Today has been an excellent day. The start wasn’t promising. I woke later than intended, a little overheated having fallen asleep with the electric blanket on. I’d stayed up far too late writing, all inspired after watching Becoming Jane at the weekend. The Jane Austen biopic ticks all the period drama boxes… carelessly tousled hair, elegant dresses, dashing cads in breeches, horses cantering through muddy woodland, the repressed sexual tension of organised dancing and a traumatic section complete with soaking rain (more breeches) and dashing around. Here, in contrast, I’ve only managed tousled hair and rain. It did however leave me all inspired to squirrel myself away and write until the early hours.
Despite the slow and bleary start I managed to get into the swing by working on really interesting tasks and I immediately hit my stride. I was in the zone, I had lots of great ideas, and everything I tried fell into place. I think my August blip is over.
Being “in the zone” is another term for being “in flow”, or fully immersed in whatever we’re doing. We often experience it playing sport, music or computer games. It’s those magical times when we’re so fully engrossed, everything else is shut out. We’re completely on top of our game (whatever that may be). We don’t have to think about how to hit the ball, which note to play next, or which button to press, it just happens. We’re certainly not thinking about what to have for dinner or whether to bring the washing in.
I’m not in the habit of quoting footballers (I prefer rugby dahling) but this is a great description of being in the zone, from the world beating Brazilian footballer, Pelé: “I felt a strange calmness…a kind of euphoria. I felt I could run all day without tiring, that I could dribble through any (player) of their team or all of them, that I could almost pass through them physically.”
It feels great to be in flow. The term comes from an aquatic analogy of being carried along by a current (in a good way, rather than in a grabbing-at-floating-debris-to-stay-afloat way). Hours pass by unnoticed, we lose feelings of self-consciousness, we’re highly focused, our skill level is as high as the challenge we face and we experience a sense of success. And we forget to have a break to go to the loo. Perhaps that last bit is just me.
These episodes of flow prove that we capable of operating at a high level much more often. It’s just that we need to get out of the way of ourselves, shut out that little voice which questions every move and happily surrender to it. I’m working out how to enter this state more often. If I can get into the zone with work more frequently, it will make for many more enjoyable and successful days, sat in front of my laptop with my legs firmly crossed.
Here’s a post which has given me a few ideas of how to intentionally go with the flow. Further reading can be found in the Inner Game books by Timothy Gallwey.
[...] wrote a while ago about being in flow , which is essentially those times when everything is going right. The trick is to exploit every [...]