flow", also known as being "in the zone", where they are fully concentrated on their work and fully tuned out of their environment. They lose track of time and produce great stuff through absolute concentration. This is when they get all of their productive work done. Writers, programmers, scientists, and even basketball players will tell you about being in the zone. The trouble is, getting into "the zone" is not easy. When you try to measure it, it looks like it takes an average of 15 minutes to start working at maximum productivity. ........ The other trouble is that it's so easy to get knocked out of the zone. Noise, phone calls, going out for lunch, having to drive 5 minutes to Starbucks for coffee, and interruptions by coworkers -- ESPECIALLY interruptions by coworkers -- all knock you out of the zone. If you take a 1 minute interruption by a coworker asking you a question, and this knocks out your concentration enough that it takes you half an hour to get productive again, your overall productivity is in serious trouble. If you're in a noisy bullpen environment like the type that caffinated dotcoms love to create, with marketing guys screaming on the phone next to programmers, your productivity will plunge as knowledge workers get interrupted time after time and never get into the zone.

http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articl...000000068.html

Another article, How to Shut up and Get to Work references the one I quoted from above

Quote:

When you have a long stretch where you aren’t bothered, you can get in the zone. The zone is when you are most productive. It’s when you don’t have to mindshift between various tasks. It’s when you aren’t interrupted to answer a question or look up something or send an email or answer an im. The alone zone is where real progress is made. Getting in the zone takes time. And that’s why interruption is your enemy. It’s like rem sleep – you don’t just go to rem sleep, you go to sleep first and you make your way to rem. Any interruptions force you to start over. rem is where the real sleep magic happens. The alone time zone is where the real development magic happens.

http://www.thinkvitamin.com/features/webapps/how-to-shut-up-and-get-to-work


I feel vindicated.