Bringing “The Zone” Down to Earth

 

Everyone wants to be in the zone – a state of heightened mental functioning, awareness, and concentration that allows you to deliver your best, seemingly with ease. This peak of mental performance can sometimes feel like an ethereal, intangible thing that you stumble upon randomly. The potency of your performance in that state is intoxicating, begging you to return if only you knew how to get there…

Alright, alright, the zone often seems mystical but it’s time to bring it back down to earth. Because, like every other aspect of the Mental Game, the zone is predictable and achievable once you understand more about it – which means you can then reach this state more often.

To point out the obvious, the zone is such a desired state because when you’re there everything feels easy, you automatically make high quality decisions and your execution is precise. In the zone you also:

Have gut instincts, senses, or feelings about the right decisions, but can’t explain their rationale.Are able to consider more factors than normal, and process them more quickly.Lose a sense of time and your perception of it is altered. For some, time flies by; for others, it slows down dramatically.Are totally engrossed in the action as if it’s the only thing happening in the world.Are focused purely on execution and care less about results.

It’s obvious why you want to get into the zone and you’ve all gotten there at some point in time. But, since you often don’t know how you got there, you think you can’t influence or control your ability to reach it and many of you have given up on trying or don’t know where to begin. 

The truth is, it seems random because there are many variables at play in reaching peak mental performance. Once you better understand those variables and your response to them, you can build a formula that will increase your likelihood of reaching the zone.

 

Two Key Variables

The two main factors that influence your ability to reach the zone are energy and clarity of mind.

You need the right mix of each to get there. However, the ratio can change day-to-day, and over time. Think of this a bit like trying to bake cookies. The recipe is pretty straightforward, but if you’re baking at high altitude you need to make adjustments. Or consider how the material of different baking sheets alters cooking time or temperature. 

We all know it’s hard to get it wrong when it comes to baking cookies, but if you want perfection you need precision. To reach the zone, not randomly, means you have command of the internal variables at play and know how to generate more or less of what you need. This is what elite performers are able to do.

The zone cannot be reached without the right amount of energy. This is true in a mentally demanding activity like poker or trading, just as it is in a physically demanding sport such as basketball and golf. If your level of energy is too high or too low, you might be able to perform well, but you won’t be able to reach the zone.  

When it comes to energy, we’re also not just talking about physical energy, emotion and motivation matter too. Sometimes you’re just not that inspired by your goals and your energy can be too flat. On the other hand, if your emotions are too jacked up, you are not going to be in the zone either. The rare convergence of these examples is using anger as fuel if you are too flat or lacking intensity, an approach used expertly by Michael Jordan.

Each person has their own theoretical optimal level of energy. Yours might be super intense, or zen like, or having a highly engaged state of mind. Energy can also come and go–especially because competitive dynamics can shift quickly. 

While a common characteristic of the zone is a sense of ease, you’re actually burning a lot of energy to produce that experience. This is one of the reasons you can’t be in the zone all the time. It’s incredibly difficult to sustain that level of energy and this is why elite athletes structure their training to try and peak at certain times of the year.

The other key factor, clarity of mind, occurs when you are primed and ready but not overwhelmed – you’re like a sponge that is slightly moist and ready to pick up the maximum amount of water vs. one that is dripping wet and no longer absorbing anything. When your mind is full, which can happen from being in the zone, you have to empty it out. While that happens naturally when you sleep, sometimes your mind needs more encouragement to empty because you have learned so much or absorbed so many details and data about what’s happening around you.

Clarity is also affected by how much you have been learning and working recently. This is why it’s not a great idea to have a long, intense preparation where you are “cramming” or actively learning right before trading or playing. And if you’ve been actively learning a lot, whether that be backtesting, reviewing hand histories, or putting in a ton of practice on the driving range, all that work can fill your mind with a lot of info that can make it harder to be intuitive and responsive when it’s time to trade or play.

On the flip side, you don’t want your mind to be empty, like what might happen if you went on a one month vacation. You want to feel like you are able to be intuitive, responsive, and have your thoughts flow.

 

Find Your Formula

Given that the mix of energy and clarity of mind is individualized, the first step to getting in the zone more frequently is creating a zone profile. I’ve included a trading example below so you can see how it works.  

 

 

Completing yours is rarely done well on the first day. Do a draft and then reexamine your past experiences to see what you can find. Then after times when you spontaneously reach the zone, look at how you got there–while your arrival there may have felt random, it wasn’t and you can uncover the variables that helped you.

You can’t reach the zone every day and you can’t stay there forever. But by understanding the important factors and leveraging them well, you can reach it much more often.

If you want more on this subject, check out my free Intuition ebook. You can also receive The Mental Game of Poker 2, which includes in depth details about the zone, for free with the purchase of The Mental Game of Poker or The Mental Game of Trading via my website. Just click the option in the payment cart to include it (see screenshot below). 

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